Networking. No, the other kind.

As the job market shifts, the clichéd adage that it's Who you know, not What you know has only proven more prescient. Unfortunately, that means that a lot of people end up hoping for luck -- that a friend randomly gets a job at a place that's growing, that an old boss remembers them, that a family member is owed a favor. Those kinds of connections are boons when they work out, but it can be frightening to bet a career on lucky timing.

So how do we increase the chances that those connections hit? By networking! It's what everyone tells us to do. So we go to events, meet some cool people, connect on LinkedIn, and then....nothing. Names sit in a list that we only look at when we need a job.

My goal in this talk is to give folks the tools to build a network and actually use it. That is, real concrete steps anyone can take to forge connections that can help define a career and maybe even create a community. Networking can feel like it's all about charm, or persuasion, or about turning every interaction into a transaction. I hope that by following some of the advice I give in this talk, more people can see that, far from a zero sum game, networking is an investment that pays dividends for everyone involved.

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