I know, I know. The telephone is so Old Media.

Like you, I only use the phone when I have to. I can IM with a friend just about as fast. And you can’t beat the convenience of e-mails that can be replied to when we’re good and ready–or ignored. The phone is a jangling  intruder.

Those of us who still have land-lines don’t necessarily answer them when they ring. We’re just as likely to screen these calls by Caller ID or voice mail because–uh, because we can.

John Wren would have you think a little differently about that. “With social media, we tend to overlook the power of the telephone,” he says. John, a business and career coach of sorts in Denver, has a nifty five-minute podcast about that’s linked in the upper left of his Web site at http://johnwren.com/.

He also runs a weekly confab called the Denver IDEA Meetup Group for the exchange of start-up and new business ideas, where I’m tentatively fixing to speak in a few weeks.

Essentially, whether you’re looking for work in the f0rm of projects or a fulltime gig, don’t sell the phone short. This might be a time when you want to intrude a bit. This isn’t getting your five job contacts for the week for unemployment–dogmeat jobs you’d  hope you didn’t get. Those you do by electronic submission, right? But when you really want something, you Make the Call.

John is talking  more upstream–not so much phone calls to employers or clients, but calls to friends, to tap into their network. “People who know you well and want to help you.” Apparently, our friends are able to help us more than we–or even they–think, until prodded.

John tells about multiple positions he’s snagged just calling a friend and asking who they know who might be able to provide a valuable connection to the right person or place.  That’s how he became, for example, director of marketing and public relations for the Denver Symphony Orchestra.

But now he’s doing his own thing. I’d probably be remiss if I didn’t give his particulars:

Do you want help as you start in a new direction? Since 1979, I’ve helped hundreds of people find a good job quickly, or to find their first or next great new client. If you or someone you know wants to start a new career, a new campaign or project, or a new business, contact me about how I can help. Contact: John S. Wren, MBA+, 960 Grant St. #727, Denver, CO 80203. John@JohnWren.com, (303)861-1447.

Note the phone number. You could, like, pick up the phone and call.

Ever stop to think why the classified ads are so unproductive a medium in the job search? Since my layoff months ago, I’ve sent out more than 200 separate applications–and no more than two of them came from a classified ad. (Actually, I only remember one, but I’m trying to be fair.)

There may be a reason for that: They’re the jobs nobody wants or nobody qualifies for–so, they have to advertise. Here in Colorado, for example, I keep seeing the same ad in both the Denver and Colorado Springs papers for “Dog Sled Mushers” for Aspen. Apparently, no mobs are beating a path to mush the huskies and “enjoy the outdoors.”

The good jobs–ones that don’t involve being checked for ticks–usually don’t necessarily have to be advertised. My wife, for example, is the director of nursing for a long-term care facility. The facilities and the recruiters all know who’s who, and when a vacancy occurs, they get on the phone and call the usual suspects, including Mary Jane, with the enticing offer. Or a DON looking to make a move calls them. It’s called networking.

The wags used to say it’s not what you know, but who you know–with more than a grain of truth. It might be more accurate to say it’s who you know AND what you know. You still have to be qualified. And none of this is to say don’t read classified ads. Just don’t stop there–network. Sure, it’s more challenging if you’re trying to do it from the unemployment line, but all the more reason to work harder at it.

The law of large numbers (as well as something called degrees of separation) comes into play here. Experts say every individual has a personal network of 500 to 1,000 acquaintances. If you multiply that by the personal network of those individuals, we’re talking 250,000 to 1 million people in the second degree. You may not know the hiring manager for XYZ Corp., but chances are you know somebody who does–or somebody who knows somebody who does.

As one who used to hire (and fire), I’m here to tell you that the personal touch is a huge tiebreaker betweeen applicants of similar experience and skills. One of the best hires I made was a guy who came back at the end of the workplace tour to sell me some more and make me understand how much he really wanted this job. I could tell it was for real, and it decided it for me right there. And by the way, it’s usually good advice to target an organization you’d really like to work for and get to know its people any way you can, including doing volunteer work there.

The networking principle also applies to our human needs for socialization. A condition called relational deprivation is an occupational hazard, so to speak, of unemployment. But that’s a subject for another time.

Resources. We’re all about resources–practical helps for people who are looking for a new or better job or career, or even a new life direction. You’re not in this alone, friend.

Sure, we’re also about promoting the book “Back to Work!” and hope many people will buy it and put it to good use.  Moody Publishers worked hard to keep the package small and the price under $10 out of consideration for unemployed and out-of-work individuals who need to watch their expenses. Incidentally, the price also makes it a wonderful gift for someone you know who is out of work.

But the larger goal here is ministry. To give you an idea: Moody didn’t hesitate to spend good money to hire the services of a professional researcher to compile a substantial appendix of useful resources for the job seeker from a Christian perspective. And then, guess what? When push came to shove, they were willing to scrap that appendix to keep the book to a lower page count.

That probably didn’t reflect too well on yours truly, as I had been the one making  both recommendations–both to undertake and then to scrap this compendium of resources. But there was some method to my madness. Since most of these resources are things to be accessed online, it just makes sense to make this an online resource with clickable links. Like you, I’m loath to sit and try to type a complex URL from a book into my Web browser.

And, of course, that’s what this Web site is all about. We’ll be posting these resources right here in logical increments. So, be sure to bookmark the site and make it a regular stop. To give an idea of the resources we’re talking about, here’s a sample–a list of job-posting Web sites, as collected by Right Management:

www.monster.com

www.careerbuilder.com

www.copernic.com 

www.indeed.com

www.jobcentral.com

www.employmentwizard.com

www.guru.com

www.careerjournal.com

www.job-hunt.com

www.simplyhired.com

www.hotjobs.com

www.careerexchange.com

www.careershop.com

www.careerweb.com

www.résumérabbit.com

www.retirementjobs.com

www.netshare.com

www.nationjob.com

www.kitlist.org

Government job-posting sites:

www.fedjobs.com

www.usajobs.opm.gov

www.bestplacestowork.org