Networking used to matter. It was hard. You had to show up and meet someone or you needed someone’s email to make a connection. With LinkedIn, networking is too easy. Simply making a “connection” and sending a note doesn’t help you differentiate yourself.

Building relationships is what matters. But how do you do that? You show your value and impact.

Principles:

  • Relationship building over networking

  • Deliver value rather than talking about value

  • Ask! What’s the worst thing that could happen?

To make this real…

imagine you are a financial analyst in corporate finance at a small company. You want to make the jump to a large company. Someone you know is a leader at a company you are interested in.

Reach out to the person in your network to check in. Ask for a meeting to reconnect. During the meeting, ask what you can help with. Be specific. Instead of saying, “How can I help?”, ask, “What’s something on your list that is important, but you haven’t been able to get to because of your other priorities?” Make sure to add that you don’t want to breach any confidentiality guidelines and don’t want the leader to share any data; you simply want to be a thought leader.

Imagine the person says:

  • AI: “We need help managing technology enhancements, such as finding ways to leverage AI.”

  • Operations: “There are so many great ideas coming from all over the organization. We need a mechanism to intake and evaluate investment opportunities.”

  • Compliance: “Things are changing so rapidly; we need help staying up-to-date with evolving financial regulations and ensuring compliance.”

Congratulations, you now have an opportunity to deliver value and build a relationship. After the call, get to work. Leverage AI. Research like crazy. Lean on previous experience. Write a paper. Create a deck. Build an example of how your solution can be implemented. Invest a material amount of time and deliver value.

The time you spend adding value with a project is substantially more valuable than time spent networking, practicing interview questions, or applying to roles on LinkedIn.

So What

Assuming you deliver value, when the leader for whom you did a project has an open role, who do you think will be on the short list? The person who “networked” on LinkedIn? Or the person who reached out and helped the leader solve a business problem?


If you found this useful, let me know! I’d love to hear from you! Also, if you think a friend would benefit from these ideas, please feel free to share.