The art of networking

Networking can feel like a chore. The word conjures images of staid, sterile events, dry conversations with strangers in artificial surroundings, and a general, irrepressible itch to get the whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible.

It shouldn’t be like this. “Networking” is really just socialising in a professional context, and socialising is what humans do best as a species. Even the most introverted among us have friends and colleagues with whom we are able to share interesting conversations, learnings and laughter around subjects relevant to our work.

Part of the problem is that we approach “networking” as a separate activity in its own right, rather than merely the continuation of these kinds of natural behaviours with people we don’t know already.

At the same time, we’re told - and experience bears out the truth of the lesson - that it’s important for our careers to invest time and effort into growing our network; to cultivate it, like we might a houseplant or, indeed, an individual relationship.

This article draws on insights from the Best Work Podcast to outline the importance of networking, and suggest some ways in which we can grow our own networks in a time-efficient and authentic way.

Why is networking important?

The hardest part of doing our best work is, often, finding it.

Having a large network of professionally like-minded people (i.e. people who work in broadly the same sphere, with whom we share a level of mutual respect) greatly reduces the friction involved in finding our best work, in two ways:

1. It increases the number of opportunities we are aware of, because people in our network will inform us about positions they think we’d fit
2. It increases our chance of securing a position that suits us, because these people will recommend us to their colleagues hiring for the position

The formula is simple: the more professionally like-minded people we know, the more likely we are to hear about, and be recommended for, positions that suit our abilities.

There are two layers to Emma’s comment. On the one hand, she recognises the importance of raising others’ awareness of her, so that when positions that suit her arise, the chances of her being alerted to them are greater.

More importantly, however, is that having spent a career cultivating her network, Emma doesn’t tend to have to actively seek work. It tends to come to her. In other words, frontloading our networking efforts pays off over the long run: we need do less of the heavy lifting once we have a fruitful network of contacts established, as long as we continue to do enough to maintain these relationships.

Is networking artificial?

Ideally, however, there shouldn’t be any “heavy lifting” at all. After all, a professionally like-minded person is, theoretically, somebody we would get along with and have plenty to talk about with anyway. The author C.S. Lewis once delivered a speech cautioning against the urge to actively to seek membership of “clubs” and “inner circles” for the sake of belonging in them, and instead urged the group of undergraduates to which it was addressed to maintain positive relationships with those people who were most like themselves, professionally and personally.

The speech is expanded on in more detail here.

The gist of all this is that we needn’t go out of our way to “network”. If it sounds or feels like a chore, we’re probably doing it wrong. Dry smalltalk with ten SaaS salespeople at a tech conference is far less effective than one in-depth conversation with another software developer after a meetup on a framework that both of you use, as well as less enjoyable. In fact, a rule of thumb is that the more you enjoy the “networking,” the more effective it’s likely to be.

How can I grow my own network?

There are times, however, when for one reason or another we might want to supercharge our reach. Practically speaking, this might mean adding a few hundred people to our social media following - a directly quantifiable measure of our “network.”

Again, a simple rule of thumb is: the more fun you can have with this, the more effective it’s likely to be. It doesn’t need to be anywhere near as extravagant as David’s approach, but there is inspiration to be taken from the creativity and lateral thinking on display here.

A more straightforward way of meeting more professionally like-minded people is to find sub-groups within industry communities that are aimed specifically at people like ourselves.

In the previous section, meetups and conferences were alluded to as potential locations for networking efforts to take place. Historically, such events have been something of a boys’ club. However, As Eimear observes, there are increasingly dedicated forums in which women can network with one another.

Eimear’s general advice is applicable to all sorts of different minorities. There are, for example, groups dedicated to providing networking (and often mentoring and other work-related support) opportunities to people of colour, to the LGBTQ+ community, to neurodiverse and disabled people, and many other groups besides.

Networking can feel like hard work, but this is typically a sign that we’re not approaching it in the right way. At its best, networking is a natural process of discovering and getting to know people like ourselves with similar approaches and views towards work, and can provide an outlet for our creativity and ingenuity as well as our sociability.