Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated
nytimes.com

Networking means creating meaningful relationships based on mutual benefits. If you are in a position to help someone, help her. She will then help you back later on when she can. And this is by no means overrated. If anything is underrated.

This article opens with a strong claim and several distasteful examples of desperate behavior associated with networking. But I wouldn't consider those "networking" in the general sense of the word; rather they are one stunt-based manifestation of it. Contrary to the article's point, you do not need to abandon networking to focus on being so good that you're attention getting. The examples given - Bieber and Adele being "found" through raw wow factor - do not resemble the way that networking organically occurs in the real world, and are very dependent on luck. Bieber and Adele would still be impressive successes if they had networked for it, and indeed the article concedes that many successful startup founders had a pre-established network in addition to their skillsets.

I think there's too much baggage attached to the idea of networking. You don't want to try and network as though it is a high-pressure sales tactic. Instead, focus on developing social skills and charisma. You also don't need to wait until you are extraordinary to network with people. There's no guideline for networking because there doesn't need to be one, it arises organically if you talk with people who have the same interests. There's another principle I have found with regards to networking - it is better to prioritize network quantity instead of quality. You want a minimum "quality" per contact, for sure, but you will find that access to extremely high quality contacts emerges in your network once you've hit a critical mass of people you can email on a first name basis (for example). If you're constantly trying to "collect" high-impact contacts without bootstrapping your way towards it organically, you'll be more pressured to pull the inane antics the article talks about.

In other words, and for practical advice: people seriously overthink networking and these examples of e.g. pitching a VC at an open mic event are not examples of organic networking. Just talk to people for the sake of talking to people. I have had incredible opportunities come to me and met awesome people because I wrote insightful Hacker News or reddit comments. Whenever I can I try to email someone who is talking about something I'm interested in.

One reason it is difficult for some people; it reeks of superficiality if not insincerity.