Jon Levy argues that traditional networking feels dirty and forced, backed by Harvard research showing people have negative associations with the term. Real relationships form through shared interests and experiences, not awkward event conversations where newcomers often dominate without offering value in return.
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Come into a room and you want to meet people. My question is, do you actually want to go into a room to network? Because the fact is that networking is a really terrible way to meet people. It makes us feel dirty. Research out of Harvard Business School found that the implicit association to networking is wanting to wash our hands.
Wow.
Right? Like, it's just awful. Nobody has ever said, oh, my God, networking, so fun.
I don't think that's a true statement. People new to their career who are clueless and eager are happy to go to networking events. And they're all excited about it because there's lots of people they could take advantage of. It's like people on Clubhouse, like, I've got to ask a question. Let me tell you five minutes about myself before I ask my question, which. Which is a. A problem for people new to clubhouse. Right? And so you do find people who have way more to gain than they have to give are the ones who are most eager to go to a networking event. At least that's been my experience of going to those.
So let's separate two things. One is, there was a study done, I think it was on Columbia University MBA students. So these are people who have the highest desire to network, quote, unquote. They even say networking is a major priority when they actually go to networking events. I think they spend more than half of their time talking to people they already know, and then a very small portion talking to some new people. But the reason networking doesn't feel right is that that's not really how most of us are going to feel comfortable with people. From a social perspective, almost everyone we meet is either through a shared interest and activity or through the fact that we grew up with them through friends. Right? And so if that's the case, maybe we should be looking at how do we make friends instead of networking. And for that to happen, we probably need some kind of activity or experience because, you know, 40,000 years ago, human beings wouldn't have been like, oh, I'm going to. Like, I'm going to walk five villages away so I can network. It's not a. It's not a realistic expectation on our species.
