“If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.” – Martin Blank, Grosse Pointe Blank.
“Pretty fly for a white guy” – The Offspring
There are two directions we’re going to go here…and neither one of them is a good one for you to take at a networking event – ours or others.
We’ve always told you “Don’t Be That Guy“. Well, now we’re also telling you Don’t Be That Fly…
The first is one that I’m sure you’ve encountered in your own day to day life, and I’m equally sure that you despise it just as much as I do.
The incessant buzzing around a lightbulb.
The annoying tendency to flit past your ear and make you duck and flinch as if an F-15 were strafing your shoulder.
Landing on your food.
And even worse…some of them bite.
Laying there at night…in bed…all nice and comfy…and you hear it. The buzzing. The infernal buzzing that means that there’s a fly trapped in your house somewhere and there will be no sleeping until it has been dispatched.
Or even worse…heaven forbid you have a cat in the house.
Lamps will get destroyed. If it still has claws, you will be used as a launching pad and you will bleed.
And if you have blinds…yes, the picture at right can actually happen. I’ve seen it. I’ve had to replace blinds over it.
The moral of the story is that flies are bad news.
So you don’t want to be the little creature buzzing around the room that nobody wants there. Just Don’t Be That Fly…uhh, Don’t Be That Guy.
Now we’re going to get a little more specific for the second part here. And since we’re closing in on Halloween, let’s use a fun classic horror film that’s on topic to build the analogy: The Fly.
I believe we’ve been abundantly clear that while we’re ecstatic that people have found jobs through our group, that’s not really what we do. It’s a happy side-effect, so even though we’re really a group focused on networking and building relationships, and not really about finding you a new job, we roll with it. And since people will always be finding jobs through our casual networking events just like people will show up at our Pink Slip Party events to network, we try and make sure you at least have a fighting chance even if you ignore everything we’ve put out here for you to read.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the classic line from The Fly: “Help me! Heeeeeeeelp meeeeeee!“, but if you’ve only ever seen the updated version with Jeff Goldblum from 1986 (or, heaven help you, the sequel from 1989 with Daphne Zun…Zinu…Zuni… Princess Vespa, you know who I mean), then you may not know where it comes from.
The basics from the original are still the same: scientist plays with DNA, there’s a fly involved, whacky mayhem ensues. Except in the original, we also have a fly that’s combined with human DNA and becomes, well, a fly-sized human. And since it was released in 1958, I’m comfy giving away the spoiler that said fly-sized human winds up trapped in a spider web, leading to the quote that everyone’s heard and knows.
And passing bystanders calmly watch as the mini-human struggles in the web, attracts the spider’s attention…and the spider does its thing.
The point?
Don’t ooze desperation.
Don’t thrash around in a blind panic and attract the attention of predators.
And for the love of all that’s good and decent in the world, don’t sit there using some high pitched, shrill voice screaming to anyone who will listen that you need help.
Not that needing help is bad – that’s totally not the point here. As mentioned earlier, we get it – people come to find jobs. You might even be showing up the day you got let go. You might be showing up six months after you got let go because you’re just hearing about us for the first time.
But please…please …remember that we’ve told you that there are many parallels between networking and dating. And just like oozing desperation at a bar is the single best way to make sure that nobody wants to let you buy them a drink, doing the same thing at a networking event virtually ensures that you’ll be turning people off from conversations just as quickly.
Or even worse…you just might attract the wrong sort of attention.
So no matter how hard it may seem…relax. Read through the 10 Commandments of Networking out at http://www.ITinTheD.com/2697/the-new-and-improved-10-commandments-of-networking/ if nothing else, and take our advice. Find one of the three of us at an event, explain your situation, and let us do what we do. Or as we’ve told you before (in those 10 Commandments, mind you) always find the event host at any event and do the same thing. If they can’t help you, you’re at the wrong event…
…in fact, you might just be in a spider web.
That’s all for this time folks. Go check out the rest of our entries: http://www.ITinTheD.com/blog/