Customer Reviews

A Foot in the Door: Networking Your Way into the Hidden Job Market

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At age 24, with a degree in Finance and International Business and one year working for a major accounting firm in London, I came to Los Angeles with dreams of landing a financial position in the entertainment industry. Smart enough to know that THE FRONT DOOR was being used by everyone, I invested a couple grand with a career coaching firm that taught me how to get in THE BACK DOOR. Within a couple months, I met with 7 CFOs of the top studios and landed a job with MGM/UA. TOO BAD I didn't have Katharine Hansen's "A Foot In The Door" then!

Now, as a 15-year recruiting veteran, career coach, and careers author, I teach this backdoor method myself. For both beginners in the job market, or beginners to the idea of informational interviewing and backdoor job search (which many of my 40-50 year-old clients are), this is a great career manual. Katharine walks the uninitiated through the entire philosophy, psychology, and practical steps of non-lemming job finding--doing it differently. Since 80% of all jobs are filled BEFORE being advertised, the technique of tapping the "hidden job market" as Katharine describes is crucial to long-term career management. Plus, experts say we are moving away from the traditional "permanent job," so knowledge of formalized networking will be a REQUIRED SKILL in tomorrow's economy.

I did well in college because 4 months earlier I found a little book called "How to Make Straight A's in College by Beating the System". "A Foot In The Door" is the same type of book to read after college and before any career change...because this is about beating the job search system.

Thanks for spelling it all out Katharine!

The socially savvy may not need this book, but those of us who are rather shy, or at least reluctant to risk annoying people, need a push. This book is the gentle nudge nonassertive types need to venture out and take a social risk.

Very few jobs are obtained through the job websites such as Monster. Recently, a job in Las Vegas for a part-time museum greeter drew over 600 applications! By law, government and publically supported organizations must advertise, but that doesn't prevent them hiring from within, which they usually do.

Where do you find jobs? Through people you know. So, the more people you meet, the more people you know and the more people you know, the more people can know you. Like the old saying says, "It's not what you know, but who you know. "

Networking sounds rather mercenary, but actually it is just friends and acquaintances. I think Katharine Hansen has written the best book yet on how to network from scratch. How do you go about breaking the ice? What do you write? How do you find people who can help you? What do you say? How do you make yourself impressive and memorable to someone you've just met? With specific examples, A Foot in the Door: Networking Your Way Into the Hidden Job Market will show you how.

Thanks to her, I now spend more time out of the house being socially productive and less time at the lonely computer spinning my wheels.

Everything in here is good for the college grad. If you've done any networking before then you are past this book.

I think this is one of the best networking books around for individuals who want to network to find jobs. I highly recommend it to my clients, especially the reluctant introverts. It offers very practical and natural advice about networking and how to do it in an acceptable way. Hansen offers scripts, tips on information meetings and much more. I especially like the "foot notes" scattered throughout. For example, if you are a shy person attending an event, pretend you are the host and it is your job to make other feel welcome. I have tried this strategy myself and it really works to help an introvert come out of his/her shell. I also like the networking hotspots...again there is something useful here for every personality type.

I did not find this information useful. Any competent employee of a workforce center (state employment agency) could give you this much advice, or more, for free. So could old library books, as this book doesn't seem to be that up-to-date. My advice is to look elsewhere.

If you are just out of College, get this book otherwise forget it! Executive level positions need much more sophisticated book to be successful.