Some of you may know that I am in the throws of a job search — well, I’d call it something more like “an epic adventure to find the company and crew that’s excited about what I want to do, wants me to do it with them and get paid for it.”

Being that I spent many, many years as a consultant, I think I am morally opposed to looking for a job. This is because I am not just looking for a place to go, do work, and come home. If I am going to spend the majority of my waking hours somewhere, shoot, I ought to like the people and the challenges.

When I was doing more consulting, my approach to finding new customers was two-fold:

1. Look for companies I wanted to do work for, then pursue them
2. Network with existing customers I enjoyed working with to find new customers

This approach (once I built up a decent collection of clients) suited me and worked quite well. I did very little else to find new customers.

I am using this same approach in looking for a new opportunity – connecting with associates via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, as well as through my local connections in pursuit of the next landing place.

What I will say about this approach is that even though online connections make it a whole lot easier to do the research, the process is quite exhausting. Unlike John McCain, I try to do a little bit more vetting of potential employers. And, since I am not going through the typical channels (HR, big impersonal web site) to get noticed, I sometimes have to go through the preliminaries a few times before I hit on the right person.

Fortunately, I have met some very nice people in my career who are so willing to connect me with people, so I have no lack of leads and connections. My location — the Boulder/Denver area of Colorado –can be a problem, though. Much of the work I am interested in is taking place in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston and sometimes Chicago or Dallas. I do get interest, but the remote thing has been a stopping point along the way. Which is funny to me, because the work I am looking to do — the work I do — is mostly done online, with the occasional conference or show or client/customer visit.

For some companies, the remote idea really isn’t an issue, especially once they realize how disciplined I am (and hey, if you are one of those and are looking for someone with my talents, please get in touch).

I am doing some messaging work for one such company right now — great people, distributed organization and great products.

In the social media realm, it makes no sense to me that you want that person in the same physical location. Sure, it helps to visit the home office, and talk to your coworkers. But, for someone like me, I can get a whole lot accomplished outside the office.