Networking How I Wish It Was Explained

When I was in college, my impression of networking was seriously limited. I knew the term, and I could use it in a sentence, but I didn't understand what it meant in practice. All I knew is that it seemed to involve awkward small-talk with people, and so I avoided it like the plague. I knew I was "supposed" to do it, but didn't want to or even understand how I was suppose to go about it. To make matters worse, all the explanations I ever heard seemed vague or circular.

If you, like me, find networking confusing or awkward, hopefully the way I've come to understand it will be useful to you.

A Blunt Definition

Networking is all about building connections with people. A connection is essentially any relationship, except it can be much more minimal than what most people would classify as an acquaintance. Even if you've only had a single email exchange with an individual, that's still a connection because you're now a known entity to that person. Basically, if you're on speaking terms with somebody, that's a connection.

Where networking gets complicated (especially for people like me who don't find social interactions particularly intuitive) is that it combines the qualities of personal and professional interactions. Personal interactions are focused on connection and friendship, while professional ones are inherently transactional.

The transactional aspect is an important element of why people network in the first place. Professionals connect with each other because they are looking for opportunities of mutual benefit. This does not invalidate the personal social element, because all of the following can be true at once: People can treat each other with respect and dignity, and forge genuine personal connections, and be looking for professional benefit out of a relationship.

The personal and professional aspects of networking are not opposed to one another. Instead, they are complements to one another. Stronger personal relationships provide access to stronger professional exchanges, and professional exchanges reinforce personal relationship.

So, if you're confused about networking and don't know where to start, the most fundamental, academic, definition possible is something like:

Networking is making acquaintances with people and finding opportunities of mutual benefit.

Calling out the transactional nature of networking directly is important because it's not obvious to everyone that this social system even exists, not to mention how you're expected to interact with it.

Building and Engaging

When you're networking, interactions can fall into two main categories:

Building interactions correspond predominantly to the personal aspect of networking, while engagement interactions correspond mostly to the professional aspect.

When you're building your network, you're essentially just making friends with people, except there is a heavy emphasis on talking about work. The reason this emphasis exists is because both parties in a networking interaction need to be able to determine how much potential exists for mutual benefit. Suppose you're talking with someone and they mention they're having database troubles at work, and you happen to know a lot about databases. Knowing this information signals to both of you that there is an opportunity for collaboration. If all you did was talk about your hobbies, then this opportunity may never present itself.

This isn't to say that talking about non-work things is unimportant. If anything, the non-work interactions are critical! First of all, humans are social creatures, so we're going to chit-chat and make friends regardless. But in a professional context, foundational social interactions form as a kind of "social lubricant" that facilitates future professional transactions.

These transactions are the "engagement interactions" that make up the other side of networking. Engaging with your network is finding opportunities for mutual benefit and executing on them.

Both building and engagement interactions develop trust and rapport, which in turn enables more building and more engagement.

Opportunity Dynamics

The term "opportunity" could be interpreted a variety of different ways, so I think it's necessary to elaborate on what this dynamic looks like in practice.

First of all, networking engagements are proportional to how well you know the other person. If you barely know somebody, it's probably not appropriate for you to ask some huge favor of them. But, if you know someone well and you've got a well established reputation with them, you can "borrow against" that reputation to ask for more. Asking a close friend if you can crash on their couch is acceptable, but if you ask the same thing of a stranger they're going to be (rightly) offended you even asked.

Second, networking engagements are reciprocal. There should be give and take between both parties. Even if you can't provide something in return at the exact moment someone does you a favor, there will be an expectation that you return the favor in the future, or otherwise perform a gesture of gratitude. Depending on the context, this does not need to be some grandiose display. It could be as simple as a "Thank you" email. The point of networking is mutually beneficial arrangements between people, not selfishly extracting value without ever giving back. People in your network are collaborators, not tools.

Third, networking interactions can be very small, and that's ok. A single email exchange or a little bit of chit-chat is a perfectly valid contribution to your network. Don't assume you're "doing it wrong" if you're not making big impactful deals with people. That's the exception, not the norm! Networks are built up gradually over a long time.

Don't waste people's time. Be polite, respectful, and concise. That said, don't "tell yourself no" for other people. In other words, don't assume someone is going to say no to something and therefore not even try. If you're not overstepping, most people are reasonably nice and even if you don't get the outcome you were hoping for, you'll leave still on speaking terms.

Knowing what will be considered an overstep is unfortunately not simple and I can't provide any direct advice other than: Be very conservative in what you ask for so that the risk of offending someone is very low. Building up trust and rapport is a slow process, and it's difficult to get back if you accidentally go too far. Think carefully about what you're asking of somebody, either explicitly or implicitly, and how that stacks up against your established rapport.

Transaction Dynamics

In the interest of spelling it out, let's look at some examples of things that people tend to leverage their networks for.

A common category of "benefit" would be job assistance, meaning things like: insider information on when a company is hiring, contact information for a hiring manager, having them "put in a word" for you with the hiring team, etc.

Another example would be soliciting someone's professional expertise or otherwise getting advice. Or, it could be a literal physical thing, like being able to borrow their truck when you need to move.

When you're starting out, you don't have access to much of anything, be it expertise, political leverage, or literal physical stuff. So, you're going to spend more time "networking up" with people who have more capital and influence than you do. As such, there will be less of an expectation for you to "pay back" whatever favors you happen to receive. However, if you look at the interactions between people who are more established, you will notice that the exchanges are much more symmetrical. That is to say, when you become more established, people will cut you less slack and expect more of you.

Understand that because networking relationships have a personal and professional component, this transactional dynamic is going to play out differently in every relationship. In a purely personal context, keeping a tally of what someone owes you is the opposite of what you should be doing to have healthy relationships. However, in a professional context, the rules are different and that kind of behavior would not be unusual. Understanding what kind of context an interaction is taking place in is critical for navigating it successfully.

You Can Just Email People

There's been a lot of theory in this post, so I want to close with some practical advice about adding people to your network.

Suppose there's someone out there who you'd like to get into contact with. Maybe they author a blog you like, developed a tool you use, or work at a company you're interested in. If they have public contact information, it's often totally ok to email them.

There are some prerequisites before you do this:

  1. If the individual has expressed preferences about how they're contacted, review them carefully and make sure you follow them. For example, a public email address may be for business inquiries only.

  2. Be concise. By sending an email you're making a demand on someone's time to read and potentially respond to it, so respect their time!

  3. Have something to say and include a clear call to action with a bounded time commitment. A question like: "will you help me on my project" is not appropriate because it places an unbounded time commitment on the recipient. Be straightforward in the questions you're asking and actually have something to say that's likely to be relevant or interesting to the recipient.

  4. Don't expect a response, especially if this is the first time you've contacted someone. They may simply ignore all email from strangers. Whether a follow-up email is appropriate is probably subjective. I'd say one follow-up is appropriate after a week or so, but I wouldn't push it.

If you cold-email someone and you get a positive response, congrats! You have just added someone to your professional network. The strength of the connection will vary by situation, but no matter the case you have now taken the first step in developing a new professional relationship.

Outside of email, no matter the context, the same kinds of principles apply. Questions like, "What common ground do I share with this person?", "How could I collaborate with this individual?", or, "What mutually beneficial exchanges exist between me and this person?", can get you starting on the process of making or maintaining a connection.

Happy networking! If this post was helpful or you have further comment, I'd love to get in touch on BlueSky.