Megan Riksen (00:04):

Hello and welcome to the Work Like a Laker podcast. I'm Megan Riksen. And today I'm joined once again by Grace Pushman. Hello, Grace.

Grace Pushman (00:27):

Hi Megan, how are you doing?

Megan Riksen (00:29):

Great. Thanks. So we're excited to be back for this new semester. We're starting with a topic that I think us as career advisors, we get this question a lot, which is how do I network if I don't already have a network and it's because, you know, networking can seem like such a daunting task, especially when you are just beginning that process. So today we want to cover some strategies for developing a network from scratch. No well-connected family required here. So grace, would you like to start us off with our first tip? Yeah.

Grace Pushman (01:06):

So the first thing to think about is who do you know? And I know Megan was just saying that, you know, we might all not be, we all have different connections, right. And so sometimes though it's thinking outside of the box, so you want to create a connections list. And by that, I mean, think about, okay. Yeah. So sometimes the first people we think about would be maybe parents or aunts or uncles, people are close to us, but you want to go outside of that because again, not all of us, you know, maybe you don't have any people who you're really close with who are doing something in the field that you're considering going into, but think about people like your classmates, think about people like your professors, your advisors. If you know, you all have a career advisor, Megan and I are career advisors, we are part of your network.

Grace Pushman (01:48):

Think about your neighbors. Think about your friends, maybe your roommates think about their parents, you know, did they do something that is in the field you're interested in. I want to give an example, you know, for my own life. So I got my first internship through my mom's co-worker's sister. I want it to be an actuary. And that's a job that does not exist where I'm from, I'm from a rural area up North. And I wanted to be an actuary. I didn't know anyone who did that. I barely knew what it was. And my mom knew somehow that her coworker sister lived in Detroit and did that as her career. And so she was coming up North for a ski trip. And so over the holidays, she just re arranged it so that I could meet with her coworker sister, who my mom didn't know either.

Grace Pushman (02:31):

And we sat at the ski lodge and I asked her some questions. And I conducted what we call an informational interview, which is where you come with questions ready to ask, like, you know, what is your typical day look like? What advice do you have for someone who's going into this job? What sorts of skills do you need to be able to do this job? Well you know, what do you like? What don't you like about your career? Just questions, things that you are curious about and that you want to know. And so that informational interview, again, with someone who, I didn't know, my mom didn't know. She ended up mentioning that they were looking for interns for the next semester. I think that the internship date there was like one week left before it closed. She was like, if you can get your materials in, you know, this could be a great experience.

Grace Pushman (03:16):

And so quickly I sent in all my materials to do the internship and they ended up calling me, I think, partly because they knew that I had met with this person who they worked with. And so that really helped because I was able to, in my cover letter, say, I spoke with so-and-so who gave me some great advice or, you know, talked highly of your organization. And so I think that really helped me, but then of course, I still had to do a five hour interview process, which was the longest I've ever done and still do have to do all that. But just that piece of networking really helped me get my foot in the door and helped me land my first internship, which was great. So again, it's, sometimes you can think outside of the box of who is in your network and create that,

Megan Riksen (03:53):

That, yeah, that example is just great because you never know the timing that you just, you walked into that internship posting at just the right time. Exactly. And you would not have experienced that if you hadn't just kind of gone out of your way to find somebody new, who you didn't even know to talk to. So I think, yeah, that's the perfect way of kind of describing what that looks like. Right. That's great. Awesome. Okay. So our second tip then is to use social media effectively, and we have, you know, a few ways of doing this. So LinkedIn is probably the first social networking site that comes to mind when you think of networking, because it's meant to be a tool that's used professionally, you're connecting in a professional capacity as a student or an alum or as a professional, right. And if you aren't aware, LinkedIn does have this amazing tool called their alumni tool, which you can access via your school's university page.

Megan Riksen (04:58):

So if you're a grand Valley student, you're going to go to Grand Valley's university page, click on alumni, and you are going to see a list of alums who have LinkedIn profiles and you can search by what they majored in by what they're doing now in their job, by where they live. So this can be a great place to start to maybe find some people who are outside of the network, that grace was kind of mentioning the people who either, you know, or who are connected to people, you know to kind of start tapping into that alumni network a bit. Cause we have so many thousands of alums kind of out there who, I don't know, probably in your experience to grace, usually alums are really, really gracious and willing to help out students. So this is a really effective tool for finding some of those people to maybe do some additional informational interviews.

