I Challenge You: Build your Biotech Network in 28 days

December is a time to build your network. It can be a really challenging time to actually apply for jobs because things slow down a lot in December. It's even hard for me to get interview teams convened for jobs that I know I'm hiring for. And there are fewer jobs posted. A lot of companies are waiting until the new year to exercise their budgets and it is just really disheartening for some job seekers. So what are we going to do instead? We are going to build our networks in our community. We just started a challenge and it is a lot of fun. If you want to jump into the community and do it with us, I would love to have you. If not, I'm going to give you the whole outline of what we're doing in the challenge so you can run it yourself if you prefer. Of course it's more fun with friends. So if you'd like the tracker and the daily step by steps that I'm giving, please jump into the community and give it a try. If you're listening to this sometime in the future and you're like, shoot, I missed this challenge and it sounded so great, you didn't miss the challenge. It is evergreen. It will always be there for you. So you can jump in to the community anytime and start this challenge. You can restart the challenge. You can do it whenever you feel like you need to grow your network and I will still be there every step of the way giving you encouragement as you do your check ins. And there'll be other people going through it too. Because like I said, this doesn't ever end. Networking is a lifelong skill and I'm trying to give you the tools right now so that you can build that network and anytime on demand. I'm Karina Klingman, scientist turned CEO of a talent strategy consulting firm. I've helped over 85 biotechs hire and develop thousands of amazing employees. So I know what works and what doesn't work when it comes to landing a job and then excelling in it. I created the Biotech Career Coach Podcast to give you simple, actionable, step by step strategies to help you land your dream biotech job, then move up the career ladder. If you are exploring career paths, looking to learn about biotech, or simply striving to be the type of person who makes an impact and gets promoted, you're in the right place.

All right, so what are we doing? For the first seven days of the challenge, I teach a new skill every single day. If you jump in the community, don't worry, you're not late to the party. You can start anytime. So your day one is any day you join. But we started on Monday, December 1, and on Monday, I taught everyone how to look at their analytics panel in LinkedIn. So in LinkedIn, when you're on your page, you can scroll down and find your analytics. And if you're watching this on YouTube, I'm going to put a screenshot of that up here for you. In that analytics panel, there are all kinds of great analytics and you can dig in and really look at what's going on. The ones we're tracking for this challenge are going to be how many times people are viewing your profile, how many times you appear throughout the platform, and how many times you appear in search results. And those search results are typically by recruiters. So that's a really good thing. But you can also dig into the analytics analytics and take a peek around, scroll through, click buttons, get familiar with your analytics panel because you can track a lot of things in there and you can really dig into who is looking at your profile and what types of companies are looking at your profile, what types of searches you're appearing for, what job titles are you appearing for, all of that good stuff. It is located in your LinkedIn analytics panel. Again, if you want to see me do this step by step, I have a full tutorial video. In day one of our challenge in the community, the other metric that we're tracking is of course, your connections. We want to see those growing day by day. Day two of the challenge is looking at who you might strategically want to connect with. So I created a worksheet to help people identify who they should be connecting with. I have people list out their ideal target companies and then some job titles that they'll be looking for within those companies when they're making their connection requests going forward, throughout the rest of the week and the rest of the month for these job titles, we are looking for people that are around your same level. If you're currently a senior scientist, you're probably not going to be trying to connect with the CEO. You're probably going to connect with other senior scientists, scientists and principal scientists. So sort of your level and a level above and a level below, those are your peers, your peer network. You can also look for people in adjacent departments. So let's say you are in the R and D department. You might want to connect with some folks in analytical or process development because they're people you would interact with in your job and industry. And you're going to be looking for recruiters. We do want to make connections with recruiters. They are important to have as connections in your network. So I give you a couple of job titles to look for there. And we also want to be looking for thought leaders. These are typically people in companies who post interesting content and they're usually very willing to connect with people because they like being thought leaders on the LinkedIn platform. So if you can find those thought leaders within the companies, it will help you to grow your network really quickly. So all we do on day two is map out who we're going to connect with in the coming month. Really easy, really actionable. On day three, I teach you how to personalize connection requests. This is really important because people who don't know you are hesitant maybe to connect with you. It depends on their personality. I typically accept all connection requests from biotech people, but that is me. Some people are a little more selective. So if you can include