WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW BY SOLA BODUNRIN

Connections

Discover the many advantages of Reaching Out!

Competing for jobs and opportunities can be overwhelming. For many, it requires such stressful juggling acts as working overtime at your current job in the hopes of being promoted, finding ways to best frame the four-week internship you did when you were 17 on your CV, and drafting countless cover letters.

You think you have done all the right things to land that job or promotion, until you find out that an old friend of an old friend of the hiring manager got the gig! Therefore, you try again, only to find that the pit of “old friends of old friends” is bottomless.

It is all too easy to look at successful people and feel that what they have achieved is somehow irreplaceable, that what makes them special is some ingrained knowledge or skill set. Nevertheless, that is not true. As the old saying goes, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

Success is all about working your networks – and this extends to cases far beyond classic networking to make new contacts. Caring for your network will expand business potential, increase innovation and diversity and set you on the path to achieving your ambitions.

In subsequent paragraphs, I will show you that your network is much larger than you think it is, and can quickly grow it if you learn to reach out to the right people. Crucially, you will pick up a few techniques to increase your circle and ensure it is of high quality. Theory and practice together will get you where you need to go. To get ahead you need to expand the network of people you know. It is as simple as that. If you cannot beat them, join them; you too can be an old friend of an old friend.

So do not despair, use the next few weeks as a guide instead. Prepare yourself for finding out a few things about a simple strategy called Reaching Out. With the right attitude, Reaching Out can be a life-changing process that will help strengthen your network. So how do you reach out? 

Before we move on to specifics, there is a bit of preparation for you to do.

First, think of everyone you know. These people constitute your network. Naturally, within this crowd of people, there are those closer to you, such as friends and family, and those less close, like former coworkers or a university professor. You can think of the former kind as your strong ties and the latter as weak ties.

Contrary to what you might think, your weak ties can have the most transformative effect on your career. This is because your strong ties usually move in the same circles, while people you only have a weak connection with tend to know information that you do not.

Through Reaching Out, you will aim to get in touch with these people and increase your number of weak ties. Connecting to people, you do not know very well leads to better networking and innovation. The value of a close friendship is not to be underrated. We all want to have people around who we trust and with whom we can share our feelings.

However, when it comes to work, if you are going to be successful, you have to dump those emotional tendencies and work according to a different professional paradigm.

Sociologically speaking, your close friends are those with whom you have strong social ties.

However, if you cultivate ties with people you are not so close to – that is, weak social ties – you are going to be a better networker.

Put simply, the goal is to expand your network of people who can let you know about an opportunity, such as a job or interesting project. The more people you know, the more likely you are to know someone who can recommend you as a contractor or employee. Moreover, that is something you definitely want – as many as two-thirds of people recommended by a company’s employee get the job!

That sounds exciting, but what if you are nervous about putting yourself out there?

More reason to do it, and do it regularly!

Typically, when we face challenges such as looking for a new job, we reach out to strong social ties or seek out job listings online. What is all too readily forgotten are weak social ties, and that is a big mistake.

The problem with strong social ties is that they are often connected to each other as well as to you, like an interconnected cluster. In contrast, weak social ties tend to be connected to other social clusters, which means they will spread news of your job search to entirely different groups of people.

Next week, we will delve into the details and specifics of what reaching out, networking and connecting with other people.

Please leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments box provided below.

Have a fruitful day!

Olusola Bodunrin is a graduate of Philosophy from the University of Ado-Ekiti. He is a professional writer, he writes articles for publication and he anchors – ‘What You Should Know’ on SHEGZSABLEZS’ blog.

‘What You Should Know’ is a column that offers to educate and enlighten the public on general falsehood and myths.