One of the key axioms for a successful job search is to avoid putting your foot in your mouth when communicating with a prospective employer. Now, however, even that’s not enough. In today’s digitally connected world, it’s also important that you not put your fingers where your mouth should be.

Consider the results of a 2005 survey by Achieve, a non-profit organization working to improve academic performance among students:

• 53 percent of teens who use both the Internet and cell phones to communicate with friends, do so most often via written messages.
  
• 34 percent of employers were dissatisfied with the oral communications skills of high school graduates.

All too often this group can text like crazy, but they can’t participate in a team discussion, make a presentation to a client or brainstorm with their coworkers.

However, lest we think this is a teen or twenty-something phenomenon, check out plane and train terminals, taxis and buses, waiting rooms, conference rooms, cubicles and offices. Undoubtedly, you’ll find more than half of the population thumbing their way through their messages on a Blackberry or similar personal digital assistant. In fact, according to Verizon, more than 500 billion text messages were sent and received via cell phones or other devices in 2005. And, that number is expected to increase to 2.3 trillion by 2010.

To put it another way, we’re texting ourselves into silence. We are starting to experience what I call “digitalysis” or paralysis by digitization. We’re spending so much time clicking out messages that we’re losing the ability to communicate verbally. And, that’s a sure fire way to hear silence from the employers for which you hope to work.

Looking for a job is a full-contact sport. Yes, it is possible to use text messages in some of your contacts with recruiters and employers and in some of your networking with others in the workforce. However, you cannot make all of your contacts that way. And no, you won’t be hired that way. To be successful in your job search, you have to get out of your digits as well as be into them.

What does that mean? Practice and hone your verbal communications skills as much (or more) as you practice digital messaging. Put down your cell phone or Blackberry and work on the following skills:

• Your elevator pitch, the brief but hard-hitting précis that summarizes your skills, background, and potential contribution to an employer.
  
• Interviewing skills, make sure you can both clearly articulate what you’ve done in your career and how well you done it and sell that capability to the interviewer.
  
• Conversational ability, take advantage of every networking opportunity to expand your range of contacts.

This practice should involve both telephone and face-to-face interactions. Its purpose is to strengthen your competency in building relationships through verbal expression. While organizations are employers, it’s people who do the hiring. And more often than not, they select people with whom they can communicate and feel comfortable. Your ability to establish rapport with recruiters and prospective coworkers predisposes them to pay more attention to your potential contribution to the organization and to give it more weight in their evaluation.

That’s the real meaning of a contact. It’s not the linkages you have on a social networking site or the e-mail addresses in your Blackberry. It’s what you do with the people behind those digital access points that determines your success. In short, a contact is an exercise in building a relationship.

Text messages can help you carry on a relationship for a time, but they cannot do so indefinitely. Perhaps more important, they also cannot establish the relationship in the first place. Most of us have been in relationships, so we know from personal experience that they take more time and effort than an instant message. Relying exclusively or even primarily on digital communications to interact with others freezes relationships in place — paralyzes them — and precludes them from developing their full potential.

To create a vital, human connection with another person — whether that person is a recruiter, a hiring manger or an employee of a company — requires the sound of a human voice. To transform a contact into a relationship — whether that relationship can help you find your dream job, make a contribution on-the-job or advance your career — requires the sound of a human voice. Only Shakespeare could replicate that sound with words, and even he wrote with the expectation that his words would be verbalized.