It's not just what you know....

There's an old saying that a buddy of mine often likes to cite:
"It's not what you know, it's who you know."

While this screams of nepotism, I find it almost accurate. It's 'almost accurate' as it is missing 2 words: 'just' and 'also'.

The way I like to use the phase is:
"It's not just what you know, it's also who you know."

Over the past couple of days, word has spread that I'm looking for a new job. Of course, I had to start spreading the word, but the network effort of people who know other people is taking over. I started by calling, emailing, blogging, updating my LinkedIn account, updating my Facebook account (Hey, why doesn't Facebook buy LinkedIn? - this is a topic for another post). From my efforts, sprung network effects, with friends/colleagues reaching out to people they know and so on. It's really been refreshing to see this work, as people seem to truly want to help.
And, this kind of blows my mind - my 100 LinkedIn contacts, expands to almost 20,000 contacts that are 2nd degree, and nearly 1.8 million contacts that are 3rd degree. Yes, m i l l i o n - now that's a big network that is only a phone call or two away.

Now, my friend who is a fan of nepotism would agrue that this is all I need, a network of people who will help me at the drop of the hat. I don't expect anyone to do anything at the drop of a hat. I need to do my fair share of the work in this job search, which is about 99.9% of what it will take to land my next job. It's this extra 0.1% that my network will help me gain. It's people providing introductions that I can then leverage. It's people passing along my resume. It's people providing advice. It's the network effect.

So, this is the "it's also who you know" portion. What about the "it's not just what you know" part?
Well, this is important, too. Being knowledgeable is very important. This comes from a combination of education, upbringing, on the job experience, and just plain smarts. Being able to perform in a professional or work environment is also very important. After all, it doesn't matter who you know if they don't believe you'll perform. If they believe you'll perform, you'll get the receommendation/help, if they don't believe you'll perform, you won't.

Taking this all into consideration, it definitely is a combination of WHAT you know and also WHO you know. A job search with only one of these 2 components will be much more difficult that if you have both. I've spent a lot of effort my professional life learning the WHAT and cultivating the WHO. In theory, my search should be much more fruitful since I can honestly say I have the WHAT and the WHO in my arsenal.

Only time will tell if it's:
"It's not what you know, it's who you know."
or
"It's not just what you know, it's also who you know."

Me, I'm betting on the latter.


Cool site of the day: http://proimagespa.com/slideshow/superbowl/