🫱🏼‍🫲🏼 The Designer's Guide to Effective Networking

This article was written in collaboration with the fabulous Anne Van Itallie, Whipsaw’s Director of Business Development and perhaps the most effective network-er I’ve ever known.

Industrial design is a relatively small field, and a competitive one at that. While a solid portfolio alone can land you a great job (more on that here), you’re much more likely to find opportunities, and ultimately success, if you’re an active participant in your network. Active participation goes beyond lurking and into engaging, and we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t!

Over the years, we’ve come to identify a set of best practices around professional, interpersonal connection which have radically changed our outlook on what it means to be in community with others. There’s no single right way to approach someone for the first time, but there are a couple of threads that are common to most right ways. The following is a primer for how best to reach out, keep in touch, and build lasting relationships with people in your professional network.

Intention and Intentionality

Before we get into the how of networking, we should first think about the why. Take a minute to assess honestly. If your intention for networking is purely to find work or to climb the corporate ladder (no judgement, we’ve all been there), know that this is not a sustainable plan. First impressions matter, and if you’re giving off desperate energy, it will show whether you think it does or not. To avoid this, you should understand what you hope to get out of connecting with someone; then, approach the interaction tactfully and deliberately.

It helps to have a strong sense of your values. If you value honesty and integrity, competence and compassion, those values should reflect in how you network. If you don’t know what they are, take some time to think about them. Defining a few core values can help you behave in alignment with them and you can use them to check your networking behavior. We look for people who are consonant, meaning that their interior values and beliefs are mirrored in their external behaviors and choices.

The Cold Approach

The first step in growing your network is also the one that people most often mess up: the cold approach. Most people are open to meeting new people, but nobody wants to feel like they’re answering the door to complete strangers.

Case in point: I receive dozens of connection requests on LinkedIn every week. Do I connect with everyone? No way! I simply don’t have the kind of interpersonal juggling skills to connect with every single person who sends a request, and I shudder to think what my feed would look like if I did. It would just be unmanageable.

If you want a response, you should first show me you know me (or #SMYKM, as popularized by Sam McKenna, Sam Sales). This might sound like a catch-22 — how can I show that I know you before I’ve met you? — but in reality, it’s all about doing your due diligence. Ask yourself, who is the person I’m reaching out to? What are they about? What do they value? Most importantly, what do we share in common? Finding commonalities will give you a starting point to forge an interpersonal connection. Once you’ve found common ground, leverage that in the conversation. The goal is to leave the conversation open in a way that allows you to build up the relationship. Here’s an example of what that might look like:

Hi [name], 

I noticed [observation about a thing you have in common]. I also [spell out a common connection here]. If you have a few minutes in the next couple of weeks, I’d love to hear more about your experience with [related thing]. 

Look forward to connecting with you, 

[your name]

LinkedIn: The World’s Biggest Networking Event

A few words about LinkedIn. For our industry and countless others, LinkedIn has become an invaluable resource. It’s not just a reliable way to keep in touch, it’s also the world’s biggest networking event. Self-described LinkedIn Specialist Rachel Grunbaum (who actually is excellent at LinkedIn) has pointed out that your profile is your booth, your posts are your messages for the world, and your comments/engagement are just like the interaction at a cocktail party. Behave like you would in the real world, because there are millions of interesting people who are there waiting to connect with you. 

Appropriate Asks

As I said earlier, most people don’t appreciate complete strangers showing up at their front door. That’s especially the case when those strangers show up unannounced, ask for a full tour of the place, and invite themselves to stay for dinner. There’s a give and take in networking, and you should always lead by giving of yourself without expecting things in return. A genuine, selfless, and open approach can go a long way to lowering defenses, and that’s the first step to fostering mutual trust.

So when you’re first developing a relationship — and especially when it comes to making first contact — you should be mindful and accommodating. Remember: you don’t know what people have going on in their personal or professional lives! A nascent connection is a vulnerable one, and asking too much of someone can quickly break that relationship down. If you come on too strong or with immediate request of someone you know, you’ll end things before they can start!

