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Is Your Network Ready for Lay-offs?

Is Your Network Ready for Lay-offs?

How resilient is your network to cope with the unexpected?

Thomas Kriese
February 15, 2024

Hi there, happy Thursday!

Welcome to another issue of the Network Wrangler. We’re up to lucky number seven! Here’s today’s structure:

MANAGE: Insights on managing your existing network
GROW: Practical tips to grow your network
INSPIRE: A business idea that leverages networks
SCROLL: Quick links to items related to networking

MANAGE: The State of Your Emergency Network

Sound financial advice says keep an emergency fund of 3-6 months of living expenses to weather unplanned shocks to our life: job loss, ongoing health issues, other major life changes.

How does your personal emergency fund measure up to this target?

Full disclosure: I’m on the low end of being able to cover 3-6 months of living expenses.

But I’m working on it.

As I’m sure we all are.

Let’s pretend, for a moment, we have the financial piece covered in case of emergency.

How well is your network prepared to step in and help you?

More specifically: how easily can you tap into the weak ties of your network? These are your oldest connections and the connections of your connections.

If you lost your job tomorrow, how quickly could you turn to your network and start lining up interviews for your next role?

If you’re like the vast majority of people who’ve been in their job for a year or more, your networking activity has done at least two if not all three of these things:

Your recent connections are hyper-focused on succeeding in your present role.
Your network sharing activity has been reduced to big achievements only (a promotion or a big new contract).
Your former colleagues are doing something great, but you’re not sure exactly what they’re up to.

This is the networking equivalent of having a rainy day fund (car maintenance and parking tickets), not an emergency fund.

You should be putting just as much effort into preparing your network to help you in an emergency as you do in setting aside money in an emergency fund.

Here are some simple steps you can take this weekend to start preparing your network using LinkedIn. Pretend you’ve heard a rumor that layoffs are coming on March 1, and you may be among them.

Your LinkedIn Profile: Sign on to LinkedIn and look at your profile. Do you recognize this person? If not, update your content before you go any further.
Your Former Colleagues: From your LinkedIn profile, visit the company pages of the last three places you’ve worked and you’ll see all your old colleagues listed. Spend time catching up on what they’re up to and who’s interacting with them. Do you see an opportunity for new contacts?
Your Current Colleagues: See what other people in your company are posting about and who’s interacting with them. Do you see an opportunity for new contacts?
Your Partner/Spouse/SO/BFF’s Colleagues: See what people in their company are posting about and who’s interacting with them. Do you see an opportunity for new contacts?

If you lose your job tomorrow, the new contact opportunities in each of the above categories will likely lead to your new role.

The strength of your network to help you in an emergency is in these weak ties.

What better time than now to start making those connections?

GROW: Sing Your Way to a Diverse Network

Sociologists use the term “homophily” to describe the tendency of similar-minded people to interact with one another in social groups than with dissimilar-minded people.

In other words, birds of a feather flock together.

Yet, as I talk about in my book, The Inner Circle Effect: Harnessing the Power of Your Closest Connections, one of the crucial qualities of your Inner Circle is its diversity, not its homogeneity.

Growing a diverse network requires us to regularly step out of our comfort zone, which is no easy task, even if we’ve got the mental fortitude to diversify our flock of connections.

But we’re determined to surround ourselves with people unlike the normal crowd we hang with. Where can we get the biggest bang for our diversification buck?

By singing together, believe it or not.

Researchers have discovered the ice-breaker effect of singing in promoting fast cohesion between unfamiliar individuals.

So, if you’re looking to create connections with a new and diverse crowd: follow the music. It can be to a karaoke bar, to a church choir, or even to a meetup group organized to sing together online.

INSPIRE: Job Referring Prize Pool

With all the talk of continued layoffs here in the Bay Area and elsewhere, there’s ample opportunity for another network-based service to make connections between opportunities and seekers.

I’m thinking of a service that falls outside the scope of traditional recruiters and hiring bonuses where the incentive is only to the winner (the one who finds the candidate that lands the job).

The service would broker the connections between open positions and referrals and would compensate those referrers whose candidate made it to the short list.

The compensation would be a Job Referring Prize Pool where every person who submitted the name of a candidate who was interviewed gets to share in the bounty of the job being filled.

Of course, the referral who landed the job would warrant the biggest portion of the bounty, but everyone who put forth a candidate would also get a nominal compensation for their effort.

This service leverages the decision-making of the hiring company to screen out all ill-fitting referrals (and eliminates the referrer from the prize pool), but moves away from the winner-take-all incentives of our current recruiting and referral systems.

Anyone want to start this with me?

SCROLL: This Week’s Quick Hits

How friendships benefit us. Why Don’t We Hang Out Anymore? Adults need to relax and do nothing together, just like kids do. (NY Times)
Synchronicity: Meaningful coincidences provide us with a sense of connectedness and belonging (Psychology Today)
How the first human settlers survived isolated for 1000 years on desert islands off Africa. (Science)

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That’s all for this week. See you next Thursday!

— Thomas

PS: Heads-up, March 4 is my next available date for coaching. We might be a good fit if you know you need to reconnect with your network and want to make 2024 the year you harness the power of your connections.