I used this 1 lesson to network my way into 4 internships

🔵 To network your way into a job, you need to get people interested in you, and that only requires 1 thing.

There’s a lot of noise out there on how to communicate.

Ever come across one of those “20 Lessons I Wished I Knew Before” posts on LinkedIn? It’s a lot to take in, and much of it goes in one ear and out the other.

In reality, if you’re looking to network your way to job offers, you just need this 1 advice.

Learn how to become interested, not interesting.

In today’s article, I’ll explain why this tip is the most important one to master.

Here’s the route for today

🦜 Topic: Become Interested, Not Interesting

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TOPIC
Become Interested, Not Interesting

What does “become interested, not interesting,” mean?

Let’s break it down into 2 parts:

1. Become Interested

I would bet that 90% of us networking are doing it for one thing: to get a job.

Simply put, if you build a strong enough connection with a recruiter or a hiring manager, your name will be on top of their list of candidates for any new opportunity.

But to get to that point, you need to capture their attention first. So how do you do that?

You capture their attention by being genuinely curious about them.

You see, people will never forget how you made them feel, and the strongest feeling you can stir out of them is the feeling of being valued.

In other words, feeling important, or feeling mattered.

That’s where genuine curiosity in others comes in because people love to talk about themselves.

As someone once said:

Translation: Putting the other person in the spotlight of the conversation will captivate them.

2. Don’t Be Interesting

The above is the typical mindset of young job seekers, however, this strategy rarely works.

Why? Because again…people love to talk about themselves.

This means that in terms of priority, people tend to help themselves before they do others.

What I’ve seen a lot of students do is they’ll write that cold email or LinkedIn message and in the content, they’ll talk about their qualifications.

Essentially, they brag about themselves and then request a chat.

This doesn’t work because at the beginning of a potential connection, you haven’t established a rapport.

You are a no-one to that recruiter. To become a someone to them, you have to make them feel like a someone to you.

Translation: Ditch the self-promotion, instead, focus on asking the person interesting questions about themselves.

Closing Thoughts:

To put it all together, this is the 5-step approach I used to network my way into 4 separate internships.

1. Do a brief LinkedIn profile check of the recruiter.

2. Send a cold email to them and in it, highlight something from their LinkedIn I found interesting.

3. Request a coffee chat so that I can learn more about their career journey.

4. In the chat, make them the spotlight of the convo, and only talk about myself if they ask me to.

5. Ask enough questions to the point where THEY end the chat, not me, then thank them for their time and ask for a follow-up.

Remember, good networking starts with a selfless mindset.

See you next Tuesday 🤝

-Michael Ly

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1. To learn about my career journey, click here

2. To learn how to tailor your resume, click here

3. To learn how I passed my interviews, click here