this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Work Reform

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (10 children)

"personal networking" feels a lot like just saying "go fish in a bathtub"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Depends on how big your bathtub is. But really. Knowing people in your field is always helpful.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

It's basically useless when you've tried your network and it's all dead ends. This advice feels like the "don't be ugly" of the employment world.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah there's that about the dead ends. Been there as well. My own field now has a lot more gains to be had from networking. Past ones, not so much. Maybe it depends on the nature of the job as well? I'm not sure. I imagine it's a lot more helpful in sales.

I'm not great at it myself honestly. I could really learn from my spouse. She's an SME in a niche field and literally every job after the first one, she was recruited by someone in her network. But that's neither here, nor there.

Anyway, that's all I got. Rant over.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I got a lot of this advice trying to get into academia. From what I found, knowing someone somewhere is actively detrimental to getting a job. Not only will you not get a job because of your connections, people will avoid giving you a job because hiring from a network speaks ill of the academic rigor of the institution. Whether it's real or not, the image is maximal meritocracy, and that means the traditional advice from the corporate world is useless.

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