Anyone who has ever found their dream job through a referral
or personal connection will tell you that deepening one’s network is an
invaluable part of growing any career. It’s true, but that doesn’t mean it’s
always easy. Balancing work and personal life is hard enough. Dedicating time
to building your network on top of that might sound daunting, or at least
exhausting.
The truth is, while networking is work,
it’s shockingly easy to fold bite-sized networking tasks into your daily
routine. Through only a minimal time commitment each day, your contacts can
multiply in no time.
Send more LinkedIn requests than resumes
When seeking a role while growing a new network, it’s not
uncommon for job seekers to submit applications en masse, hoping to make up for
a lack of connections by reaching out to more employers. As productive as this
may feel, it’s not the most efficient use of time.
If you’re sending off 30, 40, or 50 resumes a week, you are
burning time, and that is not effective. The number of applications you should
send should be much smaller, and more focused. Replace that time with networking
time.”
Prioritizing reaching out to new contacts over endlessly
applying is not only a better long-term investment of time, but it’s also
easier and more immediately rewarding. And you never know if making the right
connection might later result in skipping the application process altogether.
Reallocate social media time
If you’re active on social media, your networking skills may
already be sharper than you think. In a world where many spend hours per day
posting to more personal social channels, those who dedicate even a fraction of
that time to a network like LinkedIn see greater success than you might
realize.
If you already engage with social channels in your free
time, I recommend simply converting a small portion of that daily ritual
to focus on networking instead. This can be as easy as signing in to LinkedIn
instead of Facebook or Twitter. Make one or two posts. If you
break it down, this is 20 minutes a day.”
Remember to engage every day
Networking is more about consistent long-term action than
any one ‘lightning strike’ post that’s going to make a thousand people reach
out to you. In many cases, this long-term action might
simply take the form of commenting on a post or engaging with your network in
other small ways.
It’s about consistently offering up expertise, consistently
offering up insights. Reaching out to other people and commenting on their
posts. Asking good questions. You can move the needle tremendously by just
asking a question on every post that’s interesting in your field.
And of course, if more casual social sites like Instagram,
Twitter, and Facebook truly are relevant to your particular industry, fostering
the same kind of career-focused interactions can help there too.
Network offline, too
Amidst the never-ending request-sending and online interaction, don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for potential in-person connections. You can never predict who someone might be friends with. Being comfortable talking about who you are and what you’re looking for, you’d be surprised by how many people you’ll meet who might go, ‘Oh, I know somebody at that place, I’d be happy to make an introduction.
Between finding local networking events or simply attending a workplace happy hour, you might make a connection anywhere. If the above online-centric tricks become too rote, try stepping away from the screen to do the same thing. I always say, whether you’re at a wedding, in line at the grocery store, or at a bar, there’s always the opportunity to network. There’s always a chance to build that relationship. And you never know where it’s going to go.
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