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Networking Can Fix Your Career - Why Professional Networking is Important - FutureIQ

5,642 views Wait, is this logic right? • Dec 15, 2023
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Slog Reference: Importance of Professional Networking

Description

Networking is perhaps the most important skill for your career. To help you understand the importance of professional networking and help you build a better career, we're here with some examples, analogies and stories that may convince you to improve your networking skills. Let's understand the importance of networking now.

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

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Importance of liberal arts: https://youtu.be/pBoaeIdpEaU
School ruin kids: https://youtu.be/75RulJrHFMc
Moving out after 12th: https://youtu.be/esm39hwG1sk

Links mentioned in the video:
Networking overview by Navin: https://futureiq.substack.com/p/understanding-organizational-power
The power of weak links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_ties#Weak_tie_hypothesis
Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/berkun/status/1382016660630958080
Power in an organization: https://jacobian.org/2021/mar/15/organizational-power/

Chapters:
00:00 The most important skill
02:38 Networking in hiring
05:03 Getting this done
06:52 Why it works in hiring?
11:00 Skills vs networking
14:00 Family vs other networks in career
17:40 Networking as a side effect
19:57 Privilage in networking

#futureiq #networking

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Transcript

75% of you do not spend time to develop the most important skill for your career and that needs to be fixed the most important skill for we spend all of the time improving skills we need for our career exactly so in fact let me ask this question right in your career what are the three most important sources of power or influence uh Power or influence one okay uh one comes to mind which is the amount of skill you have that is the obvious one the greater skill you have the more power you have in your career correct uh the second is seniority experience your title title okay fine huh right and the third one huh is uh your relationships you have
built up the connections right in fact if you really ask anybody very senior anybody who's you know achieved a lot in their life to give a breakup very likely they'll say that your actual technical skills or knowledge or experience counts for about 20% and your position or your title or uh senority counts for another 20% but most of it maybe 70% is your connections is your network is your relationships okay I used three different words because each everybody has slightly different reaction to these three words right but they are all roughly the same thing okay okay uh it is your ability to influence people because you know them they know you you trust them they trust you right that
Network that connections is the most important thing today's episode I want to primarily talk about convincing you that this is important this you need to work on this and a lot of you like me might have the impression that this is somehow Shady sleazy thing to do it does sound very because I remember in the movies like from my time 40 years ago the hero used to pass ba and then go out looking for a job and he would not get the job because he didn't have the right connections sarish they used to call it sarish correct and then somebody else with connections would get the job right uh and of course that was always shown
uh to point out you know how horrible the world is and I have news for you right don't talk about it but really the world still works like that I was afraid you going to say that na I was afraid you going to say that I mean yeah I mean we we still make a big deal about all these new modern Industries and software industry and it is very meritocratic and so on but even today right if you analyze a company's hiring yeah you will notice that the most important source of hiring the one with like 50 60% chance of success yeah is employee referrals right if you are referred into the company by somebody who already works
there you have a very high chance of being hired the corresponding number for applying uh you know through a recruiter or something is probably closer to 2% 3% and the corresponding number for you know getting hired through no is I mean you have to look with a microscope or Monster or shine we don't want to specifically Target noer here should defitely no because he does that for a living very honestly uh and secondly I can tell you uh from my experience in media that this is true a lot of positions get hired on the basis of employee referrals at least that's true in terms of media I'm not sure how it works in other Industries but I'm
guessing it must be the same I mean I I'm not talking just about jobs and getting new jobs and uh so on right even within a company or say outside if you are working uh for some activity or some initiative or you're in the government anywhere getting things done involves knowing people going and talking to them having a working relationship with them right that gets things done far better then you being really good at your job yeah okay unfortunately a lot of for example Engineers uh the way our schooling system works is that we grow up thinking that oh I really need to know this technically I need to know this well inside out and then that's it
