????2010年10月，希拉?塞格去哥倫比亞卡塔赫納參加朋友的婚禮。當(dāng)時，她并未想到，這次行程會讓她得到自己夢寐以求的工作。那時，她還是Gibson Dunn律師事務(wù)所紐約市辦事處的一名企業(yè)律師，但她一直希望有機會加入一家媒體公司的法律部門工作。

????新娘的姐姐認(rèn)識ABC公司的一名律師。認(rèn)識幾個月后，塞格便提交了自己的簡歷，但她并不知道會得到怎樣的結(jié)果，或者說是否會有任何結(jié)果。7月，她如愿成為赫斯特集團(tuán)（Hearst）的一名律師。

????構(gòu)建關(guān)系網(wǎng)對于塞格來說并不容易。她承認(rèn)最初自己對于主動與陌生人聯(lián)系也心存膽怯。她說道：“不過，一旦習(xí)慣了這種做法，事情就變得容易很多?！?/p>

????根據(jù)再就業(yè)咨詢公司Challenger, Gray & Christmas于2009年進(jìn)行的一項調(diào)查，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，塞格的做法完全符合規(guī)則，并不屬于例外情況：報告將構(gòu)建關(guān)系網(wǎng)列為尋找新工作最有效的途徑，重要程度超過了商務(wù)社交網(wǎng)站LinkedIn等社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)和Indeed.com等互聯(lián)網(wǎng)求職搜索引擎。

????伯納德學(xué)院（Barnard College）的職業(yè)顧問克里斯汀?西恩稱，她會告訴前來咨詢的學(xué)生，他們必須將80%的求職時間用于建立關(guān)系網(wǎng)，編寫簡歷的時間只要有20%就足夠了。然而，對于那些發(fā)送了大量聯(lián)絡(luò)郵件、打了許多電話，最后卻無功而返的求職者來說，問題不再是為何要建立關(guān)系網(wǎng)，而是如何有效地建立關(guān)系網(wǎng)。

????正如塞格最初的感受，許多人在構(gòu)建關(guān)系網(wǎng)時感覺不自在，因為他們覺得好像是在像別人祈求一份新工作。但西恩建議換一個角度來看待關(guān)系網(wǎng)的建立：“建立關(guān)系網(wǎng)就是與其他人建立聯(lián)系”，而不是祈求一份工作。

????對于那些天生不擅長與陌生人打交道的人，建立關(guān)系網(wǎng)肯定有些困難。比如，他們會認(rèn)為這比在網(wǎng)上盲目求職更有壓力。而且，一旦感覺之前的努力毫無成效，許多人會就此放棄。所以，第一步，或許就是降低自己的期望值。西恩稱，職業(yè)關(guān)系網(wǎng)聯(lián)絡(luò)人每聯(lián)系10個人，或許只能得到幾個回復(fù)。她建議：“關(guān)鍵是要看到積極一面。如果有兩人給了你回復(fù)，應(yīng)該立刻跟進(jìn)。即便他們的工作與你期望的職業(yè)沒有太大關(guān)系，也應(yīng)該去拜訪一下。盡量不要被那些‘拒絕’所困擾?！?/p>

????CareerSonar網(wǎng)站聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人阿塞夫?卡齊爾也給出了類似的建議。這家網(wǎng)站會將求職者在LinkedIn和Facebook的聯(lián)系人與互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上海量的職位進(jìn)行匹配。他說：“如果（你主動聯(lián)系的）那個人感覺無法給你提供真正的幫助，但又不想說出來，他們便會不理睬你，這時求職者便應(yīng)該嘗試尋找其他人給你推薦工作，或繼續(xù)尋找下一個機會。機會總是無處不在?！?/p>

????不要把那些拒絕，甚至得不到任何回復(fù)的遭遇放在心里。塞格的經(jīng)歷便充分證明了積極思考的力量。在建立關(guān)系網(wǎng)的最初九個月里，她估計自己至少聯(lián)系了50人，其中許多都是素未謀面的陌生人，有一半一直杳無音訊。她說：“有的人非常積極地做了回復(fù)。有的人卻一直沒有音信。我給有的人發(fā)了跟進(jìn)郵件，然后他們便做出了回應(yīng)。有的人會把我介紹給其他人。回復(fù)的內(nèi)容五花八門?！痹谶@個過程中，盡量從自己的錯誤中總結(jié)經(jīng)驗，但要一直堅持下去。西恩說：“要堅持不懈，但也應(yīng)該有禮有節(jié)。”如果沒有收到回復(fù)，可以向潛在聯(lián)系人發(fā)一封跟進(jìn)郵件。因為“大家都很忙，” 發(fā)一封跟進(jìn)郵件可以避免他們錯過你的郵件。

????When Shira Saiger headed to Cartagena, Colombia for a friend's wedding in October 2010, she wasn't expecting the trip to lead her to her dream job. But as a corporate attorney at Gibson Dunn's New York City office, she was always looking for an opportunity to jump to the legal offices at a media company.

????The bride's sister knew an attorney at ABC, and after following up a few months later, Saiger passed along her resume, not knowing what -- if anything -- would come of it. By July, she was a lawyer at Hearst.

????Networking didn't always come easily to Saiger, who admits she was initially shy about reaching out to people she didn't know. "But once I got more in the habit of it," she says, "it got much easier to do."

????A 2009 survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement consultancy, found that Saiger's experience fits the rule, not the exception: The report ranked networking as the most effective way to find a new job, beating out social networking sites like LinkedIn (LNKD) and Internet job search engines like Indeed.com.

????Christine Shin, career counselor at Barnard College, says she tells her advisees that they should be putting 80% of their job search time into networking and only 20% into cranking out resumes. But for those who send out plenty of networking emails and phone calls only to hear nothing but silence, the question isn't why they should network, but how.

????Like Saiger originally did, many people feel uncomfortable networking because they feel like they are asking for something -- a new job. But Shin suggests looking at networking in a different light: "Networking is making connections," not asking for a job.

????For people who don't naturally find it easy to talk to strangers, networking can be difficult work -- far more stressful than blindly applying to jobs online, for example -- and when efforts seem to fail, many people give up. The first step may be to lower your expectations. According to Shin, for every 10 people a professional networker reaches out to, he or she may only hear back from a few. "They key is to emphasize the positive. If those two people got back to you, immediately follow up," she advises. "Go see them even if they're not working that closely in something you want." She adds, "Try not to obsess too much about the 'No's.'"

????Asaf Katzir, co-founder of CareerSonar, a website that matches your LinkedIn and Facebook (FB) connections with the Internet's seemingly endless job listings, offers similar advice. "If the person [you've reached out to] doesn't feel like they can really help you, and they don't want to say it out loud, so they ignore you, try to find someone else to refer you to the job or move on to the next opportunity," he says. "There's surprisingly a lot out there."

????Saiger's experience is evidence of the power of positive thinking and not taking those "No's" -- or, more likely, lack of responses -- too personally. During the nine months she spent networking, Saiger estimates that she reached out to at least 50 people, many of them people she had never met before, and didn't hear back from as many as half of them. "Some of those people were incredibly responsive. Some of them I never heard back from. Some of them I sent follow-up emails to and then they were responsive," she says. "Some of them introduced me to other people to network with. It was a wide range of responses."

????Try to learn from whatever mistakes you make along the way and just keep plugging away at it. "Be respectfully persistent," Shin says, by sending a single follow-up email to a potential connection if you haven't heard back. "People are busy," and end up missing emails.