Life is all about who you know. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
My mom and grandfather both told me that at a very early age, and it’s stuck with me ever since. You can refute that statement. You can say “I make my own destiny” and “I got to where I am without any help at all.” I seriously wish that were true, but it’s just so far from reality.
You got into college because somebody with influence believed in your application. You got your first job in high school because somebody thought you had the right skills. Maybe you got a great deal on a house or apartment because you found the right real estate broker to help you out. Whatever the case, someone with influence gave you a shot or recommendation because they believed in whatever you presented to them.
Given how connected we are today, life is all about who you know and leveraging the right connections. Connecting to influencers is more important to your job search than anything else (except for maybe your resume and experience) because they can give you leverage during the interview process. Impressing the right person may get you that dream job you’ve always wanted, but it’s going to require you to get out of your comfort zone, get a little vulnerable and go for broke.
Here’s how to do just that:
Identify Your Goal
It’s easier to network when you know what your goal is first. If you blindly connect with people, you have nothing to offer them for connecting. It’s a transactional relationship because they’re investing network capital into your brand to help promote you.
When I network, I always have a goal in mind. Before I was hired at Grasshopper, I had searched for a job on and off for just under a year. But going after job portals wasn’t working for me. I found I couldn’t get any further in the process without influencers in my back pocket—or at least someone who could vouch for me during the interview process.
So, I made a simple goal: I wanted to connect with 10 marketing people who were “killing it” wherever they were working. “Killing it,” of course, is the technical term for being great at your job.
As soon as I put that goal at the forefront of my thoughts, everything else felt logical. Sure, I wanted to get a new job, but that’s harder to control. I could control who I connected with and how they perceived my career goals. All I had to do was get one or two people on my side to turn things in my favor.
Make a List
The next logical step was to make a list. I needed a list of marketing influencers I could realistically connect with who could help me out in my job search. These needed to be new people because I had exhausted my other options, and I needed to get fresh takes on my job search from people with little connection to me.
I make lists for everything. It’s an easy way for your brain to understand the road map without wasting too much brainpower on an objective. If you don’t believe me, read The Checklist Manifesto. It will change your life for the better.
A list of influencers is also important because you can come back to it and make notes on the people you’re trying to connect with. You can cross out people who aren’t working out as a networking relationship and make notes about people who can point you in the right direction. It’s all about laying the right groundwork to reach your end goal of getting a new job or, at least, an opportunity to interview somewhere with some leverage.
Engage the Influencers
Here’s where things will differ for everyone. Every influencer is different. Every person has a method of contact that they prefer.
Luckily, marketing people tend to enjoy social media for networking, and that makes my life easy when I network with them. Other industries may be harder to network in, but each one has opportunities to do it. Maybe you network through emails. Maybe through conferences and events. Maybe you just need to see if they’re doing open office hours and meet up with them. Identify the right method and go for it.
Engaging people you don’t know will make you feel vulnerable, but that shouldn’t stop you. They didn’t get back to you? So what? Move on. The less emotion you put into networking, the better. These influencers are super busy, and it’s not personal. Your email may just be lost due to the overwhelming number they get every day, and there’s nothing you can do about that.
You only need one or two people to get back to you. Why? Because that’s all you’ll need to help you get a foot in the door anywhere. However, engaging and getting people to get back to you takes time.
For example, most of the contacts I reached out to on my networking list took months of engaging on Twitter before I felt confident enough to ask them out to coffee. I made it clear that this was purely informational, and I just wanted to learn more about how they got to where they were in their careers. Ultimately, two people got back to me. I had two opportunities to impress and convince them that I was worth their influence.
Sell the Influencer
Selling is a hard skill. Convincing anyone to give you money, buy something from you, believe in you, whatever the case, is really hard to sell.
I had two coffee dates after reaching out to my list of influencers. One worked at an ad agency and the other worked at a startup—the two areas I wanted to be in to build my career. When we got coffee, I asked them both tons of questions about what they did and how they got where they were. They asked me tons of questions about what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be.
Everything in this conversation needs to be predicated on convincing them that you are worth their time. Busy people don’t like to waste their most precious resource (time) on something that doesn’t turn out to be worth anything. Sounds harsh, but it’s true.
The conversation that led somewhere was with the startup marketer. We talked for over an hour about marketing philosophy and about our experiences. By the end of the conversation, I got the line I wanted to hear: “I love it. I’m going to help you out.” Those words were the most magical thing I had heard in my job search.
For some reason, people can have this aversion to accepting help; they believe they can just go at it alone. That needs to stop. Life is about paying it forward, and that’s what this influencer was going to do for me in my job search. I now had someone who would vouch for me while I looked for jobs. I now had leverage.
That connection I made with her is the reason I’m now at Grasshopper. She introduced me to the former Ambassador of Buzz, Jonathan Kay. He put in a great word at Grasshopper as I went through the interview process. Now I’m writing this post.
Whatever you’re doing, networking is about connecting to the right people, not just every person out there. If you use the steps above, they will help streamline the process and make it actionable. Once you set out goals and steps to accomplish those goals, your stress level goes down because you can predict, with some degree of accuracy, what’s going to happen next.
All you need is one person on your side with some influence. That’s all it takes.
Taylor Aldredge is the Ambassador of Buzz at Grasshopper, a virtual phone system for entrepreneurs. Grasshopper provides a phone system for entrepreneurs to sound more professional and manage incoming calls. As the Ambassador of Buzz, Taylor works with Grasshopper customers to help promote them as well as Grasshopper’s brand. Taylor also helps recent college graduates learn how to network and get hired for their first job after college.
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