Here are a few things to consider:

First off, be reasonable in how much time you ask for. Most people, especially successful ones, have busy schedules and can’t accommodate hours out of their day to chitchat. A safe bet is to ask for a 15-minute call; a shorter meeting may be easier to accommodate but is rarely enough time to get to know each other meaningfully. Give the person a reason to walk to talk with you. Most of us want to be helpful, so asking for advice or perspective is appropriate. Once you’re on the call, you can politely request for the other person to stick around a bit longer if the conversation is going well.

Second, make it clear that you’ve done your homework so the meeting isn’t a waste of their time. There are few things more frustrating than taking the time to talk to someone, only for them to waste that time asking questions they could’ve found the answers to online. Come with a list of questions and a clear goal in mind. Ask yourself before the call: what is it that I hope to get from this call? And just as importantly ask yourself: what is it that the other person can get from this call? What value can I add to the interaction?

Finally, make only appropriate requests and ask only prudent questions. The name of the game is self awareness. If you’ve just met someone for the first time, it’s probably not appropriate to ask for a professional referral for a role, but asking to be introduced to a colleague might be. You may be dying to ask what their salary is, or which coworkers they dislike, or what kind of recreational drugs they do. Fantastic! Curiosity is great! This is not the time or place to ask any of those questions!

Familiarity vs. Formality

Students sometimes ask me how to approach networking, and I get why that is. Design schools don’t teach it, so students are left to their own devices to figure it out. My best advice is to just be yourself — within reason. There’s a balance to strike between formality (professional, buttoned up, and serious) and familiar (approachable, easy-going, with a good sense of humor). Acting professionally doesn’t mean you should water down who you are; it’s just about understanding social expectations. Being too chummy early in the relationship can make people uncomfortable, while being too stiff will make you hard to relate to and easy to forget. Take your time, read the room, and lead with genuine humility.

On a related note, we’ve noticed a growing trend of people using ChatGPT to guide their end of the conversation. I see the utility in large language models, of course, especially for those whose primary language isn’t English. But unfortunately, we can usually clock a message written by AI. As much as LLMs can aid in writing, it does drive a wedge between author and reader when the reader knows they’re not actually the writer’s words. Forming a strong connection is the objective, so it’s important to avoid seeming inauthentic. Personally, I’d rather read a message written by a real person in their own voice, even if there are a couple of grammatical errors or spelling mistakes.

That said, a good use of AI is prepping for the conversation. Query the person’s LinkedIn and corporate website. Ask it to provide you with an appropriate agenda aligned with your goals for the interaction. AI can give you a great list of thoughtful questions and can give you good advice about how to best position your ask. Even better, ask your AI model what NOT to do. Your call will be better for the prep work.

Nudging

There is an old adage known as Hanlon’s Razor which you might’ve heard before. It says, “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” I love this adage because it lends grace to others (albeit abrasively) while providing peace of mind to oneself. In this section, I’d like to propose a new version of this which goes, “never attribute to apathy that which can be adequately explained by a busy schedule.”

The truth is that busy people get busy. Even if there’s an opportunity to connect with a supremely interesting person, things sometimes slip through the cracks. It’s only human, especially now that apps, services, and communication channels are vying for our attention at every turn (LinkedIn’s inbox is especially terrible, as it escapes most aggregators and email management tools!). So try not to take it personally when a contact doesn’t reply to your messages — it’s likely they simply forgot or didn’t see it in the first place. With that in mind, it’s fair game to nudge them to reply, provided you do it the right way.

So, what is the right way to nudge someone, and how much time should you let pass before you do? Most networking conversations aren’t truly time-sensitive, so it’s better to be flexible and humble in your expectations. In these cases, I’d wait a week to follow up. That allows enough time for them to catch up on their weekly goings-on and get back to you at a better time. For conversations that are time-sensitive, I’d wait a day or two before following up (as a general rule, I like to give people a day or two to respond to any communication, save for pressing matters). As for how to nudge them, a short, polite message will do. Nobody wants to receive an overly emotional or passive-aggressive message. Express your continued interest in chatting with them and move along. That might look something like this:

Hi [name], 

I wanted to follow up on this. I know you’re busy, but I’m really interested to hear your perspective on [topic of conversation]. Let me know if you’re open to chat at your convenience. If now isn’t a good time, when do you recommend I follow up with you? 

