Strategic Networking Moves to Reenergize Your Career

Hi there, happy Thursday!

Welcome to issue #29 of the Network Wrangler. We’re almost in our 30s! Here’s what we’re covering in today’s issue:

• Reenergizing your Career Via Your Network

• Learning When a Connection Should Stay Cold

Reenergizing Your Career with Strategic Networking Moves

Up and into my mid-30s, my career trajectory was just a series of “arcs of interest” that followed one after the other. Each arc lasted about two and a half years, meaning I stayed with a specific company or in a particular department within a company for ten seasons before leaving for something new.

Little did I know then that my penchant for change was building my networking skills by forcing me to cleave my closest connections in large chunks as I transitioned from one place to the next and rebuilt my networks anew.

While I made these career and network changes on a regular cadence, a lot of others stayed the course in a single company or discipline for a decade or more.

Recently, I’ve been talking with a lot of folks who are hitting their mid-careers as professionals, and I’m hearing a lot of them share they’ve reached that time when the career path that once brought excitement now feels stagnant.

I’ve shared with them, and now with you, that strategic networking can be a key tool to reinvigorate their career trajectory, offering new opportunities, insights, and directions.

Here’s how you can use networking to breathe new life into your professional journey.

1. Identify Your Goals for Networking:

   Before diving into any networking activities, you have to clearly define what you want to achieve. This is all about being intentional with your efforts. Are you looking to switch industries, gain new skills, or step into a leadership role? Clarifying your goals will help you target your networking efforts more effectively, allowing you to seek out individuals and groups that align with your aspirations, AND it will better help you to enlist the support of others to support your finding new connections.
   

2. Expand Beyond Your Current Circle:

   We’ve talked a lot about the power of weak ties in your network, and that means breakthroughs in your career will come from outside your immediate network. I’m a huge advocate of reconnecting with your old and cold connections to reinvigorate the freeze-dried social capital with these folks. You can also look for networking events and professional groups in areas you want to explore, but first check with folks you’ve already built close connections with and maybe haven’t spoken to in years.
   

3. Leverage Social Media Platforms:

   LinkedIn is invaluable for both reconnecting with your old colleagues as well as for reaching out to industry leaders you admire. When was the last time you joined a relevant groups, or participated in discussions, or shared content that reflects your professional interests and expertise. Engaging actively online can tweak the algorithm to make you visible to potential mentors who can offer guidance or to recruiters who can suggest new opportunities.
   

4. Reciprocity Means You Offer Value First:

   Networking is all about reciprocity. It’s not just about what you can gain from others. Leading off by offering value is crucial in forming mutually beneficial relationships that lead to strong connections. Whether it’s sharing your expertise, providing support on a project, or introducing connections to each other, the value you add will make you a memorable and respected figure within your network.
   

5. Follow Up and Stay Engaged:

   After making new connections or reconnecting with old ones, it’s important to keep the momentum going. Set a reminder to follow up with a thank-you note, suggest a catch-up meeting, or send articles that are relevant to your conversation. I’ve taken the habit of actively scheduling monthly 30-minute virtual meetings with folks I want to stay in touch with because I’ve found that if it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t happen. Regular engagement helps to solidify relationships and keeps you on the radar for upcoming opportunities. No agenda is necessary other than to reach out and check in on each other.

You can use the above methods to unlock new possibilities and directions for your career through engaging and growing your network strategically. The key to effective networking is to be proactive, open, and genuine. And the best part is these qualities can also set you apart as a valued professional in any field.

Who are you going to reach out to first?

When a Connection Should Stay Cold

I practice what I preach by regularly reaching out to old and cold connections in my network to see what insights and value they can bring to my current efforts to grow and expand my business and find new opportunities. I’m lucky that, with the exception of a single connection, I’ve heard back from all the folks I contacted and have been able to schedule a catch-up call, coffee, or meal.

Last month, I was excited to finally catch up in person with someone I hadn’t spoken to in almost a dozen years. We both expressed excitement about reconnecting and blocked out an hour on our calendars to grab coffee midway between the two cities where we live.

Our initial enthusiasm for seeing each other wore off within 10 minutes of our sitting. By the time my coffee had cooled off enough for me to gulp it down, I was delivering the manufactured unexpected reason that pulled me away to spare us both the awkwardness of the meeting.

Yeah, not every reconnection with an old or cold contact goes well. But that’s such a minimal risk compared to the tremendous upside.

I’ve spent a lot of time discussing overcoming the anxiety of reaching out to someone you haven’t seen in a long while. I’ve talked about how to diffuse the imagined bad outcome of reaching out to someone and not hearing back from them. In that case, it’s a rather invisible failure with few witnesses save for the person who received your bid to reconnect and your psyche.

But I haven’t talked at all about managing the outcome when you reconnect with someone after a gap of many years only to find out that maybe the connection should have stayed old and cold—like, colder than the lukewarm coffee I gulped down last month.

This is an expected outcome of any efforts to reconnect with old and cold connections. If you’re working the process of reconnecting, the odds are strong that you’ll come across an old connection that should have stayed that way. Remember, thanks to Dunbar’s churn, we lose half of our closest connections every seven years. That’s seventy-five close relationships that go dormant, and we can’t possibly remember why they did.

And it’s okay when your efforts to reconnect fall flat. Maybe in the past, you had a strong relationship that was situational to a specific role or industry. But outside that context, there’s not much there there.

It’s perfectly acceptable to discover that there’s no value overlap anymore. Let it go cold again.

But don’t let it stop you from continuing to reach out to old and cold connections to expand your network. Fall down seven times, get up eight.

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