a note with some common ground and make that connection request really authentically, it does help. Now, on the free LinkedIn plan right now, December 2025, you can only send three notes with connection requests in the entire month. So that may be limiting to you. If you're on that free LinkedIn plan and that is okay, you can still send out connection requests, your volume might be a little bit higher and once they connect, we'll worry about following up with them in a note in the messages. So on day three, I taught you five different ways to connect with people. These are different types of connections. Whether you share a past company or lab with them, whether you just share a similar ish career path, a similar degree, whether you just think they're really great for posting awesome content, I have five different templates for you to choose from. So it makes connecting really, really easy. On day four of the networking challenge, which as I'm recording this was yesterday, I taught people how to nurture existing connections because one thing that people tell me in the community is that they're connected to people on LinkedIn but they really aren't talking to them or sort of keeping that warm. And that can be a little nerve wracking for us introverts. I get it. So I teach you how to authentically nurture those connections so it doesn't feel weird. We're not asking for favors ever in any of our requests. We are just making authentic connections periodically so that people think well of us and we are top of mind. Day five, which is today, I am going to teach about creating and sharing content, because sharing content on your LinkedIn page is the fastest way to get eyeballs to your page and to expand your reach. And I'm going to do that by sharing this podcast. So I'm going to teach what I do behind the scenes when I am thinking about how to post this podcast. And I'm going to teach several other ways of posting that don't feel like a heavy lift because not all of you are out there recording a podcast. I get it. I'm kind of weird in that way. So if you are not recording podcasts and creating original content, that's okay. You can still show up on the platform with meaningful content and I'm going to teach you exactly how to do it. When you post on LinkedIn, it really grows your reach. And I'm also going to be creating little engagement pods within the community so that when you post things, you can also post them in our community and we will jump in there and we will like and comment them so that you don't feel like you're just speaking into the void and you are expanding your reach as soon as you post something. Day 6 I am going to teach how to add value through thoughtful engagement around the platform One of the big fears that people tell me is they don't know what to say when they're commenting on other people's posts and they feel weird, like it might be something cringey. I'm going to give you a whole bunch of ideas about how to engage thoughtfully around the platform, and I'm going to give you a little AI tool to help you to brainstorm the different ways to do this. Now, the problem I see with most AI tools that help with LinkedIn engagement is that they are really generic and really cliche. What I suggest doing if you are asking an LLM for help brainstorming ways to engage on the platform is to ask it to help you with five different angles for engagement before you ever draft anything. This way you can choose how you want to add value. An example from earlier this week when I was showing my engagement on the platform, there was an HR team that posted about some community service that they did, and the HR leader linked that back to how wonderful their culture is. So my angle for engagement as someone who loves talent acquisition and loves nurturing talent, was that building community through community service is such a great culture enhancer. So that was my thoughtful piece of engagement as opposed to just saying, wow, looks like fun, which is what a lot of the comments were on that post. And on day seven, I'm going to round out the week by teaching you how to Ask for Coffee Chats and if you listen to my podcast, you know I love coffee chats. These are also known as informational interviews, but that terminology can make people feel really scared to ask for them. What's easier than just catching up over coffee? So I'm going to give you multiple templates to use in different situations where you're asking for a coffee chat with a new connection. And you only do this after a little bit of engagement with them, but teach you that cadence. We're going to want to nurture those connections after the coffee chats and I've already taught you how to do that in the week. This entire challenge is meant to give you all of the tools to feel comfortable engaging on LinkedIn so that you can build your network after week one when you've learned all of the tools and techniques, I have a specific cadence that will help you to grow your network day after day. It takes less than 30 minutes a day to show up on the platform and make a huge difference for your career. And through a challenge format, you are doing it with a whole bunch of other people. It's a lot more fun, it's less scary and you have some built in accountability. So that is what we're doing in the community right now. You can absolutely do it by yourself and it is a lot easier to do with a community. So join us in there. It'll be fun. Thanks so much for listening to the Biotech Career Coach podcast by the Collaboratory Career Hub. Join our school community to get access to support resources and materials and be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn. Pro Tip when you connect with me on LinkedIn, you get instant access to my entire network of biotech folks, which is powerful for your career. If you found this podcast valuable, please subscribe or follow us on YouTube so that you never miss an episode. Have an amazing week and we'll see you back here next Friday. It.