YOUR RANT: I've been unemployed for a year. Nothing is working. What can I do?

911 REPAIR: One classic bit of career advice is to "make getting a job your full-time job." Jobs don't usually fall from the sky into our laps. Which reminds me of a fascinating study that found the most valuable help for job hunters doesn't come from your best friends, but from your distant contacts. Mark Granovetter reports that job hunters got a job only 17 percent of the time because of people they knew well. Most got jobs through people they saw only occasionally or rarely. It's commonly known as the law of weak ties. That's the value of making your job hunt a full-time job. Because it will force you to pursue those weak ties, the very ones that have a higher chance of helping you out. I've included three Dos and one Don't for creating a more comprehensive job hunt below. For more about Granovetter's findings, check out "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown, 2002).

-- DO go deeper. Job hunting is difficult. It's tough on your ego and energy; so most people find a million excuses to avoid it. We do one long day of calling people and then do less and less as each day passes. There is nothing that can replace spending six hours a day looking for work. It forces you to pursue new avenues and to generally go deeper into the process.

-- DO contact everyone. You need to contact anyone who knows what you can contribute. Old bosses, co-workers, vendors and customers. You never know who has landed a really cool job, who has more work than they can handle or who could use someone just like you. One thing I've found, when you contact a lot of people from your past, a bunch of them will let you down, but most of them will come through like champs.

-- DO try longshots. Most of us are very logical when we think of trying to find work. We gather the usual suspects in our minds. You need to be more creative than that. I like to play at least one long shot a day. Follow up on an article that you read in the paper, contact someone you met only once, approach someone who seems out of your league. I'm not saying that you should put all your efforts into long shots, but a regular dose of long shots can pay off for you. It has for me.

-- DON'T limit your options. The beauty of being a human is that we can surprise ourselves. Regularly. Yet in a job hunt most people tend to take the narrowest of views of themselves and their opportunities. Resist this temptation.

And you thought weak ties were just something that a dad received on Father's Day. No, they are often the key to getting a great job.