Think for a moment about people in your life that want you to succeed.  Who are those people?  Why do they want you to achieve your goals?  How do you know they are wishing you well? How big is your list? Please take a few minutes to consider the list of your fans.

Now take a few minutes to think of people around you that hope you fail. Are the people you are thinking of childhood enemies?  Classmates you’ve been competing against?  Workplace rivalries?  Why do they want you to fail?  How do you know they are rooting against you? How big is this list?

The above is a valuable exercise as you evaluate the relationships around you, including your personal network and your professional contacts. What you are likely to discover might surprise you. Most people you know truly want you to be successful.

The problem, however, is that most people continue to behave as though others want them to fail.  Do you get nervous when you have to give a presentation in class?  Do you stress about upcoming job interviews? Do you worry that you’ll get ripped by the professor for the project you are working on?

While most people view their audience as an adversary, ready to judge and eager to rip them if given the opportunity, you need to understand the opposite is generally true.  Your audience almost always wants you to succeed!

Your professor?  He or she hopes you’ll earn an ‘A’.  Your classmates?  While some would think it funny if you crash and burn your presentation, most would rather see you knock it out of the park.  And most importantly, in your job search, the recruiter and the interviewers sincerely hope to hire you!  In each of the above situations, the audience is your advocate, not your adversary.

A job search is difficult enough on its own. If you head into the job search process with your fists up, ready to prove your adversaries wrong, you make things far harder on yourself than they need to be.  Instead, flip your expectations upside-down and dive into the job search process believing that people want to help you at every turn.

Consider the following list of people that you might work with during your job search:

• Your network of colleagues/classmates – they absolutely want you to succeed as it will validate their belief in you.  Do not be afraid to ask these people for advice, for references, or for job leads (discretely of course).  These folks may be your biggest and most helpful fans!
• Your professors – Your career success is their success.  Professors love talking about their former students who have gone on to great professional success.  Whether you are asking your professor for a reference or for introductions to professionals in your field, they will be flattered that you asked and typically eager to help.
• The college Career Center – It’s obvious that they are cheering for your success, but far too many students choose to fly solo in their job search.  Doing so is a huge mistake. Not only can the Career Center help connect you with recruiters on campus, they provide valuable resume and interview preparation.  According to the 2010 NACE student survey 71% of college graduates receiving job offers worked directly with their Career Center.
• The (Campus) Recruiter – Their charge is to locate talent and provide candidates to hiring managers in their organization.  Many wrongly believe their job is to find reasons to exclude candidates. In reality, they are looking for reasons to include candidates in the hiring pool.  The more qualified candidates they present to their hiring teams, the better they look to their managers.
• The hiring team/interviewers – Like the recruiters before them, those conducting interviews sincerely want each candidate to nail the interview.  If you are selected for an interview, know that the hiring team wants to be able to offer you a position.  If you succeed, they don’t have to conduct additional interviews (and trust me when I say most managers have a strong dislike for interviewing) and they can rest easy knowing their job opening has been filled.

At each step in the job search process understand that those around you want you to succeed.  When you view your contacts as advocates, rather than adversaries, you can go confidently into each interaction knowing that everyone in the room shares the same goal – your success!

This article has been cross-posted to www.myfootpath.com where I am flattered to have been asked to submit a guest blog post.  You can find this submission at www.myfootpath.com/mypathfinder/tips-for-job-seekers-find-the-job-search-advocates-all-around-you/ and I encourage you to discover the other blog posts and resources that myfootpath has to offer.