VOICES

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Networking is Key to Getting a Job -- But How Do You Get Into the Network?

By Joseph Simon

Date: 12-17-96

Networking is how most job seekers find jobs -- especially in San Francisco which is home to the mother of all networks, cyberspace. But what do you do if none of the networks that are changing the world ever crosses your path? PNS commentator Joseph Simon, recently downsized after 16 years of steady employment, was born and raised in an inner-city neighborhood of San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO -- I am out of work.

After 16 years of steady employment in blue collar jobs, I have been downsized. I face a world of applications, interviews -- and no call backs.

Looking for work, I walk through the financial district. Billions of dollars are flowing around me, but it seems to me they flow through secret canals, with no leaks.

As I gather applications and fill them out like so many lottery tickets, I remember the unemployment counselor's advice. "Nine out of ten jobs are found through connections, or friends, and friends of friends."

This is "networking." I'm supposed to harvest my family and friends for a lead. But coming from a black neighborhood, my friends are not likely to be much help -- those who do have jobs are hanging on by a thread.

Networking means someone will see beyond my resume and realize I have potential based on my associations; "Yes, you're Chad's friend. Chad is great. How long have you known him?"

Networking means an interviewer will see beyond my black face and see a go-getter, a boot-strapper, a quick learner, and give me a break.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich says I should expect to have six or seven jobs before I retire, should train and retrain in new, emerging sectors of our booming economy. Why, right here in San Francisco, the "information superhighway" is breeding new jobs at a dizzying rate.

That network, the mother of all networks, has become the stomping ground of the new white, capitalist, hero -- the successor to the corporate raider. The cyberpunk.

White kids, bored in the suburbs, turned the garage into a hothouse of creativity. Then the amps and speakers gave way to Macs and modems, and the tattooed and pierced crew went from smashing machines to connecting them.

They are connected to those billion dollar canals. They dispense the jobs. They are not in my network.

I have watched white guys get the breaks for years. One guy I worked with selling shoes is now marketing director of a software company. He had maybe three semesters of community college. How did he get from measuring feet to spreadsheets, I asked -- a customer liked his approach, he said, and asked him to run the marketing division.

A white woman I knew studied French literature at an Ivy League school. We were at a party, and her beeper went off. She had to rush back to her office, she explained, where she manages data processing for a major bank -- huh? From French literature? Oh, she said casually, she didn't know anything about computers but the company trained her from scratch.

Another guy I worked with had Ronald Reagan's aw-shucks style and a six-foot-two Nordic frame. After one week on the sales floor, he took to telling me what to do and had his arm dangling off the shoulder of the company manager. A few months later my co-worker was a systems administrator in an office with cold air blowing and high security locks. No degree. No experience. But he had "that something" and he got a break.

I may get one of those breaks. But the networks that are changing the world are not crossing my path.