Megan Riksen (05:59):

And especially if you have an idea of the types of either jobs you want to learn about or company you want to connect with alums are a great place to start because then you aren't necessarily just starting with somebody who works in the human resources area of that company, who's, you know, only focused on hiring, but you can kind of get a little bit of an insider scoop if you want to go into marketing. And you're talking to an alum who works in the marketing department, they're not going to necessarily have control over the hiring that goes on, but they are going to have some great information to help you get connected to that company or to learn more about their role. So that is one tool we will absolutely link in the show notes as well. Linkedin groups are another way when you're using LinkedIn that you can start to get engaged with fellow professionals.

Megan Riksen (06:49):

So look for the groups that make sense for either what you are majoring in, or again, kind of the industry potentially that you might want to work in post questions, engage with the people who are posting questions and articles, comment back, right, use it as an actual social networking tool. And you might just find that you're able to then, you know, develop some relationships from there as well. A similar feature to that LinkedIn alumni tool is actually something that's on handshake. And that is called peer to peer messaging through the community feature on handshake, which essentially is the same thing. You can reach out to fellow students and alumni who use handshake and ask for an informational interviewer, ask a few questions to get some information about maybe it's a, you know, a senior at grand Valley who did a few internships and they both look really exciting to you as future internship spots for you.

Megan Riksen (07:52):

Why not do some messaging too and reaching out to that senior students who can then say, yeah, absolutely. My supervisor at this position was so-and-so. You should definitely reach out to her. You might just find that, you know, through kind of that peer to peer messaging, you're also able to get a lot of great information and then ideas for additional people to connect with as well. And then the last thing with social media is get creative, right? So everyone has a presence. Pretty much everyone has a press presence on social media now, and that is not only individuals, but it's also companies and organizations. So interact with the companies where you would like to work on Twitter, interact with people in your desired field on Instagram share content from people that you are following on LinkedIn, share it to your audience. I think there are a lot of ways to kind of get creative in that process that you never know where that really is going to lead you. But I think that's a big part of networking is just starting to put yourself out there in general.

Grace Pushman (08:59):

Yeah. And I think it can feel really scary and intimidating, but it what's, the worst that can happen is that maybe someone doesn't respond, but you, if you haven't, if you've been nice and polite about it, you haven't burned any bridges. So just put yourself out there. And I actually just heard a great story the other day, where someone's roommate got a job from reaching out to someone on LinkedIn, they got coffee over, it was over the summer and now has a job through that interaction. So you just never know what can happen from those reach outs.

Megan Riksen (09:30):

Right. Right.

Grace Pushman (09:32):

All right. So we'll go on to our next tip tip number three, which is to ask for introductions. And so this is really kind of just a really quick short tip that when you're, when you're doing these informational interviews, a great last question to ask is, is there someone else I can connect with or anyone else that makes sense for me to connect with? So, you know, if you're talking to an alumni, maybe they aren't the person who is working would work directly in the field that you're interested in, but maybe they know someone at their company who does, or maybe they know someone who does something similar at another organization that you could reach out to. So it's always a great last question to ask, and I think it's another way to just keep expanding your network.

Megan Riksen (10:11):

And it feels more organic in that way as well, right? Like you might need to use LinkedIn and social media and a few other things where you are reaching out to strangers. Now it's kind of a soft intro if it's an alum, right. Cause you have that Laker connection, but certainly to have someone then sending an email on your behalf after you had a conversation with them doing an introduction for you, then the hard part's over, right. Then the introduction has already been made, then you just need to set up a time to chat. Like that's, that's the easy part. Right. so yeah, I think that's, that's a huge tip and should always be kind of like you said, that last question that you ask that you're asking someone.

Grace Pushman (10:50):

Yeah, exactly.

Megan Riksen (10:52):

Great. Tip number four is quality over quantity when it comes to networking. I think this is particularly important because you can kind of go down the rabbit hole of the internet, especially everything about LinkedIn and you're sending, you know, tons of requests to people and maybe you're including a message, maybe you aren't, but you're just trying to reach out to as many folks as possible. You probably, aren't going to hear back as frequently then if you are reaching out, you're sending a little message or you're, you know, trying to connect with someone and then they get you connected to somebody else. You know, cause if you have too many connections, it becomes hard to stay in touch. And you know, if you are just having kind of surface level conversations with people, it can be really hard to feel like you're, you're getting to know someone.

Megan Riksen (11:45):

So my recommendation is always, you know, find the people who you connect with that you can, that common connection point, whether that's over something completely unrelated to your internship search or job search or talking about your career, maybe it's just, you know, individual passions, but share what you're passionate about. Be authentic in the way you are interacting with that person. Don't feel like you need to like put on this special networking hat when you're talking to someone like share who you are and what you get excited about. And if you're watching, you know, a TV show and you end up having a 15 minute conversation with somebody just about the best TV shows you all have been watching most recently, I guarantee that that's going to be a much more memorable interaction than if you stick straight to your list of questions. So have the questions ready be prepared, but also, you know, think about how you're going to share who you really are and make some of those common connections.