Thanks in advance for your time, 

[name]

The Post-Meeting Follow-Up

Once you’ve met with a new connection, it’s a really good idea (I’ll say it again: a really good idea) to follow up with them. This shows your desire to continue the conversation and your willingness to be a resource to them. Ideally you’ll follow up within a day of your meeting, while the conversation is still fresh in your mind. We normally set a task on our daily To Do lists to send a follow-up email to all of yesterday’s meetings. Building this habit into our daily email triage has kept my relationships advancing forward and makes sure we never leave anyone hanging.

There are two things you want to express in a follow up note: first, your gratitude. This person has taken time out of their day to talk to you when they had no obligation to do so, potentially pushing meetings or foregoing a lunch break, so make sure to verbally recognize it. Second, you should demonstrate that you were truly listening and are working to apply what you’ve learned from your conversation. A quick nod to a topic your discussion shows that it was a meaningful experience for you and that you weren’t just shaking hands for the sake of growing your professional network — something utterly useless without meaningful connection anyway.

Email and LinkedIn messages are great, but the cherry on top is still something extra — a handwritten note, sending a copy of a book you think they’d like, something small you’ve made like a sticker — those things make your interaction much more memorable and they can also trigger the Reciprocity Principle, which makes it more likely for you to have larger, positive interactions in the future. 

Remember that networking is not a one-time thing. Your goal is to build long-term trusted relationships that move people from being acquaintances into them being raving fans (of YOU!). We like to think of it like a great episodic show or story — each interaction builds towards one narrative which is that you are someone worth knowing. 

Keeping in Touch Long-Term

Sometimes networking can feel like a near-term endeavor, especially when you’re desperate to land a job. In reality, it’s all about cultivating long-term relationships with people you respect. If you treat the people in your network as disposable, you shouldn’t expect anything but the same in return. Simply put, you only get out of it what you put into it.

The best way to begin cultivating these relationships is by offering to give of yourself before asking for anything in return. That applies to favors, sure, but it also extends beyond the literal. One way to give before asking is to show up to the conversation. Being present in the community, whether at in-person events or in the comments section of a LinkedIn post, is a concrete way to be involved with your network. That means providing thoughtful commentary where appropriate, sharing your knowledge, and acting as a resource to others. Look to enrich each individual relationship by giving what you can. That’s the kind of interpersonal investment that will pay off.

How to (Eventually) Leverage Your Network

There will, at some point, come a time where you’ll want to seek the help of your network. Maybe you’ve been laid off and need to find your new job, or maybe you’re seeking a highly specialized vendor with a reliable track record. Maybe you just want some solid career guidance. Regardless of your needs, this is when a well-cultivated network will come in handy.

Asking for help starts with understanding your relationships. First, make an assessment about the person in question and your relation to them: are they a close ex-colleague and friend? Is this someone you’ve only met once before? Is it someone you’ve never shared a conversation with? Figuring out where you stand with them is critical. Obviously (I hope), you should never ask someone you hardly know for a referral for a job. It not only reflects poorly on you, it also puts a strain on the relationship that may be difficult to come back from. The more someone has to stick their neck out for you, the closer you should be.

That being said, there’s a limitation to what you can ask for and what is effective. In the case of referrals for new jobs, you’re actually less likely to get jobs from first-level connections, no matter how close you are with them, as that could be construed as a biased, nepotistic hire. It’s usually your second-level connections (i.e. the people you’re not connected to but who your connections are) that can be of more use to you, with your first-level people acting as trusted sponsors on your behalf. If your ask might put your trusted contacts on the line, consider asking instead for them to vouch for you to someone else who can judge your candidacy from a more objective standpoint. That takes some of the pressure off of them while teeing you up as a person they can trust.

Parting Thoughts

This is by no means a complete guidance on networking. There are practically as many relationship dynamics as there are individual people, and levels of familiarity will vary. But if there’s one thing we’ve found to be true about people, it’s that they’re willing to help the people they care for. The foundation for any good relationship, personal or professional, is to give selflessly and to respect others. Keep these in mind and you’ll build a network you can rely on in no time.