Our editorial series on dealing with competition is almost done, but we’ve got one last point for all of you who stayed with it from the beginning! To bring things full circle with the first part of this series, let’s remember that all the other career-seekers competing with us are human beings as well. And how do human beings behave outside of work? The answer is quite familiar.
- ENGAGE THEM AT OTHER LEVELS OUTSIDE OF BUSINESS WHEN POSSIBLE.
A great majority of us, being human, are able to form connections with other people with as little reason as having something in common with them. This ease in making connections extends to almost any environment we are in, but it somehow becomes drastically reduced when we’re looking for a job.
Naturally, this happens through the nature of competition. There are no friends when people who don’t know each other compete for the same position. On the extreme end, some career-seekers actively try to sabotage their rivals. As we’d discussed earlier in this series, the “small world” effect means that being hostile to our competitors can backfire on us in the future.
That’s not to mention that we may also encounter these fellow career-seekers in normal situations outside of work. They may be our fellow members from an organization’s other chapters. They could snatch the last bag of our favorite snack from the shelf when we encounter them at the grocery store. They could even be in an employee-client situation with us someday; either they’re the employee and we’re the client, or vice versa. A lot of uncomfortable and even frustrating situations could crop up when we find that we’re moving in the same circles as some of the competitors we disrespected.
How do we avoid this? First of all, we would have to build professional connections with our competitors in the job-hunting environment; this was discussed earlier in this editorial series as well. Once these rivals become parts of our business network, we should keep in touch with them for news on common professional interests, as well as other local and national developments that affect the entire workforce. Once we’re comfortable with that, our conversations with them will occasionally reveal some small details about our respective personal lives. They may have something not work-related in common with us, and a non-business friendship can start there.
This won’t happen right away with all our connections, but we can manage to have a good number of our friendships start out this way. This is what happens when people “click” despite starting out as rivals. And with these professionals as our friends, we’re never too far from a helping hand in case we get stuck in a certain point in our careers. They can perform that role just as well as people who have been our long-time friends even before entering the workforce. They can be valuable allies, and we can never have too many of those on our side in the professional world.
And that’s what this editorial series is supposed to help us do: make fewer enemies and more allies. We hope that you’re able to use the advice we’ve given to forge fulfilling relationships with fellow career-seekers. Stay tuned to Servicio Filipino for more of the best tips and guides tailored for every professional in the workforce!