Careers blog: Addressing your networking fears

You’re doing everything people have told you: reaching out, networking, setting up coffee chats. But it’s not leading anywhere. You’ve passed your CV to a few people - nothing. Not even a single invitation for an interview. You start to feel invisible. Are you not interesting enough? It seems the ‘networking’ thing only works for others, but not you. It’s frustrating to hear the advice “just network”- what does that even mean? No one actually tells you how to, or how to make it work.

In my work with alumni, I come across recurring themes around the fear and disappointment of networking. Here you can find some reflections on the top three fears you have shared and my suggestions on what you can do to shift your perspective and reshape your relationship building strategy.

A prominent networker Heidi Roizen (American venture capitalist and a lecturer at Sandford), whose story Heidi Roizen Case Study has been used for many years by top business schools, has inspired some of the tips shared. Before I go further, I need to quickly address your challenge question: No, unfortunately, Heidi Roizen is not in my network, YET.

Networking Fear 1: “I keep reaching out to people on LinkedIn, and I either get ghosted or receive impersonal, unhelpful replies.”

Some of the things you have been sharing:

• "I spent hours crafting personalised messages that apparently weren't worth a response. I am running out of energy"
• "Even WBS alumni from my course ignore my outreach attempts."
• "It feels humiliating to put myself out there and get nothing but silence."  

A lack of responses from the LinkedIn community rarely reflects on you as a person or a professional. The initial exchange is inevitably a bit cold and distant, but it is the first, so how much should we expect? People are busy, it is more likely they are dealing with full inboxes, back-to-back meetings and the timing of your message did not work this time. Try again.

Reshaping your relationship building strategy
As you will have noticed in this blog, I am trying to limit the use of the word ‘networking’ to help with the shift of perspective.

Prioritise getting quality contacts over simply getting lots. Research thoroughly before reaching out and make yourself easily discoverable i.e. update your LinkedIn profile with your target job location, latest achievements and professional interests, because people will look at this to understand who is contacting them.

You can try to refine the content of your outreach messages. Consider different ways of contacting people. Go beyond social media.  Be mindful how you use AI tools too. Feedback suggests that outreach messages often fall flat when they don’t read well and contain hyperbolic or adjective-heavy language, as these tend to indicate that you have not spent the time and effort to put yourself in the message. People would like to talk to you, not to your AI agent.

A mistake many make is that they invest a lot of time and effort in the initial outreach activity but then they don’t follow up. A timely reminder or a friendly follow-up message will keep these connections warm. Create a system to manage follow-ups without investing too much emotional energy. In my case once a week I spend time revisiting meetings and interactions I had the previous week. I think of the conversations that stood out for me, of what words people used and how they challenged me to look at a problem through a different lens. Then I choose one person who was part of such interaction and I drop them a quick message or a WhatsApp text to say thank you and share what I enjoyed from that meeting. Sometimes I just need to know how they are doing. Nothing complicated – I go back a week in my diaries both personal and professional, and pick up one contact who has created this impact in me and re-connect.  

In short, research, refine, re-connect.
 

Networking Fear 2:  "I fear cold messaging people I don’t know."

Some of the things you have been sharing:

• "It feels too much to contact someone I don't know."
• "I overthink every word until I don’t know what to write.”
• "The rejection rate makes it feel like a waste of both energy and time."

The ability to send cold outreach messages is a skill and as such the more you do it, the better you will become. As we know skills take some time to acquire so you will need to keep doing it to get better outcomes.

Reshaping your relationship building strategy

Before reaching out to a cold contact, find a person to facilitate an introduction. As the co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman advises: "The best networking isn't cold—it's informed, intentional, and ideally facilitated through mutual connections. Spend the time to find the connection points that make your outreach relevant."

You can check if there is an upcoming event you are both attending. The MBA Alumni conference is coming soon, so make sure you register and review the list of attendees (this will be emailed out to those who have registered before the event), identify people you would like to connect with and prepare for meeting them.  Make a note that I will be co-facilitating a networking session too, so don’t miss it. Heidi Roizen talks about “controlled randomness" which implies that you allow yourself to come across and meet random people, but at events or meetings which are likely to attract like-minded professionals.

On LinkedIn you can start creating content. This is a good way to grab the attention of people you don’t know. You can tag key figures in your target industry and/or their organisation. Bingo.

Additionally, you should try to engage with the content of others on a regular basis. People review who has liked or commented on their posts and those ‘engaged’ followers are therefore more visible to the author of the post. 

Networking fear 3: "Everyone says 'network' but no one says how."

Some of the things you have been saying:

• "The advice is always vague and unhelpful."
• "Different people give contradictory networking guidance."
• "I'm following all the 'rules' but still not seeing results."

I am not going to tell you ‘how’ either because I don’t believe there is a standard multi-application approach to networking. In my opinion it is important that you experiment and find what works for you. If you are introvert, you can still excel at networking. It might require more energy from you and you might need time to recharge after an event. However, if you have a genuine interest in other people, this will help and make it easy for you to ask thoughtful questions and demonstrate active listening. On the contrary, there is no guarantee that extroversion will always keep the attention of the room on you and support you in building strong connection. 

Reshaping your relationship building strategy

I have come across a few people in my career who are exceptional at networking (in my view) and each one of them has their unique style of doing this. These people have developed their own relationship building strategies across all situations. They adapt their approaches depending on context and depending on the people they interact with.  Alison Wood Brooks, professor from Harvard Business School and author of Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves, suggests that to be good at conversations, which is required for establishing connections, we need to be able to self-read, mind-read (the other person) and room-read (the context). 

So I encourage you to create your personal networking strategy based on your strengths, values, objectives and situations and I am confident this will work for you.