Megan Riksen (12:47):

And along with that, I think you'll find that when you're able to do that well and find those common connection points, the networking starts to feel a lot more reciprocal where you're not just reaching out like, Hey, so-and-so alum, give me all the information helped me find a job. Boom done, no, you want to be sharing. Maybe they are looking for other ways to give back to grand Valley and you are a part of a student organization and you could have them in as a speaker and it becomes kind of a mutually beneficial relationship. I think that's, you know, that's a huge piece to kind of creating a quality relationship in a networking sense that it allows you yeah. To move forward. And then you won't feel awkward about reaching out to that person again, you know, two months down the road. If you have another question for them, because you already will have kind of established that baseline relationship.

Grace Pushman (13:46):

Great. And I think that the last, our last tip really goes well with that creating an authentic relationship, which is to stay connected. And I think if you have that, that great basis where you're, you're connecting on things at a more authentic level, then it's easier to stay connected. And so here are some ways that you can do that. I think a lot of students, you know, if they reach out to someone let's say on LinkedIn, they have a great conversation and then they kind of think, okay, well now what, how do I, how do I maintain that connection? And so a few small things you can do would be to, you know, keep up with what they're posting on LinkedIn. So if they're posting articles, updates, if they have an anniversary where they're working, like it comment, maybe send them a direct message to congratulate them. Linkedin will give you those updates often for people. So just be, be engaged with them on LinkedIn. If you see something that you think they would be interested in, maybe share it with them. You can also check in every so often. So if something happens in your life, update them. So if you, if you get an internship or an interview somewhere that is along the lines of what you discussed with that person, share it with them. It's great to get good news. I know that in our jobs, Megan and I work with students where we'll help them in this process. And then sometimes we never know like, well, did they get a job? Did they get an internship? We like to hear back and you know, so do these people who you're connecting with. So don't be afraid to reach back out and every so often, you know, wish them happy holidays or, you know, send them little notes here and there, just so that they can remember who you are, keep that connection going.

Grace Pushman (15:20):

You never know. Even if you land a job, you never know when you might want to reach back out to them in the future. So just keep that connection going. I'll also say too, that if you end up applying to a position at their organization, make sure to send them a note and let them know like, Hey, thank you so much for giving me all that great info about where you work. I just wanted to let you know that I am applying to this job because of that conversation we had. So thank you. Not only does that make, you know, keep them in the loop, but now that now they can go and say, Oh, Hey, so-and-so is applying for this position. Make sure you're looking for their resumes. So it's all, it's a win-win in every, in every aspect. So keep that connection going, even after that initial conversation and just those little ways

Megan Riksen (15:58):

Mmmmhmmm, and that's really best case scenario, right? You're networking with someone you've established this authentic relationship with them. You've kept in touch. And then you are top of mind if something comes available at their organization or when you apply there that they're then willing to say, yes, I actually know this person. I'm willing to go down the hall and talk to someone about you. So yeah, that's when networking, you know, you really start to reap the benefits. It might not be immediate, but you know, the more kind of time and energy you can put into those quality relationships, I think the more it's going to pay off in the end. Yep, exactly. Great. Okay. Well, we've got our top five tips. Think we've, we've covered some really good strategies here. So you know, just a note to keep an eye out, always on handshake.

Megan Riksen (16:52):

There are tons of networking events, both hosted through the career center, hosted through other departments on campus and then hosted externally as well by many of our great employer partners. So you can also, you know, make sure that you kind of have your finger on the pulse of what's going on in terms of actual events where you could be networking with people and then many of the same rules apply. Right? If you meet someone through a networking event, such as a career fair, you establish a bit of a relationship. Yep. Then you're going to go from there to kind of continue to pursue to pursue that relationship. So anything else for today, Grace, or do you think we covered it all?

Grace Pushman (17:31):

I think we covered a lot. I think this is a good jumping off point for students, but I think also keeping in mind that if you do want some support with us, because it can be scary to, to network and to reach out to people, we are here for that as well at the career center. So we can help you. I've helped students, you know, draft LinkedIn messages to send out emails. Like we're here to help you with all of that. So if you want any support, feel free to come in or we'll do a virtual appointment with the career center and we'd be happy to help with any of that.

Megan Riksen (17:58):

Great. All right. Then I would like to thank everyone so much for listening today and we hope you tune into a future episode soon.