How to Ensure the Time You Invest in Your Job and Career Networking is Worth It
If you’ve been following this series on networking strategy, whether it’s for a job or your career in general, we’ve gotten to the point in the process where at least a few people have said “yes” to a conversation with you.
That’s great, but I think we all know that the quality and usefulness of those conversations can vary — a lot. When I was an executive recruiter at a top 20 firm, there were weeks when I booked dozens of networking calls, and some were better than others.
Over time, I learned that the quality of my networking conversations was mainly up to me. By observing my colleagues, I developed a specific approach that I employed consistently to ensure that the conversations were as productive as possible.
You can apply the same approach to your own networking efforts.
Don’t pitch or sell — engage instead
Getting pitched or sold to by someone we barely know doesn’t feel good. Enough said.
Networking shouldn’t be about pitching or selling. Yes, your ultimate goal is to get a job or generally advance your career. That’s a given. But the first objective of most networking should be to learn as much as possible. Establishing relationships and making friends in an industry or area of focus comes in a close second. The opportunities will follow.
To accomplish these two objectives, it’s critical that you get people to open up. They can’t (or won’t) do that if you immediately launch into a sales pitch the second you get a minute with them.
Most people you reach out to in your networking likely won’t have hot leads for jobs. That may end up being frustrating, and networking could seem like a lot of effort at first for little payoff. But the time you’re spending with these contacts isn’t pointless. Your contact may have thoughts about your career strategy, the industry you work in (or want to work in), the good and bad companies to work for, as well as people they know who might be helpful to you in your job search.
They’ll need a little time to get to the point where the ideas are flowing and they’re willing to share them. Most people aren’t able to brainstorm effectively or make quick connections when they first engage in a conversation. They need time to warm up, and they need to feel comfortable with you.
They may also need prompts.
Strategy: Ask questions to get your contacts to open up, and give them the material they need to brainstorm for you
Executive recruiters are highly experienced and skilled at engaging other people and getting them in the proper frame of mind to brainstorm networking strategies and potential sources and candidates. Recruiters know not to dive into that exercise too quickly, or they risk having the networking contact freeze up or shut down.
Their contact may need a few minutes of warm-up conversation, which usually means getting them to talk about how things have been going in their work and life. It’s not just a good warmup exercise. It builds rapport and can be the beginning of a longer-term relationship. It can also further strengthen an already existing relationship.
When the recruiter does turn the conversation to their client work, they may start by providing a brief description of the role they’re recruiting for, the client, and the qualities the recruiter thinks they need in a candidate. The recruiter is careful to leave things open enough that the contact will have the mental space to think creatively or even provide out-of-the-box suggestions. After all, the recruiter’s strategy may not be perfect and might need some adjustment. If the recruiter were overly specific, it might limit their contact’s thinking, and the recruiter might miss out on new insights and ideas.
How you can apply this strategy
To apply this to your own networking, you’d ideally start a conversation by asking questions about the other person and listening more than you talk.
The other person may have learned lessons in their career that they’d be willing to share with the right person — you in this case. Your networking contact may have also considered alternative career paths that you hadn’t even thought of yet. Questions like “If you weren’t at your current company, where else might you be?” can be very informative and yield some of the best insights in your networking effort.
At some point in the conversation, if the person you’re engaging with is polite — and most people usually are — they’re going to ask you about your plans. Be ready with a response, but forget most of the advice you’ve gotten about an elevator pitch. Instead, describe what you’re looking for in conversational terms, why it’s important to you, and how you think you’re able to contribute.
Be clear, but not overly specific. Start with something like: “I’m hoping to lead product innovation in a fast-growing health tech company. I enjoy working with leading edge technology and have always been able to get technical and business people to work together collaboratively.” You can get more specific with regard to things like title and target companies after you’ve engaged your contact for a while. If you’re too specific initially, you’ll potentially be limiting your contact’s creativity, which will reduce the potential value of your networking.
Even worse, you could end up shutting the conversation down. If you say that you’re looking for “a head of product role at Company A, B or C,” chances are that your networking contact won’t know of any open head of product jobs in those particular companies. Conversation over. And your contact probably won’t think too far beyond that pretty specific description you provided. They could have potentially had other ideas but may refrain from sharing them since you seemed to have a particular focus.
Ask for referrals — then ask for introductions
Anyone who has tried networking for a job knows the feeling. You have this great list of people to call. You get over your doubts and fears, you reach out, you have a series of interesting feel-good conversations — and then nothing. No leads. Not one.
Then what do you do?
Strategy: Build on your momentum to avoid running out of people to contact or call
Executive recruiters know that sustained networking over weeks and even months is crucial to success in closing searches for their clients. It’s usually not that hard for a recruiter to think of the first few people they might call to get things going. It’s pretty rare though that they’re going to find their entire candidate pool in the first round of outreach. They know that to successfully close a search with a great pool of candidates they may need to reach out to hundreds of people in a particular professional community.
One of the most demoralizing moments for executive recruiters can be coming to the realization that they’re running out of people to call. Yet, their candidate pool is far from complete. So they have a pretty simple approach to avoiding ever being in that dead-in-the-water situation.
Executive recruiters build their networking efforts using a chain of referrals.
Executive recruiters build their networking efforts using a chain of referrals. They get into the regular habit of asking most of their contacts not just for candidate ideas but also for the names of other potential sources for their search. If each person they reach out to comes up with just one name (ideally two or three), then their networking effort fades out only when they decide it’s time to stop.
How you can apply this strategy
Always ask for referrals. At the end of every networking conversation, make a habit of saying something like, “Now that you know all of this, is there anyone else you think I should speak with?” Most people will be able to think of at least one person, or ideally two or three. Some may be able to do it on the spot. Some may require a follow-up ping a few days later to give them some time to think about it.
Once you get the name or names, it might feel natural to say, “Great — I’ll just look them up on LinkedIn.”
Don’t do it.
Be sure to ask for just one more thing. Say something like: “These are great suggestions — thanks so much. You’ve already been so generous with your time and I don’t want this to be a lot of work for you, but would you mind letting them know I’m going to be in touch? Or, if you’re comfortable with it, you could introduce us via email or LinkedIn and I can take it from there.”
That way, you start the interaction with your new contact through an actual introduction. You won’t need to explain to the new contact how you found them, and your new connection will be much more likely to help you if they’re certain that you’ve found your way to them through someone they already know and trust.
In the next post
If you’ve been successful getting your networking contacts to open up, brainstorm a little and then provide referrals, you’re likely going to be swimming in notes, contact info and to-dos. It can get overwhelming very quickly. You’ll need good systems in place to take full advantage of your hard work and to build and maintain your credibility. In the next post in this series, I’ll cover the importance and critical elements of a reliable networking system.
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