Dig Your Candidate Well Before You’re Thirsty in Business and at Work

At the beginning of my career, one of my favorite books was Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty – The Only Networking Book You’ll Ever Need by Harvey Mackay.

I used this resource at first to create a foundational network for my own career path opportunities. It dovetailed perfectly with my natural / lifelong curiosity about people, unknown and known. As I settled on my career path of the last few decades (which prominently includes but is not limited to recruiting for open jobs at all levels), professional people-collecting became even more focused and meaningful. Every person I met (and meet) is a potential candidate for a future client job opening. (People-collecting also comes in handy for putting together the relationship-building puzzle pieces when considering prospective clients.)

LinkedIn is the perfect platform to keep track of prospective candidates as well as periodically communicate with them. I always ask for a business card; if they don’t have a business card, I confirm that they’re on LinkedIn, and I send them an invitation from my LinkedIn app before we end our conversation. The bigger your LinkedIn network, the bigger your pool is for prospective job candidates.

In this current tight candidate market, employers are using tools that I haven’t seen in almost 20 years (the last time we had this tight a candidate market, around Y2K) such as TV and radio commercials, full-page newspaper ads, billboards – you get the picture, and you’ve seen it yourself.

In addition to these big-ticket recruiting ad purchases, it’s a perfect time to start digging your candidate well, and keep digging on a weekly basis for the foreseeable future. Prospective candidates are everywhere:

• At business events
  • Looking for PMP Project Managers? Go to the local monthly PMP dinner, as an example
• In your congregation
• On your nonprofit Board(s) of Directors
• Teaching, supervising, mentoring and hiring your friends and family
• As references for your latest new-hire-to-be
• At your kids’ school events
• In waiting rooms
• Running your favorite store
• Giving you excellent hospitality service
• Etc.

As the saying (and its tropes below) goes:

• Always be meeting new network contacts
• Always be helping your network contacts with a quick answer and/or advice in your area of subject-matter expertise (e.g., it’s best to give first before you get something from your network contacts)
• Always be recruiting
• Always be selling;

To always strive for success, in business and at work.