You will be able to map the people you already know who could help with your next move.
Say "networking" to most people and they picture a hotel function room, a name tag, a glass of orange juice and an hour of trying to start conversations with strangers who are also trying to escape. Plenty of people decide they are simply bad at it and give up before they start.
That picture is mostly wrong. For most career moves, the network that helps you is not one you have to build from scratch at events. It is the one you already have, and it is larger than you think. This lesson shows you how to see it.
Your network is everyone who would recognise your name and reply to a message from you. That is a much wider group than your close friends and current colleagues.
Former classmates count, from polytechnic, ITE, university or even secondary school. Former colleagues count, including people who have since moved to other companies, which is exactly what makes them useful. Your NS mates count, from your section or your unit, and so do people you met in reservist cycles. Clients, suppliers and people at partner organisations you have dealt with count. So do people from your church, mosque or temple, your sports club, your volunteering group, your old CCA, and the parents you chat with at your children's school. Friends of friends count too, because a friend can introduce you.
When Wei Ling first thought about her network, she came up with eight names: her current team and a few close friends. When she worked through these categories, she reached forty-one. Among them were a polytechnic classmate now working at a third-party logistics firm, a former colleague who had moved to a software company, and an NS friend of her brother's who worked in data at a retailer.
It is natural to think your closest friends are the most useful people to ask. They know you best and want to help. But when it comes to finding out about new opportunities, acquaintances often matter more.
The sociologist Mark Granovetter studied this in his work on what he called weak ties, published in the 1970s, including a well-known paper titled The Strength of Weak Ties. His work found that acquaintances, people you know but are not close to, often pass on information that close friends do not. The reason is simple. Your close friends tend to move in the same circles as you, know the same people and hear about the same things. Acquaintances move in different circles, so they hear about roles, companies and people you would never come across yourself.
This is good news if you feel your inner circle has no connections to your target field. You do not need it to. The former colleague you have not spoken to in three years, or the classmate you see once a year at a reunion, may be closer to your next role than your best friend is.
When people think about networking for a career move, they often reach for the most impressive name they can think of: a director at their dream company, a well-known person in the industry. That is usually the wrong place to start.
Start with people one step from your target field. That might be someone who does the job you want at any company, someone who works at a company you are targeting in any role, or someone who made a similar switch recently. These people are easier to reach, more likely to reply, and often more useful, because they remember what it was like to be where you are.
Arjun's first instinct was to message the head of learning at a large bank. Instead, he started with a former teaching colleague who had moved into training at a hospital group two years earlier. She replied within a day and spent half an hour telling him exactly what had helped her switch. A senior person might have been flattered by the message and never answered it.
A network is not a collection of contacts. A list of 800 LinkedIn connections you have never spoken to is worth less than twenty people who would pick up the phone. What turns a name into a real connection is some exchange of value, however small.
So think about networking as being useful as well as asking for help. Congratulate a former colleague on a new job. Pass on an article that is relevant to someone's work. Introduce two people who would benefit from knowing each other. Answer a question in your own area of knowledge when someone asks. None of this takes long, and it means that when you do ask for something, you are asking someone who already thinks well of you.
This is also what makes networking less awkward. Asking for help feels uncomfortable when it is the only thing you ever do. It feels normal when it is part of a relationship that goes both ways.
Most people underestimate their network because they never write it down. When you list names category by category, people surface that you had forgotten, and links to your target field appear that you had not noticed.
That is the activity below: list thirty people across work, school and personal life, and mark those connected in any way to the directions on your shortlist.
List thirty people you know across work, school and personal life and mark those connected to your target directions.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).