Successful Application II: Network.

Let’s be honest: who can best assess which qualities you possess and what you are capable of? Naturally you yourself. This is why only you yourself can exactly communicate in your application what you are capable of, what you are worth and, most of all, what you expect for yourself. Therefore you should always present yourself with self-confidence and openly represent your interests throughout your entire career – towards your current employer, the headhunter of an Executive Search Consultant or competitors. An important basic principle of career advice is: “only he who says what he wants can also get it.” Therefore self-confident demeanour is always advantageous for your career. If you find it difficult to advocate your own interests and concerns, you should definitely consider coaching or a professional career advisory service.
Always remember: taking advantage of a career advisory service by a professional consultant does of course incur costs. The financial loss that you will incur throughout your entire career due to too much modesty and reservation will, however, be considerably higher.

Consciously build a network

A good network is an important foundation for lasting success in your career and can also bring many advantages for an application. It is often less a question of direct professional advancement in the form of job offers. It is rather the case that especially an external network helps you to recognise what is currently being sought, to assess yourself and your current position or also to receive advice or specialist information. Professional career advice from a coach or an experienced Executive Search Consultant can help you in the long term to build a network properly and successfully exploit it.

Via a functioning network to a better job

Even though it should not be the most central aspect, a functioning network can be the key to your desired position. Nowadays it is generally believed that a good 40 per cent of vacancies, particularly higher positions, are not even advertised on official job markets but are filled through recommendations and unsolicited applications. So it’s no coincidence that headhunters and Executive Search Consultants often seek suitable candidates direct from their own pool of contacts. Yet even if you do not directly land a new position in this way, you probably learn of a vacancy in your desired company before other applicants. You know someone who works in this company etc. All of this brings you priceless advantages for your application.

How to build you network properly from the very beginning

Nowadays online services like Xing or linkedin offer you the possibility to organise your network easily and transparently and to continually manage and extend it. In the first step you should contact old school and student friends, former and current work colleagues and all of your business contacts. In addition you can of course massively increases the chances of being found by an Executive Search Consultant with the aid of your online profile. To this end though a certain amount of maintenance is required: you should for instance regularly check whether additional contacts such as to an Executive Search Consultant come into question for you. Especially the “birthday function” gives you a welcome opportunity to make contact to people who are particularly interesting for you. In this way bit by bit you can build up a large and hopefully resilient network which will definitely be very helpful for you in the long term.