Years back there was a popular TV commercial that showed people playing tennis at the club, and when one man said to the other, “My broker is EF Hutton, and he says….” at which time everyone freezes, the idea being everyone wanted to hear what EF Hutton had to say about stocks.

I feel the same way about Nick Corcodilos, a master headhunter who writes syndicated content as www.AskTheHeadhunter.com. When Nick Corcodilos talks, people listen….or should.

In today’s post, Nick says:

The single biggest source of hires (30%-40%) is personal referrals.

Few companies have the resources for HR executives to go out and recruit through personal contacts, he continues, since most recruiting budgets are wasted on Monster, CareerBuilder and HOTJOBS.

The big takeaway from his post today is the concluding sentence:

The lesson? If you want to hire somebody (or find a job), go talk to people. You’ll have little competition.

Here is a plug for our own LINKUP.com, which Nick does not mention, but I just want to encourage all those job seekers who are not comfortable with ‘networking’ to first visit our site here. There you can find only jobs only from company’s own website, more than 50% are not advertised to the “public.” If I were going to start networking, I would at least like to have a target list of companies that I know are hiring. And then, when I start my networking, I would have a leave-behind document for my network of friends, that lists those companies who are currently hiring, with some contact names, numbers and so on, so that my networking actually results in some movement and activity. It would be easy to do. It would be far better than asking the contact to “think about me when you hear of any openings.”

nickcview