I’m often asked for career advice and it usually simplifies down to two insights:
- pursue a bold goal that you actually want to achieve and will fulfil your purpose ; and
- use your network to get there.
There’s much that can be said about the first. Too many people don’t stretch hard enough. Achieving an underwhelming goal is more disappointing than failure. Others pursue goals for money or status or because of the expectation of others. They are the people who I meet who are trapped in jobs that they hate and feel they can’t leave. Your boss’s enthusiasm for your big new mortgage is self-interest not support.
This post however focuses on the second part, your real network.
Your Real Network
In an age of digital communications and social media, we can see our networks better than ever before. Connections that once were well below Dunbar’s number now stretch into the thousands with ease, all visible and searchable.
It is tempting to see this as your network, especially when tools like Linkedin tell you that it is. People go out of their way building these numbers. They also oddly expect these strangers to benefit them without any form of relationship.
Spread through the vast web of weak digital connections, is a far more precious network, your real network. These are the people who will actually help you with your career. The others will be applauding bystanders.
The real network are people who will put in effort to help you achieve your goals. They refer you with an endorsement. They make calls. They send you opportunities and mention you as a candidate in the right places. They tell you the hard things to hear that you need to know. These people make jobs for you. The real network are advocates.
Advocacy Comes At A Cost
To advocate for you, someone puts their social capital on the line for you. A bad reference can ruin a relationship. That failing can be as simple as not following up on an introduction that was made for you or having a change of heart mid process and not letting everyone advocating for you know. An advocate is putting themselves on the line for you. To earn that outcome two things must be true:
- The advocate needs to want to work for you: there needs to be a reason. Altruism works some times, but don’t count on it. Reciprocity is always the strongest reason even if that reciprocity is paying forward a debt to others. Real friendship, previous working relationships of mutual support and genuine generosity and your reputation for the same matter more than a compelling pitch. You are asking for effort so make sure you justify why you are worth the effort to them before you start.
- You need to be worth the effort: Once some advocates for you, you are carrying their brand along with your own. Respect their efforts and be considerate. Importantly if someone gives you help keep them updated and be thankful. The worst way to find out your assistance worked or didn’t is a late Linkedin update.
These two criteria may mean that effort is not always aligned to the closeness of your relationship. Some connections can be too close, do too much already or have too much baggage. There can be people who lie in your weak ties who might have a better likelihood of making an effort because that relationship is unambiguously positive.
Advice is Cheap. Effort counts.
When engaging your network, start with asking for advice. Advice is easy to give and doesn’t imply a commitment to make effort. It also allows the other person to learn before they are forced into the embarrassment of turning down your request for a job or advocacy. If you do a good job of the advice conversation, often you will meet the two criteria above and advocacy naturally follows. However, it will only follow if the person explicitly offers to help and shows some evidence of doing so. If you walk away from the coffee with a warm glow, you got nowhere but you had some caffeine (That hopefully you paid for).
Understand who in your network is actually making efforts to help you achieve your goals. Treasure them and make sure you are repaying the favours with your own efforts and at least some gratitude.
Understanding the effort involved is also why some of the highest profile and most powerful people are the least likely to help. They are too busy, have too many obligations or feel too important to invest enough time in you. Someone whose day is in back to back 15-30 minute appointments might refer you to a direct report but that’s just a way of moving the problem, you, elsewhere. When everyone comes at you for help, nobody gets any.
Forget the big numbers of connections. Forget the fancy titles. Find the people who will help you achieve what you really want. Start fostering the real network that will power your career.
