How the f**k do you network?
Why business cards, LinkedIn requests and standing by yourself with a name badge on your lapel ain't gonna help you.
Last night I stumbled upon a Reddit thread that at first glance made me laugh.
How the f***k do you network? Someone had written. I am the only one sat down, holding my cup as a prop, not knowing what to do with my hands. Everyone else is talking. How do people do it?
I read on. Pretty soon I stopped laughing.
Update: thanks for the advice so far, which I have been reading while hiding in the toilet. But I keep sweating and turning red as I converse. People also look at me like I’m an 👽.
I have no idea who this person is, and yet I feel I know them intimately. That’s because I have been this person - many times over. Perhaps you have too. I know what it feels like to tip up to an event where you are judged by the depth of your CV rather the content of your character; where you are made to feel like your future depends on your ability to ‘work a room’ rather than work an actual job, and where those who speak ‘small talk’ appear to win at life.
Networking. Brrr…The very word fills me with dread. It sounds so exhausting, so transactional; so vicious with its hard, flinty consonants. It doesn’t feel like a word made for human beings, who are a basically a bundle of skin, nerve endings and emotions.
Before I entered the world of work I’d never really heard the term before. Before that it was just about making friends. ‘Find people you like and who like you,’ Mum used to say. It seemed like sensible enough advice. So I went out into the world and focused in on those who felt like my sort of people. People I could be myself around, which, because I was shy and intense, was a very small pool of people indeed. They weren’t useful people because that was not a requirement for my friendship. I judged them merely on the quality and generosity of their company.
Later however, as I emerged from the optimistic flush of educational life into a world that appeared to want absolutely nothing I had to offer, everything felt as though it hung on these invisible threads; useful human connections that I had no idea how to make.
‘It’s who you know, not what you know…’ those some years ahead of me in the corporate game would say without any further instruction as to how that actually worked. I noticed how weary they sounded as they said this, as though they too had spent many an evening sat on a toilet lid, watching the clock whilst simultaneously wondering how on earth they were going to introduce themselves to a roomful of lusty corporate climbers.
Some people are born networkers. The idea that opportunity exists on the shoulders of others is sewn into their DNA. I know parents who believe the greatest gift they can give their child is a network system for later in life. It is why they will spend their entire savings on access to the ‘best’ schools, holidays in the ‘right’ places (even if it bores them to tears) and do pretty much anything to get their child into a university where the gates of opportunity slide open. If ‘your network is your net worth', as the saying goes, then you need to start early.
The British upper class understand this better than most. They are networked from cradle to grave. Entry into Eton for example, is not just access to one of the best schools in the world, but access to an entire network of alumni past and present onto whom you can lean in later life. What’s more, access to this network does not require you shove a business card into the hand of a stranger, or present your life as a one-minute elevator pitch. The keys to this network exist as a series of effortless signs and signals, invisible to all apart from those whose network you need to access. It is a signet ring bearing a family crest and worn on your pinkie finger, the cut of your shirt or the colour of your trousers (burgundy or mustard); even a secret hand signal, I have been informed, that marks you out as part of this vital network. It is even said that when young men enter Eton they are given a glossary of words that remain unique to the world of Eton. It is a world where teachers are a ‘beak’; ‘chambers’ a break after morning lessons and ‘half’ a school term. To know these words- and to utter them in later life, is to establish yourself as part of an important and extensive network.
I have seen this play out in boardrooms and parties over the years, where my practised elevator pitch has looked desperate and shallow compared to a bond made between two individuals who attended the same university.(Oxford? What college? Me too! Do you know such and such…?’). Passing out business cards at an event where the only thing you have in common with everyone else is your ambition to start a network, never, in my opinion, works.
I’m mid way through my career now and I can tell you, hand on heart, that I have never found a random LinkedIn invitation to bear any fruit. I have also never found those dreadful networking events anything other than a painful exercise in humiliation and impossible small talk. No one will remember who you are because they have your business card in their purse. And cold approaches on social media puts you in the same bracket as that random guy who DMs you promising to make you a million overnight…if you’ll just send over your bank details first.
Because here’s the truth: although we now all have larger networks than ever before, comprised of hundreds of virtual connections that includes old friends, new friends, people we once met at a party and those we follow simply because we admire their taste in lampshades, I doubt anyone’s career has soared because of this. I suspect there are few people in these intricate webs on whom we can lean in times of existential need. I doubt there’s anyone on Facebook Messenger you could reach out to to discuss your future. That’s because these are not real ‘networks’. They are a list of people, no different to a guest list at one of those horrendous networking events. They are connections that fill the space; fleeting and unreal.
Which brings us back to square one- how the f*k do you network?
I’ve been thinking about this all weekend and so here are some thoughts…