guidance counselor 2.0 · episode 23
networking 101
key takeaways
- be curious about other people, not sleazy. just listen and ask genuine questions.
- when reaching out, be specific. give a time limit and topic instead of asking vaguely.
- pick five people at conferences or online to connect with deeply rather than working a room.
- use social media as a networking tool. document your journey and build community over time.
- networking is friendship, not selling. use context and be real in every message.
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about this episode
learn how to network authentically by being genuinely interested in others instead of selling yourself.
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full transcript
auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.
Thank you again for tuning into Guy in the Council 2.0 on a Thursday on a rainy kind of jerry Thursday morning here in Nashville. So I wanted to first off give a shout out to now my new friend, Jack Langston. Yesterday, if you did not see our live show yesterday, I had a VP of engineering on talking about salary negotiations and it was so cool as a hiring manager to hear him say, hey, if a kid is way higher than we are, maybe, maybe it's our fault, which is, it was so refreshing. So shout out Jack Langston and the evidence, care crew. I know a lot of them out there.
So shout out to them. Again, thank you, Jack Langston for coming on. I appreciate you a ton. Obviously, I want to give my friends a shout out to my team around me, which I'm very, very thankful for Alex Pooler. Alex Pooler, design at gmail.com if you need to reach them for design help. We got summer, living to entail dussing.com. I promise it's coming. I keep, I've been saying it now for a bit, but summer is just doing a complete overhaul. There's a lot of things that we need to improve on my website. So that's coming. The next Drew Skeleton video work, if you need video clips edited, I have a contact there.
And then Brandon Arvek, Brandon Arvek, Brandon 78, he's my man. He's doing this whole content creation generation type thing that we're doing. So very excited with that. That being said, oh, finally, finally, if you're still watching this, you haven't logged off yet or you watched this later. If you are hiring manager in 2021, I would love to work with you. My goal is over five new companies. This is 10, five new companies in 2021 because of this live show. So if you hate your recruiting company that you're working with and you're across the country, you're trying to hire dev talent and you want to talk to me, even if you just want to talk to me, see how we do things, hit me up, DM me, we'll love to work with you.
Even if you're not in tech and you want to hire a bunch of people, call center, whatever, DM me, we can do it all. Make up. So now I'm going to dive into the live part to the actual part, not live. We are live. You know, if you want to come scoffee. So, hey, Azusa what's going on, man. It's good to see you. Thank you again for tuning in. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. So I'm going to talk about networking today and I've talked about networking again, but I want to keep talking about it because I think it's so difficult. networking is what recruiters do.
For the longest time, I'm going to admit this. I did not know how to recruit at make out. Right? If anybody's watched this at make up, like, look, like we did not know how to recruit until legitimately I was, so I was three years into my career, four years into my career. I've been recruiting for nine. So I was almost halfway through my career and I had no idea how to do my job. Just to be totally honest with you. I had no idea how to do my job. So what I want to do is I want to essentially share all my secrets on how to network.
And so first off, I want to do questions first. Right? We're going to go ahead and Q&A now at me comment. Please let me know if you have any questions on how to network, especially right now. Because again, it's a whole new world. I'm going to go ahead and start singing the whole new world. I'm just kidding. I'm not going to sing a whole new world. It is a whole new world when it comes to network awareness. So let me know if you have any questions. I'm going to go ahead and start answering some questions that came in. Brandon, Brandon, I remember, man. I'm a marketing guru.
I want some of my way to attend a network event where everybody is obvious there to meet others and sell themselves. So many people are sleazy in this environment. How do you do it naturally? So I think this is great. I think this is a great question. Here's why. I think this is a great question is because whether it's now in a virtual environment or when we go back to normal, whenever that is, it is going like this is it. Right? Like there's so many times this is why recruiters get a bad rap because recruiters just don't know how to be. And that is my biggest tip with this.
Just be. Just be there. Don't say anything. Don't sell yourself. Be interested in somebody else. And that's what I'm getting to. With this whole networking thing, with networking is sliding into people's DMs. You need to be like, hey, I admire you. I love what you're doing in the community. I love this. I had a conversation yesterday. Brandon, I'm going to catch you up on this conversation today when we're talking. I had a conversation yesterday with a guy named Eddie like shea. I think I take your answers last name. I think I'm butchering that greatly. Eddie, if you're watching this by chance, I'm sorry. But Eddie has grown his following from like 3000 people on LinkedIn to 36,000 people on LinkedIn.
He is the founder of very good copy. He's in the marketing space and I randomly DM Tim and I ask him for six minutes of the time. What I'm doing, I'm trying to take my own advice to show y'all it works. I talk to two people that aren't even in my network that aren't even in my network in the past six months because I took my own advice. I messaged Chris Phillips for the Spurs up show, shout out the Spurs up show, shout out Chris Phillips. He's doing the Lord's work down at that at Columbia South Carolina University of Game Cox podcast. He does a great job.
I don't have anything to do. He's not tech. But I DM Tim because I want to learn how he has scaled his business. And guess what? I said, hey, man, can I have like seven minutes of your time? Would love to talk to you about digital marketing strategy? And we had a great 15 minute call. And now we interact all time on Twitter. So the guy I talked to yesterday, Eddie, Eddie's up at Chicago, not even in my network, doesn't even know me. And I emailed Tim and said, hey, listen, can I have six minutes of your time? I want to talk about how copywriting and the job search come hand in hand.
