Rant: I spent 5 years networking wrong before a stranger at a diner set me straight

I used to think networking meant collecting business cards like they were Pokemon. Go to a conference, shake hands, hand out my card, and hope someone called. Did that for 5 years in Austin and got exactly zero job offers from it. Then I'm eating eggs at this diner off I-35, and this old guy next to me starts talking about his boat. We chat for 20 minutes about nothing, and he ends up giving me a lead on a project manager gig at his company. That's when it hit me: I was treating people like transactions, not humans. Stopped pitching myself at events and started just asking people about their actual lives. Now I get more work from random conversations at a coffee shop than I ever did from a suit and tie mixer. Anyone else discover their networking was fake this whole time?

2 comments

2 Comments

rowanp157d ago

Five years of bad networking, that's dedication right there.

michaelcoleman7d agoProlific Poster

Ended up switching groups entirely, that fixed things.