Stumping for jobs in room of strangers

Back in the warm Indian summer of 2000, a marketing type parted the crowd at a HighTech Friday networking event wearing a nametag with ?Opportunity Seeker? scrawled beneath his name.

What a rapier wit, we thought, and returned to jabbering about our unbelievably good fortune over cups of microbrew and thick slabs of pizza.

But today, deep in the chill of the post dot-bomb winter, it would seem that Mr. Marketing was on to something: You might make the most important contact of your job search at a networking event.

By some estimates, 85 percent of job openings are never posted, which means…