Networking Isn't About Finding a Job
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As I’ve worked on launching Junction over the past year, I’ve had many opportunities to talk to professionals in Taiwan about “networking.” Just bringing up the term often garners a fairly negative reaction. Many if not most people I’ve spoken to say that networking seems a bit dirty, and so they only do it when they need help finding a new job.
In my experience, this type of networking feels unfamiliar and strange to many professionals precisely because you’re basically asking for a one-way favor when you ask for help looking for a job. There isn’t much you can do for the other person in return.
On the other hand, what if we network not with the immediate goal of finding a new job, but with the long-term aim of learning and sharing knowledge? Excelling at the most challenging (and rewarding) jobs in the economy today - such as consulting, investing, product management, and entrepreneurship - require us to quickly synthesize information and expertise from multiple fields. Since most of us simply don’t have enough experience to rely on ourselves, we need to build mutually beneficial relationships with people who have different expertise.
I wish I spent more time doing this myself, but even the limited effort I’ve put into this sort of networking has benefited me immensely so far. Let me give you a few examples.
Learning from different teams in the same company. Early on in my career as a consulting analyst, I needed to quickly get familiar with the details of financial services operations - think the teams and processes that help you handle banking transactions, for example. Googling yielded some background information, but nothing that was ever going to impress a client. So I set up coffee with colleagues who dealt with customer experience and quality management, two key areas of concern for my clients. By spending just a couple hours exchanging information with my colleagues I was able to get knowledge that enabled me to excel in my role, eventually allowing me to get promoted ahead of schedule.
Learning from people outside of my company. Being promoted to a more senior client advisory position meant that I, a fresh 29 year-old consultant with no industry experience, had to be able to tell commercial banking and wealth management executives with 20+ years of tenure how to do their jobs better. While my consulting background allowed me to provide a useful perspective, I needed to develop a deep empathy for their day-to-day concerns. Fortunately, friends were able to introduce me to bankers who taught me about the details of their work and the challenges they face. For my part, I helped them expand their skill set by sharing research and frameworks from my firm. These relationships ultimately enabled me to win credibility with my clients and become a credible partner.
Using my network to find business partners. A couple years later, as I started to develop the idea for Junction, I realized early on that I was not going to be able to succeed as a solo founder. I simply didn’t have the necessary expertise in technology or marketing. I absolutely needed to bring on partners to have the slightest chance of succeeding. So - and by now you’ll know where I’m going with this - I reached out to my network. I was able to find each of my co-founders through existing relationships and introductions, which gave me assurance that I could trust them:
Ryan (Chief Technology Officer) - I had worked with at AppWorks in Taiwan when he was an outstanding intern there; he brought with him two developers with whom he had worked on previous projects
Sam (Chief Marketing Officer) - he had gone to college with my wife, and I had gotten to know his expertise in marketing when we were students at Georgetown
Ken (Chief Product Officer) - he played volleyball with a mutual friend of ours at Yale, and was recommended to me as a highly capable and reliable person
As a result, I was able to put together a team and start working on this venture much more quickly than I could have otherwise.
While theoretically I could have succeeded in each of these three things if I had not consciously developed and leveraged my professional network, it is clear in my mind that being able to find connections with expertise in various fields accelerated my progress. And because I also shared my knowledge, they were able to advance in their roles as well. None of this was awkward or had anything to do with finding a job.
So I encourage you to do the same - I promise that you’ll find it more beneficial than you might expect. We at Junction understand, though, that networking is often time consuming and you might not know where to look for people to meet.
That’s why we’ve built the Junction networking app to make networking simple for busy, ambitious professionals. It takes just a few minutes to create a profile and specify your interests, and every day we’ll introduce you to one person we think you would benefit from knowing.
Click here to learn more and sign up!