that's good enough for success and the answer is that it's good enough for mediocre success until a certain level but to rise beyond that you do need to get better at networking yes and you you touched upon exactly this point and one of the previous episodes that we did uh for specifically it was for 12th standard students but he did mention that you know connecting with your peers connecting with your fellow students will give you a greater chance of doing better better in future life and by that he essentially meant networking right we said right earlier that your expertise and experience or your title are not that important I mean a lot of people especially early in their career are
under this mistaken impression that you know you have a title you are the boss and that's it everybody has to listen to you anybody who has been the boss knows that this is not how the world works right if your employees don't respect youm right or if you don't have a good working relationship with your employees getting anything done is extremely hard right uh whereas if you have a good relationship uh with your employees you can get far more done and that is just the people who are reporting to you but you have to do a lot of work in adjacent organizations right people who are not directly reporting to you either they are reporting to someone else or they
are your peer in different teams different departments could be anything and being able to go and convince them of things is important right that's how you get things done that's that's true but you know what what bothers me about networking a lot of the times is that networking skirts so close to nepotism that sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish between the two and the initial example that you gave giving where the hero doesn't land a job keep seeing these No Vacancy signs everywhere and then somebody with sifarish gets in that somebody with sifarish is typically the the b or ban or whatever of the owner so that's that's nepotism yeah sure see the what they show in the movies is
unnecessarily extreme okay in the real world this is what happens right telling me about movies this is completely Ro reversal and how in the real world Imagine right uh you have to hire a person okay now I I understand understand the software industry I will take an example of the software industry sure to get one person I have to start with 100 resumes okay okay and then out of that at least 40 of them will actually match all the keywords that are there in my job descript JD right the job that uh description saying that you should know this you should know this you have to have this degree 40 of those will uh match right and then bringing
that 40 down to one or two people is a huge effort okay especially because so many people lie on their resumés so many people have a degree but it is from a college that was so bad that they really don't know anything that they were supposed to have learned in four years right now so from these 100 I have to pick one person who is going to work out as a really good employee right on the other hand Shri Kant who I have known for 20 years right and who says I know this person and he's really good right I I am not going to hire this person just because shant recommended I am going to
interview this person but because I know shant for a long time I know shant won't lie to me outright right so suddenly my chances of a interviewing this person are extremely high in fact Almost 100% because I won't want to say no to shrikant and my chance of starting the interview on a favorable note are also higher because shrikant has given me a reason to believe that this person is good and will probably work out right because again I know given the kind of relationship shant and I have if that person wasn't actually good enough Shri Kant would have found some way of not recommending that person to me right and once in a while I do get an acquaintance
who recommends somebody who was bad correct right but over time what happens is that I stop listening to that person's recommendations that's what I my networking is doing for me right I build up in my head an model of every person I know knowing which person's recommendations for which kind of uh stuff are reliable and which ones are not reliable right so that is why it works and this is actually a good thing right because those 100 random people who have applied uh through a recruiter and all that right you have no idea which ones of them are sincere which ones of them are fake which ones of them think they're good but they are not good
right it's just too much work I I I completely get where you're coming from and I do agree that if I if someone is coming to you through me then they have the added responsibility of making me look good so I will of course make sure that I vet that person before sending them to you so your job is half done there right away but here's my problem my problem is if I send uh someone to you and you happen to hire that person then somebody who is probably a good enough or better candidate maybe who has applied through a resume might not yeah that's how the world works I mean tough right because I can guarantee you that
any person anybody hires in India right there is somebody sitting in Cambodia who is better than that and are you going to go there and find that person in Cambodia no there's a trade-off between how much effort you can and should put into something right it be nice if we lived in a world where there was like a one button click saying that who's the most ideal person for this job in the whole world and it would find and bring that person here we do not live in that World app idea right there we are going to take 2% of the royalties if you make an app on that no okay why not we need to live fine we giving it away for
