Networking is everything. Did you hear that? Networking is EVERYTHING. It’s more important than how you translate your academic experience into a resumé. More important than what you know (or don’t) about your next job or career. Networking is how you will get your next job. One of the very first people I ever spoke to when I was thinking of changing careers (she herself had just left one job and was beginning another) gave me this nugget of career wisdom: “You are always looking for your next job. You just don’t have to take it.” So, you can’t get started networking too soon, you can’t network too much, and you will never stop. Get ready to buy a lot of cups of coffee and/or roast beef sandwiches (and the ubiquitous Kettle Chips). Alternatively, and for the time-being, learn to love Zoom.
What is Networking and Why?
“Networking” is a fancy word for “talking to someone over coffee.” Or “over a sandwich”. Pre-pandemic, this typically happened in person. For now, it happens on your laptop via Zoom. Oh, and actually, it’s not so much “talking” as it is “listening”. You ask someone questions, listen to their answers, and learn. When you are nearing the end of a conversation, you ask your coffee/lunch date if s/he would connect you to a few people who would be good for you to know. And so on. One of those future people will be the gateway to your next opportunity, and one day you’ll get an email or phone call that will go something like this: “I was just talking this afternoon with my friend Susan -- she mentioned that you two had lunch a few months ago. We were talking about this position in my company that we’re hiring for. She told me a little bit about you, and I’d love to talk with you to learn more about your background, and to tell you a little bit about the position, if you’re interested. Please call me/email me.” BOOM!
A Plan
OK, that’s pretty quick. Let me walk through some initial steps. Let’s say that you don’t know exactly what you want to do next. Maybe this will help: https://exeunt.substack.com/p/so-you-dont-know-what-you-want-to
Or maybe you’ll discover what you want to do next by talking to people about what they do, and something will click or light a fire under you. Or maybe you know exactly what you want to do next. In any case, here is a plan.
Who
Make a list of 5 people who you want to have coffee/lunch/Zoom with. Don’t know where to start?
Think of people in your family & friends circle who are doing something that you think is interesting or possibly pertains to something you’ve identified as a possible interest. Your aunt who has a bicycle store. Your cousin who has “some kind of on-line business”. The cousin who got an MBA and works at Goldman Sachs/McKinsey/Deloitte/Grant Thornton, etc.
Talk to your institution’s career advising/counseling office. Many of them are geared to undergrads, but many places are dedicating more and more resources to graduate students, too. What you want is for them to give you a list of alums who are in XYZ field, with contact info (any biographical info is a bonus), starting with anyone in your immediate geographic area and expanding out from there.
First Contact
OK, you’ve got your 5 people. Email them and set up a time to meet, either physically or virtually. Wondering how to approach them? Try this: “Dear Mr./Ms. Jones, My name is I. M. Smart, and I’m a graduate student at The University of All Knowledge. The career advising office here gave me your name and email address. I’m researching my next possible career direction, and am very interested in learning more about XXX. Would you be able and willing to meet with me over a cup of coffee or lunch, and tell me a little bit about what you do and how you got there? I’d be very grateful for your time and insights. Are you free next week on XX or XX? Thank you very much. I look forward to hearing from you. Best, I. M.”
Hmm, no response? Don’t sweat it -- yet. Give it a few days to sit. After 3 days, try again. Copy your original message into a new one, with the same Subject line, but your text is something like: “Dear Mr./Ms. Jones, Just a quick note to pull this up in your inbox. Thanks, Brendon”
Hmm, no response again? Wait about a week or 10 days. This will give you time to craft the voodoo doll you will use to inflict pain and suffering on this coldhearted ingrate. After about a week, you send the “pull this up in your inbox” email one more time -- this is the Hail Mary. If s/he doesn’t respond to this one, s/he doesn’t want to and is never going to. Buy pins for the doll.
In my experience, most people are happy to talk. You will have to adapt to whenever and wherever is convenient for them, of course, but they will make an effort to make some time for you. Everyone has been there -- out wondering and wandering and looking -- and I think that most people are basically kind and generous. Even on Wall St. The rest are hoarding hand sanitizer.
The Meeting
So, you’ve got your networking dates lined up. What are you trying to accomplish? First, try to find out a little bit about the person, if you don’t know already. A quick search on LinkedIn or her/his company website are good places to start.
Your conversation will likely have three parts or stages:
you will ask if s/he can talk about what s/he does and how s/he got there. S/he will most likely talk quite a bit. I’ve found that most people like to talk about what they do and why. Don’t interrupt. Listen and take notes.
s/he may ask you about grad school, your dissertation and/or why you don’t want to be a professor, and why you are interested in management consulting/catering/bicycle repair/etc.
This is a possible trap, so tread carefully. Regardless of the real reason, your answer is NEVER something like “Academia sucks/I hate my dissertation/I hate my job/my students suck/I am miserable/my advisor sucks/the job market sucks/the last 4 years have been the biggest mistake of my life” and so on. These feelings and circumstances seem to be widespread in academia, and are maybe a little bit cute with your fellow grad students or faculty peers, but it’s all just weird or annoying or depressing to everyone else. Your answer is ALWAYS something like “Well, as you might imagine it’s kind of complicated, but basically one of the many things I learned in graduate school is that I’m more interested in being out in the world accomplishing XYZ than I am being in the library.” That’s just a start, a placeholder for now. A more robust response to this potential trap/dilemma will take a whole separate article, which we’ll publish soon. For now, just remember that you never set yourself up as the miserable, trapped person who made a terrible mistake and is wasting her life.
At the end of the conversation, you will ask if your date would be willing to introduce you to a few more people with whom you should speak. Try for 2-3. Any more is a bonus. This often comes up naturally in the course of the conversation -- “Oh, what you just said reminds me that Bill over in accounting actually did his M.A. in Medieval English. You should talk to him.” Sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, you’re trying to get a warm introduction to your next networking meeting. You will also offer something in return -- a look at their son’s/daughter’s college admissions essay, free Latin translation, a list of favorite US history podcasts, a cheat sheet to Kierkegaard -- whatever. Maybe something came up during the conversation….
Follow Up
OK, you’re back home after a very informative coffee and conversation (of course, sometimes these things can be mind-numbingly dull. Even that is informative). If you haven’t already, you immediately create a spreadsheet into which you are dumping all the contact info, names, etc. And some notes -- when, where you met, some high-level insights. Trust me, after 30 networking “dates” you’ll begin to forget this stuff. By the way, you’ll possibly be staying in touch with a lot of these people for some indefinite period of time, which means that you’ll be coming back to this spreadsheet a lot, which means that you’d better organize it in whatever way that makes sense to you. The next day you write a thank-you email, hopefully recalling some particularly illuminating moment or observation. Here’s the important part: if your date hasn’t already introduced you via email to her “2 people you’ve got to talk to”, then you remind her: “Also, thanks again for offering to introduce me to Sally Smith and Ben Harper. I’m looking forward to learning more about XXX from them. Oh, and like we talked about, I’ve listed below my 5 favorite Jane Austen movies on Netflix. Enjoy!” It’s amazing how that little nudge will increase the odds that those introductions will actually happen.
OK, so where do we stand? After your first 5 networking dates, you’ve hopefully learned a lot. Equally important, you've got your next 8-10 people in the pipeline. Get started on those emails!
To be continued…..