St. Louis Business Journal
How to find the people you need to make a work transition

By Anna Navarro

January 2004 - To make a successful change in your job or career, you need help from other people. They may be old friends or complete strangers, but there is no way to escape people in this process.

If you are outgoing and enjoy socializing, this aspect of a work transition is a welcome opportunity to meet and connect with people. But for those of us (and I count myself among them) who are sometimes shy, this can be a challenge.

So when Rachel, a young attorney with whom I was working, expressed concern about talking to people about a career she was exploring, I completely understood her hesitations. I also knew she needed to get past this hurdle or she'd be stuck in a job she didn't like.

Rachel had difficulty with the adversarial aspects of her legal career, so we started to explore possibilities outside the law. We discussed becoming a trust officer, especially one whose responsibilities focused on establishing trust arrangements and helping clients after the service had been sold.

The career was interesting to Rachel, but not too familiar. She needed to check in with people in the field to make sure her understanding matched reality.Here's where Rachel's career change came to a halt. She didn't know anybody in the field, and had no idea how to approach or even find people who worked in the field. As she said: "I have no connections."

To get her past this hurdle we analyzed her personal network. Everyone has one, even people who think they are unconnected.

We analyzed:
• Friends, neighbors, acquaintances
• People in clubs or professional and civic organizations to which she belonged
• Professional service people in her life: doctors, lawyers, hairdressers, etc.
• Her core and extended family
• People she knew from current and past jobs:
- co-workers: peers, bosses, subordinates, clients, customers
• Former classmates
• People at her place of worship

Rachel discovered several people who, though they were not trust officers, worked in banks or had strong links to banking and the financial services industry. I explained to Rachel that they could be helpful by referring her to trust officers, or to others who might, in turn, know trust officers.

I advised her to call these people and explain that she was in the midst of a career change and was exploring the possibility of becoming a trust officer and needed to talk to people who were knowledgeable about the field. I also urged her to emphasize that she was NOT going to ask anybody for a job, just for information and advice.

Rachel followed through and was surprised to find that she not only got several names of people in the field, but the people she called were supportive of her efforts.
We continued to dig for contacts. One of my favorites is on-line newspaper archives. A detailed search resulted in seven more names of individuals, along with information on their companies and projects in which they were involved.

Another resource is professional associations in the field. A trip to the library and a check of Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations yielded several groups that might be helpful. She found their websites and learned a great deal more about the field. She also contacted their headquarters and was able, in one instance, to get the name of the local chapter president as well as the schedule of local meetings which welcomed guests.

The yellow pages provided her with a list of local trust companies and banks with trust departments. She studied their websites and obtained several more names of individuals who looked, from their titles, as if they might do the kind of work that interested her.

By the time she completed these steps she had the names of about a dozen people, more than enough to start her networking process.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways to build a network. There are many more ways to use the internet and the library to find names of people to talk to in almost any field. This column is meant to spark your imagination and to encourage even those readers who think they are unconnected to believe that they can find names of people in a field. Some of them will be kind enough to provide very helpful information and advice about the field if you ask.

Anna Navarro is the founder of Work Transitions, a nationwide career consulting firm that trains independent career strategists and consults with individual clients.

This column was originally published by the St. Louis Business Journal. The actual title of the column and date in which it appeared in the Business Journal may be slightly different from what appears on WorkTransitions.com.