‘Tis the season for many of us to question whether we like, dislike or truly hate our jobs. And regardless of which of these categories you fall into, networking remains a key ingredient for your long-term professional happiness.

I could share a top 10 reason why networking is important for your career like this one, but I’ll let you decide if you think those tips are worthy of your time.

Instead I’m going to share this somewhat dated (from 2016), but extremely valuable and spot-on article/graph that reinforces what I truly believe when it comes to networking for a new job.

The article is entitled, New Survey Reveals 85% of All Jobs are Filled Via Networking and was conducted by LinkedIn and Lou Adler, who’s an accomplished author, CEO and all around super savvy individual.

If you’re looking for a new job here are the top two things you need to be doing in order to find your next job:

ABN = Always Be Networking

Aka, Just because you have a job doesn’t give you a free pass to stop networking. When you have a job is when you should be maintaining your network and nurturing your contacts so that when it comes time for you to seek support you don’t have to start networking from ground zero.
If you don’t believe me look at the graph. You’ll clearly see that those who were employed AND networking had the most new opportunities even if they weren’t actively looking for something new! What does this mean? It means that all of the jobs that are never posted or potentially aren’t even created yet are often times offered to those who currently have a job. Or are offered to those who have expressed some interest to their networks that they are interested in something new, something more challenging or are just hard working, motivated people that others are drawn to and want to bring onto their teams.

Don’t quit your job and hope something new/perfect will fall into your lap!

Quitting and hoping are not going to ensure you a new job or even worse a job that will ensure professional fulfillment. That being said, if you’ve been focusing on networking while you’ve stayed at a job your’re less than thrilled to be at your network can be simultaneously looking for new opportunities for you while you’re doing the same!

Finding and securing a new job is HARD WORK. Be an avid networker and enable your networks to help you along your journey towards more professional and ideally personal happiness!

Looking for a New Job? Here's the Best Tool to Help You!