We hear it all the time:

Trust your gut.

Most of us subscribe to the belief that we should always trust our gut instincts and when we don’t, we’ll wind up regretting it.

Like the time you kicked yourself for ignoring the hunch that told you to turn left, take the earlier flight or ask that cute guy/gal out on a date.  Or maybe on a cloudy day, you went back to the car for your umbrella and then wound up in the elevator with the recruiter you’d been hoping to introduce yourself to.

It wasn’t an accident. It was your gut instinct.

And as everyone knows, your gut knows best.

Right?

Well, maybe not. Recent research proves your gut may in fact be a liar.

I met a couple of Spanish guys last November at a hostel in Munich. Unable to find employment back home, they’d moved to Germany hoping for better luck. I’d run into them every few days in the kitchen or the lobby, and inquire about how their job search was going.

They never had good news to report.

You’re doing all you can to find your ideal career. You spend several hours every day firing off introductions to leads. You are focused and disciplined, and yet nothing seems to come of your efforts.  You blame the bad economy, but you can’t help feeling that there’s some secret technique you still haven’t tapped.

There is a huge difference between students who truly get networking – and those that don’t. Whether it’s their social background, or a tendency to be shy, it’s like they come from two different worlds.

All of them will have heard of networking, of course, but actually initiating it themselves is a very different matter.

So I suggest they map out anyone who could be useful for them to talk to, on and offline, and then come up with imaginative ways of getting to these people.  Here are three case studies of students who took that advice, and the results that came of it.