Networking For People Who Don't Network

Dec 12, 2024

These are the heuristics that I use for professional networking. I think I’m a pretty good networker, but not any sort of natural networking savant – I’ve just been able to find good results by following a few easy habits.

Networking is kind of like working out: It’s easy to get started and a relatively small amount of effort gives you significant benefits. If you follow some incredibly basic rules and aren’t lazy, you can build a great network with ease.

How to Meet People

Networking is probabilistic. Most of the people that you meet are not going to wind up being long-term connections that matter in your life. This is fine and normal, and as a result:

There’s no pressure to build a super strong connection with any given person. It’s completely fine if you don’t like everyone, or if someone doesn’t like you. This is the normal state of the world, but some people feel like they need to “work the room” or hit some sorts of arbitrary networking goals. In my experience great networkers never act like this.
You really do need to put yourself out there and meet a lot of people if you want to expand your network. It’s bit of a numbers game.

Your Coworkers

By far – by far – the most important way to build your network is to positively interact with your coworkers. People that you work with are the most accessible and high-quality network that you can build. They are right there. You have a shared experience, a similar industry focus, and are often of a similar age and life situation. The #1 missed opportunity in networking is failing to take the achingly simple steps to build a network from people you work with every day.

How do you do this? At a bare minimum: Literally just be competent, be a good teammate, and don’t be actively antisocial. Say hi to people in person. Be friendly in meetings; have a brief Slack conversation if it makes sense in context (don’t be annoying, of course). Remember names. Eat lunch with other people. You barely even need to talk at lunch – just be pleasant. If you do these things and are a good, reliable teammate, it is almost impossible to not build a network.

When you talk with your coworkers, be positive. Many people find it tempting to use shared grievances to build relationships, which can work well in the short run but sets you on the wrong course. If you try to manufacture rapport by complaining about your boss or the sales team or your CEO, all that you’ll construct is a network of complainers. Winners are inspired by ambition and shared victories, and complaining is pretty much the polar opposite.

For the more advanced level of building a workplace network, actively identify people whom you’d want to work with in the future. The reason that coworker networks are so valuable is that judging compatibility is incredibly difficult outside of work and incredibly easy at work. Whether as a peer, boss, cofounder, or subordinate – doesn’t matter. Do not waste this information asymmetry.

It’s also valuable to expand strong relationships outside of work, even if it’s very simple (we’re coffee buddies, or we get a beer every few months). You want to broaden the context of your relationship beyond your job, because your network will ideally outlast the context of your current team.

Out In the World

Beyond your coworkers, the next rule is simply to get out there and meet people occasionally, in ways that work for you. For myself: I like nice dinners, I like expensive cocktails, I like talking to people, and I don’t like approaching people speed-dating-style. That means that I prioritize dinners for senior Product leaders – and I will not go to a meetup, conference, hosted talk, or virtual event unless I’m forced or paid to attend. I also like chilling with my family, and won’t travel to an offsite unless I really like the group.

When you’re at these events, just be yourself and never brag. You’re going to get asked where you work; my quick tip is to have a very brief description of your background that hits the highlights concisely. Mine is about 12 words, and I’ll only elaborate if prompted. Keeping it brief is essential because nobody likes a person who only wants to talk about themselves.

Nurturing Your Network

Reach Out When You Think of People

This is a well documented “trick,” but whenever someone comes to mind, you should reach out and say hi. It can be for anything:

“We just refactored that code you wrote 3 years ago on the scheduling service – forgot how clean your design was, hope you’re doing well at Meta!”
“Did you see that Jimmy [our shared peer] is running his own startup now? Some crazy AI thing.”
“Yo, I was watching this snowboarding video where some dude falls off the lift, it reminds me of when you fell off the lift on Spring Break.”

People do love being thought of… but more importantly, life is made up of all of the tiny events that happen in between the big ones. Take advantage – bring people along for the ride of the micro-moments that are happening in your life, and it will help to keep your relationships alive.

Meet In-Person Semi-Regularly

Staying connected in these tiny moments is great, but if you want to maintain a deeper relationship with someone, you must meet in person at least semi-regularly:

At least once a year for casual acquaintances (“we met at a conference”)
At least every 2 years for close acquaintances (“we worked together for two years”)
At least every 3 years for very close friendships that involve a foundational bonding experience (“we were college roommates and spent every weekend together for years afterwards; we worked at a startup together for 5 years”)

Past 3 years of your last in-person meeting, assume that your friendship is going to erode.

We are social primates, and in my experience humans do not fully trust people they haven’t seen and ideally physically contacted. Vista Equity Partners, one of the most successful PE firms in tech, literally enshrines this with their culture of giving hugs. Vista are not preschool teachers; they are not sensitive artists; they are not running a sentimental business. They are apex predators of the capitalist wilderness. But even they realize that in order to build trust people rely upon close contact, and giving someone a hug is a good way to get there.

You need to meet in person to build a network. For a tiny example of this: my Stay SaaSy co-author and I don’t actually find ourselves in the same office very often anymore, but I always prioritize speaking with them for at least a few minutes face-to-face when I can.

How to Engage

Trade Personal Details

Swapping some amount of personal information is an important part of building a connection. There are a few reasons that this works.

The first is that it just feels nice if someone remembers a few personal details about you. This is true even if you suspect that someone is only remembering personal details for relationship-building purposes, because 99% of the time people will treat you like an NPC even if it’s not in their best interests. I suspect that the guy who makes my bagel only remembers my name so that I keep giving him money; he’s a smart guy and probably likes recurring revenue. But at every other shop I go to weekly they act like I’m a goddamn stranger, so I still like Javier more.

The second reason this works is that people like you more if they know personal details about you. It’s just natural: You know the most about your close friends and family. You also (largely) like your close friends and family the most. People perceive a strong association with knowing others’ personal details and liking them.

Don’t Act Weird

If you stand far away and squint, networking is kind of like dating: Two people talk and decide if they want to spend more time together. As a result, networking and dating share the same patterns for when they get weird. Don’t fall into these patterns:

Don’t ask someone to be your mentor (this is like asking someone to be your boyfriend/girlfriend on the second date; either let it happen naturally or get deeper into the relationship before you broach the question)
Don’t get all weird about paying for stuff (very similar to dating: the default should be that the person who can expense the meeting from their job pays, and if neither or both can, then it’s whoever initiated the conversation)
Don’t send strange thank you notes (don’t text anything weird after the date, although a quick non-desperate text is fine)
Don’t brag about having met someone (don’t reveal personal details about your dates)

It is shocking to me how often people violate these basic rules and inadvertently act like creeps.

Networking Matters

Many jobs kind of suck – that’s why they pay you to be there. They suck because they don’t pay enough; they suck because they don’t provide enough opportunity; they suck because you don’t like your coworkers. Networking is a solution to all of these problems: If you network effectively, you’ll work with people you like, at more successful companies, which can pay you more.

There’s not a whole lot more to ask for than that. Over a third of your waking life is spent at work – that’s too much to spend with people you don’t like or respect. So get out there, and follow these incredibly basic steps to build a better network.

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