People 🔭 Day 2 - Networking Advent Calendar

Now that you've written down your networking goals, identify the people you'd like to have in your network.

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 or missed Day 1, read here; to read Day 3, go here.

Day 2: Find 3 people that you’d like to connect with

Having described where you’d like to be in your career, let’s take a look at the specific people to network with so you can get there. These people should either give you information and knowledge, or open up doors for you.

If you’re actively looking for a software engineering job, perhaps you’d like to connect with:

• Potential peers, so other engineers in your dream companies

• Engineering Managers or leaders, so you know what they look for when hiring

• Product managers, so you can stand out as an engineer with a product mindset

• Product designers, so you can build fully usable side projects

• Experienced bloggers, so you can write a great engineering blog (and hiring managers will tell you an engineer who writes well is a gem in the remote world)

• Users of the product that your dream company creates

• A mentor, someone experienced in your specific field with a background you can relate to

• VCs, so they can introduce you to their portfolio companies (even ex YC-founder & current VC Lucy Guo said you should do it)

You don’t need 10 different categories, only a few would be enough to start with. Try to already write down 3 names and add their profile links to each of the categories.

My personal example: I just started a Product Manager role, so I’d like to learn more about my customers and receive advice from experienced product managers. I would want to connect with:

• Senior Product Managers or Head of Product at B2B SaaS startups

• Hiring managers at startups and scale-ups that are facing challenges in their hiring

• People who work on recruitment tech products

Where can I find these people?

Just a few ideas:

• LinkedIn (duh)

• Twitter, amazingly more friendly for networking; try to find Twitter lists (Google “keyword + Twitter list”)

• Elpha, female startup networking community

• WomenTechMakers Berlin

• Polywork, a fun professional network

• Ask people you already know to introduce you (“Who’s the best __ you worked with? Who should I speak to if I want to know ___?”)

• People in your university alumni group

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Are you excited to see how you can exercise your networking muscle? Any feedback for me? Looking forward to hearing from you!