Alright, we’ve got to talk about it; it is the second to last week Inside Maddie’s Mind, after all. It’s big, it’s scary. It has a general aura of mystery. One could compare it to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s — arguably useless and immensely arbitrary — “I know it when I see it” standard for obscenity. Yep, you know what I’m alluding to here: networking.
I know, I know, it’s bad. You can stop screaming in pure horror. I promise you, I’m already cringing as I write this, thinking about how sweaty my palms get when I’m forced to talk to other professionals in my career field. So, while networking is necessary in the way we have set up our society and professional job market nowadays, that does not mean it isn’t evil.
But let’s focus on that “necessary” part first. As I’m sure many recent graduates and long-term career professionals will all tell you, it can be really hard to get a job. And even further, it’s extremely difficult to get a job without “knowing the right people.” To do that, you have to somehow get your name out there, showing these potential employers who you are, while also showing them that you are knowledgeable in your field and therefore a suitable candidate for any job. This requires first being personable and easy to talk to — more on that later — but also not too casual where employers might not think that you’d easily fit into an office atmosphere or environment. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful.
But now, on to the evil part. I’ll just come out and say it: Networking is gross. It’s certainly not fun. And worst of all, it contributes to the already overly-present elitism of the professional world. But what do I mean by that? If you don’t know the right people, you won’t get anywhere. At the very least, it will be extremely difficult to get where you want to be.
But going even further with this, it’s a lot harder to know the right people if you aren’t born into privilege. First and foremost with this, people naturally find it easier to talk to people that they perceive are somehow similar to them. Really, we just generally are more favorable to people that we think are like us. But this can work against you if you don’t happen to come from the same background as the professionals you are trying to network with — right off the bat, it won’t be as easy to chat with them in the first place. Think of the nepo babies, people. That’s exactly what this is.
Moreover, networking generally favors people that are more extroverted than introverted. This seems obvious to say, but it’s easier to develop professional contacts through socialization when socialization comes a bit more naturally to you. The issue with this is that there are a lot of jobs where networking is beneficial to “getting your foot in the door,” but being extremely extroverted is not a requirement of the job’s actual skill set. Of course, it’s always possible to “fake it ‘til you make it,” but it will always come easier to those that are inherently more social.
You might ask, Maddie, why did you take the time to write this? Are you going to stop networking? Haven’t you literally been networking nonstop this year to try and find a job for this summer? Aren’t you going to keep networking next year to hopefully find a job after you graduate? In your eventual career, won’t you be forced to network if you ever want to move up or try something else? Well, if you’re really asking, my answers are: I was just thinking about it this week as that’s kind of my thing, probably not, yes, yes and yes.
I may hate every second of it, but you better believe you’ll catch me at the next career fair, talking myself up as I sweat through my shirt. It’s an unfortunate reality that I just don’t have a solution for at this moment. I know, I really dropped the ball there. But there’s still value in walking about the negatives of this dependency on socialization in the professional world.
