Networking the West with Liz Ryan

The Networker’s Advantage

By Liz Ryan, 1-30-07

I got an email from a lady in Seattle. She was getting ready to move to Boulder, and looking jobs in the Boulder area. She found a job in my company and applied for it online. Then she wrote to me. "It is crazy," she wrote, "this new world we live in. I found the job opening in your company, found your site, found your blog, and read all of your advice to job-seekers, while in the process of applying for a job where, if hired, I'd be working for you. How can I go wrong? It's almost too easy."

The lady didn't end up coming to work with me, only because she wasn't going to be in town by the time we needed someone to start. That's okay -- life is long -- perhaps we'll work together later on. The point is that the lady has a point -- online research has made things like job-searching much easier (but only for those people who jump into the process). Networking has made a lot of things easier for a lot of us. The openness of making and sharing connections over the past decade has made it easier to meet hard-to-reach people, learn things about organizations and individuals, and generally work faster and smarter.

Networkers have a big advantage over non-networkers, so much so that it's hard to understand why anyone (even really shy people) would be reluctant to jump into the networking vortex. I understand that it's time-consuming, but the access to people and knowledge is so enhanced by expanding your sphere, that the time expenditure pales in comparison (at least in my experience). Today I called a friend to ask her what she knew about a person who had asked to have a meeting with me. Invaluable phone call, that. Using LinkedIn it took me five seconds to discover who we knew in common.

Okay, perhaps I am preaching to the choir here. But when I asked my friends what business-type New Year's resolutions they were contemplating for 2007, every one of them said "go to networking events -- although I hate them." That part made me sad. There are some dismal networking events out there, but some of them are tremendous. Which is your favorite? Why not leave a comment and fill us in?

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.