Refine Your Small Talk Job Search Skills
We’ve all found ourselves in that situation where someone we don’t know asks us what we do for a living. Depending on your mental energy level at the time, you may offer a job title-only response or you might go into a little more detail about what it is that you actually do for a living. In many instances, we don’t really know who’s asking us the question and we likely don’t know anything at all about what he or she does for a living. You never know when the opportunity will arise to meet someone that may actually help you in a future job search or in your current career. And if your current job requires you to hire IT contractors, for example, you won’t know if you’re talking to one unless you start to ask some questions.
The art of the small talk requires some skill, however, and nothing is more likely to end a conversation for conversation’s sake faster than a poorly crafted segue into career-related questions. Some people simply don’t want to talk about it and you have to be able to recognize that early on. But some people will offer loads of valuable career information out of sheer boredom, if the situation is right. The key is to be able to mine for some information that may be of value to you – and often times that will come simply by offering some of the same information about yourself.
Starting and expanding the dialogue is generally easy to do and most professionals understand the importance of casual networking and how it can potentially yield new opportunities. Obviously, you need to be upfront and honest about what it is that you do and be genuinely interested in hearing someone speak about their jobs – even if it’s never going to be of any relevance to your career. If you actually start listening to the people around you, you’ll likely be surprised at what you hear and learn. This is especially true when you’re searching for local jobs in your area.
When you do come across some people that you think you may want to keep in contact with from a professional standpoint, you want to make sure that you’re using some sort of effective career contact manager to do so. By making it general practice to engage the people around you in social and other non-professional settings, you’ll greatly expand your base of contacts that may ultimately prove beneficial in advancing your career and future personal job searches.
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9 Responses to “Refine Your Small Talk Job Search Skills”
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Small talk is something you either have or you don’t. Small talk could be very important to landing a future position anywhere.
It’s an important skill to develop if you want to network successfully.
I know I had to learn this skill at my last job. I was the Communications Specialist for the X PRIZE Foundation, which is a very difficult organization to explain in the intro of a conversation. We actually had talks at meetings about some strategies people used for explaining what we did. Those were very useful, and after a few months, I’d come up with a standard “elevator pitch” about what I did. Now that I’ve moved on to freelancing and America’s Job Exchange, that skill has come in handy, and I’ve created elevator descriptions of all of my clients.
The old saying is “you got to give before you get.” Smalltalk is what that’s all about. If you put your objectives back a bit you might also find there’s a better deal on the table. You can only hear it if you keep yourself open and listen.
Agreed, Mike. Small talk is an important skill but you don’t learn a thing when you talk; you can only learn when you’re listening.
These days, having a 30-second ‘elevator pitch’ ready is a great way to prep for those unexpected times when asked about what you do. I recently posted an article about networking at trade shows (http://undergroundjobnetwork.com/?p=991) and it stresses the importance of being able to describe what you do before the listener’s eyes glaze over.
Victory! Your site has helped me solve a real problem and I have found the information I have been searching for. It has taken weeks to find it, and it’s all here. I’ll be back!
You would think, since you spend 40 hours or more a week “working,” that you’d be able to easily explain to someone what you do all day, but I find that to be one of the hardest questions to answer in conversation. I can say I am a marketing coordinator, but if someone wants more info, I am usually at a loss for words. I run a blog, I manage a social network, I work with HR Folk . . . . . and then I’m stumped!
Small talk is an essential skill to have. Quite often I have made some some ice breaking comments to candidates about traffic, weather etc and been quite stunned at the lack of conversational skills.
I always suggest that candidates keep an eye on local news when going for interviews.
Small talk with the receptionist (good and bad) has a habit of filtering back…