You have to work the network! It’s guidance I get all the time. When my friends and mentors found out about my summer internship at a giant and illustrious tech company, I think “network your butt off” was the most common phrase anyone said to me for weeks. But what does A+ networking really mean?
According to LinkedIn’s founder, Reid Hoffman, accumulating “weak ties” and friend-of-friend(-of-friend) relationships is the way to win. Research by academic big-names like sociologist Mark Granovetter lends some support for that make-a-bunch-of-shallow-connections approach, and I have heard it unabashedly espoused by quite a few career counselors.
But I am not so sure that it’s all so simple. I firmly believe in the importance of interfacing with with a diverse set of people to diversify one’s own perspectives, yet I also yearn for authenticity in my interactions. For me, the power of connections is in building relationships rather than building rolodex entries. With that objective, I tend to go for quality over quantity, so I prioritize time spent furthering my friendships with a few strong mentors rather than enlarging my circle to encompass more and more weak connections.
I don’t deny that those who optimize for quantity have collected a lot of business cards that can become name-dropping lines in cover letters. But stepping back, it seems to me that the very need to name-drop comes from a necessity to differentiate oneself in a sea of similarity. You can be the Excel wizard at desk number 142 in a given consulting or banking firm, and you’ll be much more likely to land there if you some folks know who you are and vice versa. But knowing your name and knowing you are two very different ball games, and I prefer relationships that lean toward the latter ‒ i.e., rich, thought-provoking connections.
While these two approaches are not in and of themselves mutually exclusive, we all have one natural style that is more comfortable (i.e., deep or broad), and that approach often bleeds into how we conduct ourselves in the other case. True to my introverted side, even in networking meccas like large cocktail events, I often find myself on the fringes, in some quiet and fascinating one-on-one conversation that lasts most of the evening and then well beyond it. If you’re more the social-butterfly type, I bet you’re great at the cocktail chatter but maybe more challenged to nurture these deeper connections. In a world where it seems everyone stresses the handshake-and-elevator-pitch style of interacting, I want to pitch the power of mentors. I have three major reasons.
- They know you better, so they’re more able to connect you to opportunities that align with your skills and strengths, rather than ad hoc possibilities that you drum up in superficial one-offs. They might be better equipped to identify the right next step for you than you are!
- You know them better, so you can calibrate their advice and weave it into your own thinking more knowledgeably based on what you know of their background and bent.
- Because each of you is more aware of the others’ goals and ventures, the relationship has the possibility for more symbiosis and reciprocal assistance rather than being a one-way street.
This third point is especially crucial, yet it is often overlooked. The “network your butt off” mentality sometimes catalyzes a competitive ‒ and shortsighted ‒ mindset in which we use connections like paper toweling: grab it when you need it, and then throw it away. What about the dish towel method of saving and caring for, rinsing and reusing (or in the case of people, re-engaging with)?
I feel incredibly blessed to have developed a handful of this sort of resonant relationships. If those extraordinary people happen to be reading this article, please know that I thank you (you know who you are). And if you, reader, are more a hand-shaker than a handful-of-friends-er, we should talk ‒ seriously.
