Here are four quick actions taking mere minutes that are much more helpful, when you make a networking ask or someone makes a networking ask of you.
Most people network badly. I’ve written at length in both The Career Toolkit, Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You and my many articles on networking about how people approach networking wrong, often focusing on transactions rather than relationships. Today I’m going to write about the mechanics of how, even when doing the asking, “transactional” part (i.e., “please help me”, many people do it wrong.
First, let me clarify what I mean by “transactional.” Sadly, most people “network” when they need a job and do so by asking strangers they meet to “network” and help them find a job. As I’ve written elsewhere, true networking is about building relationships. Over time you can make asks of those relationships, including for help find a job.
But what happens when you do get to that point. Suppose Alex says to Chris, “I’m trying to find a job, can you help connect me to anyone?” Typically, Chris will empathize with Alex and try to be helpful. Chris may think of a person or two, or may not, and then will usually offer, “I’ll keep an eye out for you; let me know if there’s anyone you see who I’m connected to on LinkedIn, I’m happy to make the introduction.”
That’s all kind and good, but I would suggest that if you really want to help someone, as Chris does in this case, you can easily do more. Here are simple things Chris can do. Any one or all of them, take only a few minutes but significantly increase the odds of a successful outcome for Alex.
Any of the steps above take only two to ten minutes each. All could be done in less than twenty minutes. Chris doesn’t need to do all of them, but doing any one action provides a concrete outcome that is much more helpful than, “I’ll keep an eye out for you.” It also makes Alex’s needs more memorable for Chris.
I’ll add one caveat. This applies more to an acute need such as someone looking for a new job, to hire for a role, or gain some new knowledge. It’s less applicable to a salesperson saying, “I need to connect with the finance teams at hospitals to sell our accounting software.” Certainly, networking helps every salesperson (and unfortunately most salespeople confuse true networking with generic lead gen), but that doesn’t mean you need to actively ply your network for every product or service of every salesperson in it. Otherwise, you’ll bother your network with continual sales pitches which is not your job and will weaken your relationships with others. Those are not acute needs, as such “keeping an eye out” is fine. If you have a close contact in your network who is asking for a specific introduction to some, that’s one thing, but a general “be my open-ended lead funnel” is not.
I’m not suggesting salespeople are asking you to do this. Many salespeople would not; although many sales spammers do this daily (“Hi Mark, I’d like to network with you to find someone in your company who . . .”) as well as similar self-serving-requests-miscategorized-as-networking asks across your network.
Networks are one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal and they unfortunately aren’t utilized well enough. Even when someone looking for help across her network reaches out, she faces the further friction of not having her networking partner know how to help effectively. As the asker, you can apply the above to ask for more specific help from the person in your network. As the person being asked, you can offer the above, to be a good networker, and by doing so demonstrate good networking techniques for when it's your turn to ask for help. Good luck.
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