Check in 🤳 Day 11 - Networking Advent Calendar

The Networking Advent Calendar is a 24-day long training program to build your networking muscles (and your network)! Not sure why you should do this? Missed Day 1? Read more here.

Day 11: Check in with 5 people you already know

On Day 8, we spoke about the power of weak ties in your social network and how they can unlock career opportunities. We scheduled virtual coffee chats with two people in our existing network.

Virtual coffees can be quite a lot of planning and come with a higher level of commitment. Today, let’s try something that is simpler so you can have more reach. Message or email 5 people that you connected professionally with recently and see how they’re doing. Example:

Hi Jane,

It’s been a while, hope you’re staying warm and healthy in this weather!

Saw that you just started a new job with Google, congratulations :) How’s your onboarding going so far?

If Google is a company you’d like to work for, this could be a good opportunity to potentially land a referral from Jane. Having started the new job, Jane is probably going through the “honeymoon phase” with her employer and is more willing to share her work experience. She’ll probably also be more eager to give you a referral as new joiners typically feel the need to prove themselves.

Another example where you can be a bit more specific with what you’d like to discuss:

Hi Ed,

Hope you’re well! How’s everything

Not sure if you recall, but we both attended the Marketing Event a few weeks back. The topic of product marketing came up recently, and I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on the best ways to approach setting this up?

Looking forward,

You might say, “what if they don’t reply?” Then nothing changes 🤷‍♀️ you didn’t lose anything in the process. “What if they don’t want to be bothered?” Well, when’s the last time you got a message from someone you know? And wasn’t it kinda nice that someone thought of you? Then they’d be happy to hear from you too.

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Are these networking exercises helpful? Any feedback for me? Looking forward to hearing from you!