"Networking" by Any Other Name...

For years, I hated the word “networking”; it conjured images of coming home from IABC and PRSA events with pockets stuffed full of business cards from vendors I had no intention of calling, of being cornered at high-school reunions by people I barely knew and had never cared for, listening as politely as possible to breathless descriptions of the multi-level marketing scheme they were willing to let me in on.

Networking, to me, was this annoying thing other people did. It took quite a while to understand I’d been networking and benefiting from other people’s networks my entire adult life.

First Big Win

My first big networking win came while I was in college. The attorney for my father’s company noticed my unusual last name on a list of incoming freshmen at his alma mater. Out of love for his school and respect for my dad, he reached out and offered me a summer job, sight unseen.

I worked at the law firm for four summers and a bit longer, when a young attorney who had worked summers for a legal publisher and knew I was interested in publishing and journalism put in a good word for me with her former employer.

These kindnesses led to my first editorial job, which, in turn, gained me the credentials to land my first position on a financial news daily. Business journalism led to a string of positions with financial information firms. Along the way came consolidations and restructurings that resulted in layoffs and job searches and new jobs, often reporting to former colleagues.

“It’s all about who you know,” my mother-in-law would say, exuding an air of worldiness.

“That’s right,” I’d reply (because correcting your mother-in-law is always a bad tactic). “It’s the people you know who know how much you know.” 

Networking, to me, was this annoying thing other people did.

I never would have called what I’d been doing “networking”. I would have called it “working”. “Socializing”. I was acquiring a reputation for who I was, for what I knew and could do.

When LinkedIn came along, I didn’t think of it as a “networking” tool. I thought it was cool. I don't think anyone was using the term "social media" yet -- I certainly wasn't. I’d just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, with its discussion of Stanley Milgram’s “six degrees of separation” experiment. I saw LinkedIn as a way to stay connected with friends and colleagues and see where our professional lives intersected.

Any illusions I might have had about LinkedIn's networking value would have been quickly dashed by my colleagues’ reactions to my invitations to link. They all boiled down to some version of, “Put my resume on the Internet? Do you want to get me fired?”

This wasn’t an unfounded fear. I actually had worked with someone who had lost his job when someone in HR stumbled upon his resume on Monster.com. How times have changed!

It’s the people you know who know how much you know. 

Strategic Use of People -- No, Thank You

Networking, it seemed to me, was distinguished from what I was doing by its intentionality. It seemed a strategic use of people, and I strongly felt that all people in every context should be regarded as ends in themselves. If I enjoyed talking with you or working with you, I wanted to stay in contact with you after the job was done. What I was doing was based on “joy”; networking was based on “work”.

And work it was. When I looked at friends and colleagues who prided themselves on their networking prowess, it just seemed so elaborate, so contrived, so strategic, so fake! The last thing in the world I wanted was to have people I liked and genuinely cared about see me in those terms.

I suppose it was the rise of online social networks that gradually took the edge off the word. As I used Facebook, Twitter, and more specialized online networks to connect with people who shared my interests in sustainability and conservation, scuba diving, yoga, and gardening, I came to view networking as just a word for what we all do naturally: try to connect with people who like or care about the things we do.

We go wrong when we try to force it, to focus on numbers, rankings, comparative values – to make people pawns in the pursuit of our strategic interests, rather than simply gravitating toward people who interest us. 

My network is now global, both broad and deep, and boundaries between the personal and the professional in many places blur. This blurring has its advantages and risks -- as it always has. After all, we're dealing with people.