Don't wear out your welcome by overdoing it with networking

By Joyce Lain Kennedy

Workplace Q&A | Tribune Media Services

DEAR JOYCE: I work in a company HR department. I’m developing a siege mentality because of a flood of calls from even the most casual of friends and long-lost acquaintances. They continually bug me, asking if I’ve heard of any jobs, or insisting that I send their names on to my boss or send e-mail pitches on their behalf to my entire professional address book. In every case I’ve said I would keep their names and contact information in an urgent file and take action whenever I hear of a suitable opportunity – and I will – but this aggressive badgering is getting old. Tell your readers that they lose ground by going to the well too often.

– W.A.Z.

As a job seeker, you can’t force targets to operate on your timetable. When your targets resent the pressure, your calls will go unanswered and you’ll get zero cooperation.

How do you know what crosses the fine line between intelligent following up and being a pest? What’s your relationship to the target? You could call your best friend every day, as long as you don’t match every call with a request for help. You could call someone you hardly knew in high school once a month or every two months.

Strategize how to follow up with your targets in ways that don’t remind them of an annoying younger brother. Perhaps you can think of something to give in return for the assistance you hope to receive. Manners and resourcefulness count in effective networking.

Credit-Check Catch-22

DEAR JOYCE: Why do companies use detailed credit checks to refuse to hire people? Unless you’re working for a bank or something, what’s a person’s credit record got to do with his ability to do a job? Nothing! Credit checks discriminate against many unemployed people who lost their homes as well as their jobs.

– J.B.

Credit checks should be called “catch-22 checks”: You can’t get a job if you’ve got bad credit, and you can’t re-establish your credit if you can’t get a job. A financial death spiral results. Credit checks should be outlawed when they are not directly related to job qualifications.

Two basic reasons account for employers using credit histories even though they don’t mean squat as indicators of being able to do the job:

1. Companies check credit histories because they can. Very few states have laws against the practice.

2. Using a credit record as a reason to reject an applicant is hard to challenge. The usual reason employers give for blowing off credit-risky candidates is poor judgment. Their typical mantra: “We don’t need to risk hiring someone who is unreliable, unwise or tempted to steal.”

I may return to this important topic in the future, but in the meantime, Google for an article, “Another Hurdle for the Jobless: Credit Inquiries” by Jonathan D. Glater.

When in doubt, omit salutation

DEAR JOYCE: Is it permissible to omit a salutation in a cover letter when you are answering a blind ad – or as you said recently, a ghost post – and you have no idea to whom you are writing? – D.E.

I think so. “Dear Sir/Madam” or “To Whom It May Concern” sounds like a salutation out of your grandfather’s era. “Dear Hiring Decision Maker” is a possibility that I like.

Check school’s references

DEAR JOYCE: I am thinking about going to a private career school, but acquaintances tell me that their promises of assisting graduates to find jobs after graduation are exaggerated and not reliable. True? False?

– P.V

Recent studies aren’t available to answer your question with data. But here’s a do-it-yourself solution:

Before enrolling, ask for the names of six graduates and the names of six employers who typically hire the school’s graduates.

Check with all references directly, and look them up on Facebook to see whom they say they’re working for, or sources of their hiring in 2010.

Ask, too, what internships the school expects to provide you, and check with that employer.

If the school admissions representative asserts that you’re being too cautious, check out another school.

Have a question? Contact Joyce Lain Kennedy at Jobs Today, The Los Angeles Times, P.O. Box 60164, Los Angeles, CA 90060-0164 or e-mail jlk@ sunfeatures.com.