Building a network

Let's say you're in one field, but you want to get into another field and you find a company that you really want to work for. Then ask yourself, ‘who is making decisions at that company?’ You might float around on LinkedIn for a little bit and see where the connections are, and try to see if you can find your way in there, or you can do some kind of a stunt that gets them on your radar.

For myself, I recently advertised my book in Times Square. You can actually advertise in Times Square for as little as $20. Okay. But if you take a picture of it, it's worth a lot more than $20, because now you've advertised in Times Square, and you can tell other people about it.

So I advertised in Times Square, hired a photographer to take a picture of it and a video of it, shared it, blogged about it, shared it on Twitter. We got a retweet from Tim Ferris, 1.8 million followers. I got invited to speak at the New York Public Library because of that, because I just got on the radar. It was one of these emergence things where if I had just messaged Tim Ferris and asked him to retweet something, he's not going to even see it, or care.

C.S Lewis wrote an amazing commencement speech 50, 60 years ago now. I think it's called The Inner Ring.

It's an incredibly insightful piece for a bunch of Oxford University graduates, I think, about how to navigate the world and connections and relationships in work. And it's all about how if you try to get in the club, you will never be in the club.

All you can do is hang out with people who you find interesting and who you genuinely like being around. And then you will find yourself in a club that no one can ever take you out of. And it's much more fun anyway.

So at a tech conference in 2008, the point of being there was ostensibly to learn about tech. You went to talks and you learned stuff. I kind of listen to the talks, but my point was just go meet people. And you could do both at an in-person event.

At an online conference where it's just the talks and there's just an online chat window, you miss all of that. It's just impossible. So you just don't get that. I think if you were able to join an online community where it's possible to and encouraged to build those kind of connections, supplemented by in-person interaction, I think is the best way to do it

If I'm honest, one of the best ways is to join a great company at the moment. Because yes, you can be online, and you can be remote, but you can also be dragged into an amazing culture that meets every so often and builds relationships that way.

Any most trade events, if you're in a sort of a similar industry already, increasingly now there are either meetups or networking events at those expos where there's a focus on either women or people who are typically not represented in that industry, so that's one way. LinkedIn has some good groups and things on these industries as well. Hello Tomorrow would be another one. They have a good newsletter if you're looking to get into the more startup side of things. They would work with a lot of deep tech startups. Hello Tomorrow is based out of France, but has a very international focus and just signing up to their newsletter, I think would be a good idea if people are looking for kind of opportunities in the deep tech space, opportunities that are open. I believe they have a jobs board as well.

So yeah, keeping an eye on the start up news locally, within either your own city, although increasingly remote work is becoming an option for people. So maybe even looking beyond that into your time zone is a way to go about it. But I think if you're in a certain industry, googling women in X, you'll hopefully quickly enough turn up some of the relevant groups or even maybe some of the people that are trying to start a relevant group and tap into them there.

I was messaging them straight after webinars. And during the webinar, I was asking questions in a chat. So they couldn't see my face, they only could see my name and the question. And I was asking a lot of questions because I was like, okay, I want them to see my name. Then, I sent them a message straight after the webinar talking a little bit more about the webinar saying, "I really enjoyed the topic." Asking something like, where did you learn a specific concept or how do you apply a specific concept in your organisation? Because currently in my organisation, we do things differently. And I would mention, "I'm looking to switch between hardware and digital product. What are the things you think are most valuable to know if I were to make this transition?" And everyone was really open honestly, to chat about this. So it wasn't difficult. Of course, sending the first couple of messages was difficult because I was afraid to be ignored. But honestly, that's not the worst thing that can happen, you just get ignored and that's it. Everyone was super helpful.