You’ve had it drilled into you that networking is essential for your career.
Yet, if you’re busy actually doing your job, it can feel like yet another thing on your list. So, you like a few posts on LinkedIn and move on.
Increasingly, that’s not going to cut it, workplace observers told Business Insider. That’s especially true if you’re among the growing share of workers who feel restless and wouldn’t mind finding a new gig.
Professional elbow-rubbing is becoming more important partly because many of us, especially desk workers, don’t have the leverage with employers that we did in the pandemic years, when bosses were often desperate to fill seats. So, landing a new role can require more effort.
Plus, as artificial intelligence threatens to take on more work and swallow some jobs entirely, more employers could become choosier about the people they hire.
Add in economic X factors like tariffs and interest rates, which are further curbing some employers’ appetites for hiring, and you’ve got more reasons to treat networking like healthy eating or hitting the gym — and not something you only do in January.
“Networking is more about farming than it is about hunting. It’s about cultivating relationships with people,” Ivan Misner, founder of BNI, a business networking organization focused on referrals, told BI.
That’s why he said he encourages people to start now, before they’re unemployed. Misner, who for decades has been an evangelist of networking, compares the act of building relationships to the adage about the best time to plant a tree being 20 years ago — and the second-best time being today.
“For those employees who have not planted an oak tree, who have not been out networking, they need to go do it now,” he said.
Joining the ‘favor economy’
One reason networking is more essential than ever is that our attention is often fractured by the amount of information coming at us, Dorie Clark, a communication coach who teaches at Columbia Business School and who wrote the book “The Long Game,” told BI.
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“What is always going to get your attention is a close relationship with people that you care about and want to help,” she told BI.
Many of us, though, often find jobs not through our close contacts but through their acquaintances, Clark said. What can play out, she said, is an example of what’s sometimes called the “favor economy.”
“You will help someone that you don’t know that well, because you are indirectly doing a favor for the person you do know well,” she said.
Clark said that because AI threatens to take jobs and because many employers are cautious about hiring, some old-school relationship-building is essential.
“The thing that is going to get you to the front of the line when jobs are scarce is interpersonal relationships with people who are willing to go above and beyond and expend political capital to help you,” she said.
Clark said that relying too much on social media as a means of networking can be dangerous because it’s often a poor substitute for making deeper connections with people over time.
“It gives you the illusion of productive networking. It gives you the illusion of connection,” she said.
Instead, Clark advises workers and job seekers to look for more “bespoke” ways of connecting. It might be as simple as sending someone you know a text once in a while without expecting a response. She said sharing something that reminds you of that person or simply saying hello can make a difference.
“As long as you’re friendly, you’re thoughtful, you’re relevant, you’re not seeking something from them — most people will be very happy to hear from you,” Clark said.
The gold standard, however, remains spending time with someone IRL, she said.
When you don’t know someone well — and especially when there’s a power imbalance — it’s best to make a single small ask. So, don’t request a coffee date, a job referral, and a testimonial quote, Clark said.
Instead, she said, think about what would be the “highest and best use” of how someone might help you and what feels appropriate as an ask.
Finding ways to stand out
Networking is also important because as piles of résumés stack up for an open job, sifting through them, even with the help of applicant-tracking software, can be a heavy lift for busy managers, Gorick Ng, a Harvard University career advisor and the author of the book “The Unspoken Rules,” told BI.
What often stands out, he said, is someone walking down the hall and saying, “My niece is looking for a job. Here’s their résumé. Do you mind just taking a closer look?” Or, Ng said, it could be that someone on the inside of an organization vouches for a former colleague by saying to the hiring manager that a candidate is likeable and trustworthy.
“And just like that, somebody else who you do not know just got that leg up because they have somebody else behind the scenes pounding on the table for their name to be picked,” Ng said.
That’s why, he said, it’s so important for job seekers to be seen, heard, and remembered. After all, Ng said, hiring managers aren’t likely to hire someone they haven’t fallen in love with as a candidate.
“It’s hard to fall in love with an applicant that is nothing more than just a Word document that you may not even look at,” he said.
Do you have a story to share about your job hunt? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.
