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I've been at my current employer for over 9 years, which also happen to be my 9 years of professional experience. I've had 5 different titles in two very different areas of the company (IT and Purchasing).

I'm moving on now and need to come up with some references. I'm having trouble coming up with more than 5 references and they are all within this one company. Just curious how best to handle this situation.

TomW's picture
Training Badge

My first question is: why do you need more than 5 references?

For the rest, it's time to start networking. What do you do or who do you know outside of work? Who has left the company you are at now and you still keep in touch with? What conferences, trade shows, user meetings, or neighborhood groups do you have out with? If none, then it's time to start.

I'd also recommend listening to the Networking podcast for some ideas on how to make it all happen once you start going.

AManagerTool's picture

IT - How many different functional groups did you deal with on projects. I know I deal with about 20....LOL. IT is funny...Oh you want a network jack activated? We don't handle that you need to call the XXX (newly formed group that will be reorganized next week again) group. They handle that now.

Purchasing - How many different vendors have you dealt with?

Anyone from these orgs can act as references. In fact, depending upon the job, I'd rate a reference from outside the company as being sometimes more important than one internal.

Also, Tom hit it on the head. Why more than 5?

rmein's picture

Listened to the reference podcast and they suggested 8 references. I doubt I'd get that many quality references. 5 seems fine to me so I just wanted to hear from others that 5 is fine, even if they are all within the same company. Obviously having a variety of relationships represented (vendor, director, VP, etc) is ideal so I'll focus on that.

Clearly I'm learning now that my networking skills need some sharpening and I do intend to start working on this soon.

asteriskrntt1's picture

Most of us need work building and maintaining our networks, but we don't do enough of it because it requires WORK.

*RNTT

HMac's picture

[quote="rmein"]Listened to the reference podcast and they suggested 8 references.[/quote]

I think the spirit of that recommendation is that you have a variety of references to call upon, depending on the apsect of your background you want to emphasize with a particular employer.

From that ideal pool of 8, you'd draw the 3-4 most relevant, most "on message" for what you're telling the employer about yourself.

That's still the ideal - and consider keeping at it as a goal until reached (which may be a little later in your career).

-Hugh