Why networking leads to jobs
And explaining the networking game
"Ohh, hello my friend!" – my meat guy, Miguel, said in broken English.
"Ohhhh Hello!!" I yelled back with a huge grin.
Today I found myself in my local butcher shop, or carnicería as it's called in Spanish. It was Tuesday, and I had a hankering for some good ol' fashioned Tacos. The rest of the conversation was in normal Spanish, but it has been translated for your reading pleasure.
"A kilo of ground meat, please!"
"Of course, of course!" he says with a smile. As he starts cutting, he glances at me. "You look tired amigo. Did you just get out of work?"
"Ohh yeah, super busy day. Just finished up 15 minutes ago and came out to do some grocery shopping."
His curiosity was officially piqued
"What do you work in?" he asked.
"Oh, I'm a programmer."
"Woah. What kind?"
"Web developer. I make websites!"
Suddenly, his eyes lit up. He stopped cutting the meat and looked up right at me.
The slew of questions began.
"Wow! What kind of websites do you make?"
"Oh, well, for example, I ma-"
"Hey, would you know how to make websites for local businesses?"
"Umm, you mean for something like the butcher shop?"
"Yeah... yeah! How much would a website cost me, for example?"
Okay, let's pause here.
What the heck just happened? I just wanted some meat from my local butcher, and now I'm suddenly thrust into quoting a price for a possible website gig on the spot.
How the hell does that happen?
One possible answer to this might be "the effect of networking". Twice a week, I stop by my local butcher, have a small chat, crack a joke or two, and buy some meat. We've built rapport for a while now, and he's curious about having a website.
He trusts me quite a bit. Because of that, I'm in a favored (and a little biased) position where, if he needs a website and he knows I make them, I might be one of the first people he reaches out to if he's interested in having one (as was the example in this story).
If you think about it, almost like magic, it's like a small job appeared out of nowhere. All because of a set of small interactions I've had with someone over many months. This is what many people define as networking. And it's sort of true. Or, well, true enough.
But, I don't know... something always bothered me about it. Probably because...
It's a surface-level explanation of why networking works
Many devs out there are looking for jobs right now (heck, you could be too!). But from my experience, the advice behind networking has always been very vague. So, especially if you're trying to stand out as an exceptional frontend dev, it's important you understand at least what's going on in the background of this "game" we're all playing (or at least, my understanding of it).
The goals of the networking game
(Before we start, let me just say I hate the word "networking". It's very icky and has many negative associations with it. One thing to understand is, networking is not so much an activity as it is a consequence of an activity. I went to my butcher and talked to him for a while. Did I "network" with him? No. I just talked to my butcher. That's the mindset you should have. Have conversations and have fun.)
The main idea behind networking is to execute actions that:
Increase your visibility
Increase your trust.
You increase your visibility by showing up at places, having conversations, and interacting with people in some way. You increase your trust by helping out, creating resources, or making somebody's day better in some way.
Both of these kinds of activities take time to execute and aren't always scalable. It's a slow process and takes time. "Networking" is a long-term game.
If our long-term goal might be "meet people who in the future could make finding a job or gigs easier," and you're a developer, a few activities that might satisfy those criteria might be:
Hang around on social media (usually LinkedIn) and strike up conversations with people
Follow and participate in local/online communities
Write articles or posts on relevant topics you think could help somebody out (probably frontend related)
Participate in an open-source project you like and think you could help out with.
Have coffee chats or 1:1s with people who seem interesting and you'd like to meet.
Your goal with these actions is to create an asset. There's value in creating a network of people who, over time, get to know you and whom you've built goodwill towards. You're helping and letting people know about you. You're also putting some good into the world by doing this, if done right.
So... once you've done this for a while, what happens in the background?
Introducing the stages of awareness
Turns out, everybody in the world has problems. They may be big problems or small problems. Tall problems and wide problems.
In the world of frontend development, we fix problems related to websites. Or, more accurately, the problems that websites help fix. Many times, even though people have these problems, they might not be aware of them. Or of the solutions available to fix them. Or of your solution.
A beautiful framework created by Eugene Schwartz in his classic book “Breakthrough Advertising” is on the stages of awareness. While it is more tailored towards marketing and purchase decisions, it's excellent for our purposes. And it goes something like this:
In the world of advertising and sales, customers have different levels of awareness.
Those customers might be:
Unaware of the problem they're having.
Aware of the problem, but unsure of any solutions
Aware of the solutions and exploring each one. They probably don't know about your product/service yet.
Aware of the products that could fix the problem. Yours is possibly on that list.
Most aware. They know you and your product/service and just need a small nudge for the sale.
In the world of frontend development, WE are the product.
Whether the "customer" is somebody looking for a website or a company looking for a hire, the process is the same. At some point, they realize they have a problem, realize they need somebody who can build a website, and then start looking around to see who can help.
The "magic of networking" relies exactly on that. It relies on this faith that, when the need to fix the problem arises, you're the one at the top of the list to be called.
That's exactly what happened with my butcher
So when he asked me how much a website like that cost, I was honest.
"I have no idea! Why do you need a website anyway?"
"I don't know. I was just curious. People normally just message me and order through WhatsApp".
"Does that by itself accomplish everything you need right now?"
"Yeah."
"Then you don't need a website 😄"
And the interaction ended up with a thumbs up from him, as he finally gave me my long-awaited taco meat.
I don't normally do emails this long, but I was surprised by how much I had to add about networking.
As always, thank you and have a great Friday!