free this world right we need to be practical some things are impractical right okay let me say this right you want fair right you don't even you can't Define fair researchers have tried there are 18 definitions of fair and they're incompatible with each other you cannot be fair you can't Define fair what I'm hearing from you now is that networking is important skills are not important no no skills are important okay but they will not take you all the way so see skill and networking are both needed right okay let's say skill is that you can play like Heavenly piano okay working is the venue where you're playing it right there is research showing that a
worldclass Pianist playing in like a subway station in the US and people walked past without paying any attention and when the same person plays at carnagi Hall people are playing thousands of dollars per person to listen right and there are videos of this tell me YouTube yeah I mean getting into Cari Hall without skills is going to be a huge flop right but the reverse is also true having skills and playing at New York subway station doesn't help either what an example uh yeah that is true so skills are needed and network is needed to make those skills shine so so I I'll tell you one problem I had with networking right it always struck me as something dirty I
grew up being told that you know the really good people don't have to go out selling themselves right they don't have to show off yeah right as an if you are really good you don't have to show off geriatric Millennials right here represent you know I always thought of networking as you go walk up to people and then you talk about oh I am such a cool person and I am so awesome and so on and which is extremely like a sleazy salesperson right most networking doesn't have to be like that which is why I keep using two or three different words I say building relationships right you get to know a person that person gets to know you yeah
and networking has happened right you don't have to talk about how great you are okay two things so one you're saying that I don't have to randomly message people on LinkedIn saying listen I a great audio producer I actually go and say the following uh right LinkedIn is the sleazy kind of networking which I don't like and places like Twitter and Instagram are the kind of relationship building which result in networking as a side effect which I actually like you know what I'm going to get him to do a series of things on how to network and how not to network we do an entire episode on that yes let's do that but before going into how to network I want
to spend this entire episode convincing you that you should Network and it's not a dirty thing and that is that is one of the questions that I have uh well it's kind of like a brid question to the other one if I want to network or if I want to ask someone for a job I will be comfortable asking friends I'll be comfortable asking family how do I go up to a random person and ask them please give me job yeah so before that okay I want to tell you that if you want a job your friends and family are going to be useless okay they're good people yeah don't say that see the problem is that
whatever job opportunities they are aware of very likely you are also aware of those because you hang out with the same people right the number of cases in which close friends or family will help you is Tiny whereas and again this is actual research has been conducted on this right okay the best opportunities come from people you just know a little bit acquaintances okay second degree connections on LinkedIn huh so this is called there is an entire paper and research on this called The Power of weak links weak links right the most helpful parts of your network are the weak links right the people who know about you maybe you meeting them once in 6 months or once a year or something
like that right not your close friends that you are hanging out with every week so wait these people are people who have to know about you or know you a little of both okay right I mean ideally they want to know you you should have actually met them or had convers with them but you know like I said once in 6 months is good enough once a year is good enough right they have a generally they know you they know what you do and they have a generally favorable impression of you so prati is going to give me my next job absolutely very likely right uh not very likely the point is that there's a possibility
there you are okay if you've been paying attention in our episodes can you tell me how many close friends family you are likely to have Bar number episode reference please go check five you're going to have really close five people and maybe 15 people who are um you know nearby nearby but if you look at people you know reasonably well that's around 150 and if you go to acquaintances right now we are talking about 500 to, 1500 correct okay so just think of the fan out the number of opportunities known by your five closest friends or 15 good friends compare that to the number of opportunities available to your 1500 acquaintances right so it's not that prati will find you a job there
are 1500 prati out there and one of them will help you find a job I know you're just helping him get out of this sticky situation now but he I was just giving pratik's name as an example and I I yeah it it does work so uh what you what I hear you say is keep in touch with all of these weak links and keep um networking with them and you know we haven't come to how that's going to be a different episode right because I I mean if I me from 20 years ago had heard this advice I would be freezing it's like are you mad sending messages to these people I only vaguely know uh right I would be