So what I do is I don't say, hey, or I don't say, can we catch up? I give a specific time limit and I give a specific topic that I want to talk about. I will tell you if you message me and go, hey, can I have two minutes of your time to talk about how I network on LinkedIn? I will talk to you for two minutes. And that is what is the most important part of networking. Sorry I got off a tangent. The answer Brandon R. based question is don't sell yourself. Be curious about other people and business cards maybe. I don't pass out business cards.
If people want to find me, they want to find me. But my goal when I, when I do, this was a tip that I developed speaking at conferences. I look at the speaker list, right? And you can just for any conference and I target five people I want to connect with. And after I connect with those five people, I kind of leave the conference. Because I get very overwhelmed with people believe it or not, right? This is great on a virtual environment. I do great virtually, but in a large group setting, I don't do well, believe it or not. And so I pick out five people I want to connect with, then I piece out.
Um, yes, Brandon networking events are always so cringy. They are cringy because no one knows how to network. That's, that's what I'm getting to. Nobody knows how to network, right? Networking for people is selling and is, and is salesy and slimy, right? That's not networking. Networking is becoming friends. We need to change the model. We need to change the mantra of networking to just becoming friends. Um, Scott, how do you get a recruiters interested? How do you get recruiters interested in regards to networking? What you need to do is you need to be interested in them, right? Again, there's a common theme here with networking and DMing people, right?
Hey, Taylor, I see you're really active or hey, Taylor, I watched your live shirt today on networking. I love to chat with you for two minutes. If they don't get back to you, that's fine. But you need to have in my admiration for that individual, right? Stewart, another great question. What is the best way to get the most out of LinkedIn network with tech recruiters or others in the same field, right? What is the best way to get the most out of LinkedIn and network with tech recruiters? I feel best way to get the most out of LinkedIn is be on it all day. Like literally like in my mind, in my opinion, the way I would structure LinkedIn, first off, if you really want to go all in on LinkedIn, I would delete every other app off your phone, Instagram, Facebook, even Twitter, obviously I do a lot of tweeting, right?
You need to pick your platform, right? We need to change. I will tell you this, you will become much happier. If social media affects you mentally, I know some people it affects them, which is fine. It doesn't affect me. But if it affects you, LinkedIn is the one place where you should be spending all your time because it will not affect you because for the most part, people are there for networking or its positivity, right? And so for me, I think what you really need to do is you need to spend all your time on LinkedIn creating content, blogging, documenting your journey, right? You're trying to go from a non tech career to a tech career, right?
I document every day, hey, I submit a 15 resumes today, haven't heard back, want to pull the crowd. How would you suggest? How would you suggest navigating this, right? Allow people, I'm just giving you all of what I do. That's all I do. I just put myself out there time and time again and people and people will start slowly gravitating to where you've been taking time. Where I'm at right now, it's taking a year, right? Where I have people like Stewart or Brodo or Scott or Jesus or Julio or Andrew or Brandon that watch, right? Kathy is always on host sway. I haven't seen host sway in a bit.
He's probably busy in his full time job now props to host sway, shout out to host sway. Right? I know these people because we've built the community together, right? So it takes time, it takes a long time. Speaking of Julio, good morning my friends, good to see a big dog. Andrew, yes, I ace Facebook a year, it goes great for mental health. Yeah, exactly. Whatever time, whatever sucks you of your mental health, right? You need to switch, you need to take away, start leveraging social media to find a job. Every single platform, every single platform, right? If you can switch social media as a networking tool, oh my gosh, the amount of momentum you will start to gain as unreal is unreal.
Cool, that's it. That's it, that was awesome. I love that. I kind of had a spiel, but I hate talking, I love questions. So I'm going to stay on here for another minute. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns on how to network right now. Brandon says obviously, emails contaminate with people just selling super hard. What's your advice for those people instead of flooded email the way they do it right now? For me is do two or three sentences and be real, right? And don't sell, right? If I was trying to sell, Brandon, I go, hey, Brandon, I saw your in Lexington, I know if you're a bourbon fan, have you seen the latest release of Johnny Walker Black?
Brandon will respond to that. What Brandon won't respond to is Brandon won't respond to the sales pitch. Use context, please. Be real. I have friends. That's all of networking is if I want to give it across anything to say networking is being friends. Be a friend. Don't sell. Networking is not selling. Networking is being a friend. Cool. All right, y'all. Thank you again for tuning in. I appreciate y'all time. If you text me to be a part of my newsletter, nope, text me to be a part of my texting community. If you're not really on it, one text a day from a job search perspective, career search perspective.
If you aren't on my email newsletter, my goal for my email newsletter is so you can delete it faster. Let me know. Please let me know if you want to get on that DM me. I'll get you added. I think that's it. Anyways, y'all have a great Thursday. Have a great weekend. This was my last live show of the week. I'll see y'all bright and early Monday morning. Again, always hear from you. Please let me know if you need anything for me. Thank you again for tuning in. I don't take it lightly that you are watching me and commenting on my video. So thank you again.
Thank you community. Y'all have a great weekend.