Being Friendly to Expand your Connections
Recently, I heard about a rule that the Mariott hotels make their employees live by. It’s call the 10 and 5 Staff Rule.
It’s a pretty straightforward rule: if a guest passes within 10 feet of an employee, the employee is required to make eye contact and smile in a friendly way. If a guess passes within 5 feet, the employee must also greet the guest.
Imagine: what would your life look like if you lived by this rule?
Expanding your Network
Studies and surveys have repeatedly found that the key to getting a job is knowing the right people. How do you get to know these people? “Networking” is the catch-all term that we apply these days, but exactly how does one “network?”
In a nutshell: you talk to people. The only difference between a stranger and an acquaintance is that an acquaintance is a stranger you’ve had a conversation with. Experience shows that, aside from a greater likelihood of landing jobs, acquaintances also get “better” jobs than strangers do.
So it turns out that one of the best things you can do to help your job search is simply talk to people. Take a chance on talking to that seat mate on an airplane, or the person standing next to you in line at the grocery store. You might even get a job lead out of it.