terrified right I am still terrified if you ask me to send a message to someone that last I contact Ed over 6 months ago yeah I would not do it right so there are techniques we will come to that but first I still want to harp on the fact that you need to start thinking of networking as relationship building right okay just be good acquaintances with people good this doesn't mean I go and start messaging people and start networking immediately no no no no no no don't don't go out and start bothering people right there are ways in which you do it where you are you know just being so no networking for the sake of network
absolutely not networking should happen as a side effect side effect yes as in you are doing something else and networking happens like I'm I'm making episodes with naen for future IQ and networking happens I get to know that doesn't well that's just two people right you want to be involved in activities where you just end up knowing 20 people as part of that activity okay I'll make a mental note of asking him in the next episode where we speak about how to do networking yeah but you know get involved in activities get involved in initiatives do things in your company from whatever you've said so far it seems to be like networking is going to
get me uh get my foot in the door yes but will it get my foot in any door as in uh Suppose there is a job that um that's that's slightly beyond my level of competence so think of networking huh I'm thinking of the Peter Principle like where you rise to the highest level of incompetence we did like I said think of networking as an amplifier okay right what is an amplifier there is a sound right audio that is coming in and an amplifier makes it louder right if you feed noise to an amplifier you'll just get loud noise on the other side if you feed silence to it you'll just get loud silence on the other side right an
amplifier only amplifies what is there right it's say you know it's like multiply by 100 right so if you have level of skill is 10 networking will make it 100 right if you have zero skill networking is going to make it zero okay 0 into 100 is still zero so networking doesn't create something out of nothing okay networking what you have makes it more visible to the world okay one final thing that comes to mind I'm almost convinced about what you said about networking but one thing that I have to bring up here is it seems to be that networking can only happen with a certain privilege or there's a certain privilege that is associated with okay
so I think what you are saying is that oh for privileged people it is easy to say networking yeah right yes the answer is you're right okay everything that you have been complaining about during this episode and I also had problems with uh earlier is that networking makes the whole world into like an old boys club where only the privileged people continue to have Privileges and this is used as a way of keeping out the others right um I wish we lived in a world where this was not true but that is not the world we live in the best we can do is the following underprivileged people so for example women find it more
difficult to network say uh in India uh theit will find it more difficult right it's always going to be a problem one is that in spite of that their chances do increase with networking in fact in some sense they need to be even better at the networking second is that people who are in power right who are privileged should go out of their way to make it easy to give networking opportunities I'll give just one simple example right a lot of networking happens like on Friday evening over drinks right uh this is two kinds of problems here right there's a whole bunch of people who don't drink and who are very uncomfortable where alcohol is being consumed true and
suddenly a lot of their networking opportunities go down correct women have extra duties at home correct evening is a bad time for them corre and so if you set up these bonding sessions on evenings it becomes difficult for women right so if you are in a position of influence try to go out of your way to give networking opportunities uh for others not to HR not to HR uh no I don't think HR can do it it has to be the actual people with power who should be doing this right but ideally I would also uh try to do an entire episode uh on networking tips for women with a woman who's done that successfully and
similarly for say scst theit people with somebody who has has actually successfully done it let's actually try and set that episode up that is going to be that's going to be a very interesting episode we in fact uh um try and get some questions from you uh for those guests of our so you know we can have like a more wholesome and more well-rounded conversation about it so I think this episode has been like I think there's a lot of detail in this that you can dig into right the primary purpose of this episode was just to get you in interested enough in this topic correct which you probably consider dis tasteful until today but for you to start looking
into right so there are a lot of links that we are putting up uh take a look right there is one overview article I have written then uh you can find information about the power of weak links you can find information or Twitter threads about why relationships are more important than your title and your role at a company you can find information about the different kind relationships with co-workers in the strictly professional sense want to clarify that again so uh the the different types of power in an organization and the interplay between them and the relative importance all of that is there in the links please take a look do check it out and uh we will come back with an episode
on how to network but for now Shri Kant naven this is future IQ thank you thank you for watching till the end if you like this episode check out these others you might like them also and please share with your friends I'm sure they will also like these thank you