Networking: Why it's essential and how to make connections?

By Frank Kane?

This article is an excerpt from our “Breaking into Technology with a Non-Traditional Background” course. For this section, we will take a deeper dive into the importance of networking.??

Let's talk about building your professional network.

As an engineer who might be a bit introverted, networking may cause you to cringe, but it is essential – and I'll tell you why. If you don't know people on the inside of the companies that you're applying to, you're just going to be another applicant in a sea of submissions from Indeed or whatever.

Let me tell you a little secret. When I worked at Amazon, we didn't even look at the people who applied to our positions directly from our website because there were so many of them and 99% of them were not remotely qualified for the job. It was just too much work to weed through all those applications to find the 1 or 2 that might actually be qualified.

Almost every person that we hired was found one of two ways. Either we found them because we went out searching for them on websites like LinkedIn or GitHub or searching through academic papers or our own connections, or they knew somebody on the inside and they got in through the employee referral program.

Putting Yourself Out There

It's not enough to just throw your resume on Indeed, or to apply directly on a website. Odds are you're just going to get ignored that way.

It's much better to know somebody on the inside and work your way in that way. And to do that, you need to put yourself out there. You need to network, you need to meet new people in your industry and make those connections that can lead to career opportunities.

You need to get past the gatekeepers somehow, right?

So if you do just apply online, you need to get past the recruiters, the people that are the front

line of defense against weeding out the people who are not qualified in the first place.

That's a layer that you can skip, right? So you can sidestep those recruiters if you can connect directly with an engineer or a hiring manager where you want to work.

Often there are referral bonuses involved internally, so the engineers are motivated to do this for you. If you are a good engineer and you know somebody who works at a company that you might find interesting, they might get some money for actually referring you to that position. So everybody wins.

Companies want you to go in this way so don't feel like you're doing something shady or behind the scenes. This is how it works. If you're a viable candidate, they want to connect with you.

They want that referral bonus. Not only do you need to find them, you need to make it easy for them to find you.?

Hiring managers also want to sidestep the recruiters because if an employee comes through a recruiter, then they have to share that candidate with other teams.

For example, if you apply directly to a website, a hiring manager is going to be competing with other hiring managers within the company for the chance to interview you. Whereas if a hiring manager finds you directly themselves, they get you all to themselves, so they get the first dibs on you. You want to make sure that it's easy for those hiring managers to find you online.

They're going to be actively searching for qualified candidates online, sometimes through non-traditional means. So you've got to put yourself out there so they can find you.

Modern networking techniques

This is about making it easier for hiring managers to find you as well as making it about you finding them. If you have a good digital footprint out there on the Internet, managers searching LinkedIn or Medium or GitHub or academic papers for candidates might find you.

But if you're not out there online, they won't. There's no way they can know you exist. So as much as you might hate social media and some of these websites, it is a good idea from a career standpoint to put your thoughts out there, put some code out there, put some tutorials out there, put some videos out there, whatever it is, because you never know what it might lead to.

Anything you can do to create a network that might lead to a hiring manager is going to help. They're going to be searching whatever networks they have looking for qualified engineers and maybe they'll find you.

This gets back to the idea of working on open-source projects. If they're looking at a relevant open-source project to what this company does, that might lead them to you – that's a good thing too.

Online and In-Person Networking?

There are other ways to get your name out there potentially in front of the right people. Join technical focus groups. Maybe those are online groups, maybe they're in person clubs or associations or societies, whatever it is.

It's a chance to meet people who might know people who are hiring and getting within the six degrees of separation of the right people. You have to put yourself out there to make these connections. You never know where they might lead.

Relevant Discord or Slack groups are also relevant organizations that have virtual meetings. Just showing up online might be enough and get on their mailing list, where you could potentially hear about new opportunities.?

There are also in-person opportunities for networking as well, sort of the traditional way of

doing things. Attending conferences might be a way to meet people who might be hiring, attending live events or joining clubs and societies that meet in person as well. In-person connections are going to be even more powerful than the connections you make online.

If I think about the collaborations and partnerships that I've done personally as an instructor, most of those came from meeting other instructors in person at some live event. While they do require more work to get into, the reward is proportionally higher as well.

Make your own luck?

If you're just sitting at home writing code and not telling anybody about it, that's not going to get

you anywhere in terms of your career. But the more people you can connect with, the more people that know you, and the more networks you're a part of, the better the odds of that leading to some unexpected opportunity that you maybe never would have even thought of or considered before.

And those little twists in life, it's making your own luck, right? You need to put yourself out there to give luck a chance to happen to you in the first place. You can also create your own opportunities for networking to start a collaborative project on the side, and maybe the people that attract will also lead to new opportunities.

So here are the key takeaways:?

• Networking is essential.
• You have to put yourself out there to find the right connections.?
• The connections you make can lead to unexpected things.
• Get out there, and make your own luck.?

If you’re interested in learning more - check out our full course, Breaking Into Technology with a Non-Traditional Background.??

Or get access to our top courses in our 10-Course Mega Bundle for only $50! Click here to learn more.