Had Dante been a post-doc student at Northwestern when he wrote “The Divine Comedy,” I’m certain he would have included another layer of hell in his inferno. Somewhere between the circles of greed and treachery would lie the dreaded networking event.
While I thoroughly enjoy meeting people and will do everything in my power to be gainfully employed, I pronounce that from where the sun now stands, I will attend no more networking events forever.
These events always work more or less the same way. First, the most accomplished and ambitious students bum-rush the company representatives with their perfectly minted resumes, expensive khakis and slight air of pretentiousness. They then all put on their corporate faces, laugh in turn at the rep’s painfully bad joke and give their perfect BS elevator pitch about why they want to do consulting or whatever the job du jour is. After two or three hours, the company representative would far rather curl up in the fetal position and watch Tyler Perry than speak to another student. By the time I finally get to talk to someone, I’m left feeling something like how Creed would feel if it had to get on stage after Led Zeppelin and The Beatles.
Though my moral compass generally points true north directly at anything that involves free beer, I draw the line at these inane networking events. Even a delicious craft beer sipped while trying to sell myself is far less enjoyable than the cans of Rolling Rock that have been sitting in my yard since last winter.
For those still firmly set on networking to improve their careers, let me share with you the best piece of advice I’ve ever been given, from an NU graduate who now owns his own consulting and marketing business. He said in essence that though people think networking is a bunch of fancy cocktail parties, in reality it’s keeping in touch with your friends and sitting on your fat ass and e-mailing every person on the alumni listserv you can find.
The reason is that unless you’re Scarlett Johansson or your resume literally says “one-legged refugee who has developed a cure for cancer” on it, employers don’t remember you. Connections, at least meaningful ones, don’t happen when you’re one of fifteen identical job-seekers that a recruiter meets.
Yet the real tragedy and irony is that, in our obsession to meet the high and mighty, we neglect the opportunity to form meaningful relationships with the unbelievable people we walk past on campus every day.
Five years from now, it’s not going to be these wannabe bigwigs in fancy suits that you’re sucking up to for a job. It will be your friend — the one whose non-major trombone recital you didn’t go to so you could “network” — who will read your resume. That cute and quirky engineering girl in class you never got to know will be looking for colleagues to help build a death star for the U.S. Department of Defense. That awkward guy you couldn’t make heads or tails of in the dorms freshman year will be a VP at Goldman Sachs.
It’s troubling to think about how little we know of the accomplishments of even our best friends. How much do you really know about the research your roommate did last summer in the backcountry of Thailand? Do you know anything about the prototype your fraternity brother designed sophomore year that is now being used by Procter & Gamble Co.? Did you read a single one of the articles that your friend wrote when she was managing editor here at The Daily?
So please scale back on trolling LinkedIn and obsessing over building a superfluous network. Take an hour with close friends, lab partners or classmates you just wish you knew a little better and learn all about the incredible things they accomplished in their young lives. It’s the best “networking” you’ll ever do.
Mike Mallazzo is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].
