{"id":18,"date":"2025-06-11T19:50:26","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T19:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/?p=18"},"modified":"2025-07-01T16:31:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T20:31:14","slug":"to-tame-networking-anxiety-change-the-dynamic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/11\/to-tame-networking-anxiety-change-the-dynamic\/","title":{"rendered":"To Tame Networking Anxiety, Change the Dynamic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by M ACCELERATOR<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am an enthusiastic advocate of networking as a method to identify contacts that can help you progress professionally. I have not always been this way, however. Until 2012, I was filled with anxiety at the prospect of reaching out to anyone to talk about my skills and what I might offer a prospective employer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put things quite simply, networking always seemed like “sales” to me, and I doubt I could sell someone trapped in a desert a bottle of water. Additionally, it is said that people are normally better at selling things they believe in, and when the “product” was me, back in 2012 I couldn’t think of a product I believed less in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what changed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full answer is “many things” but I want to focus on one particular thing – my view of what the networking relationship could be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish I had a particular “aha” moment I could point to, and I am almost certain I had some help arriving at this thought, but I began to think of networking not as “how can this person help me” but “what knowledge do I have that can help this person?”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I started to view things through this lens, I had already worked at a very large financial services company, and while I wasn’t interested in working there any more, I still knew plenty of people who still worked there. Possibly the person I was talking to needed something from my<\/strong> network. Or they could benefit from some of my other skills – public speaking, writing, technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at networking as an opportunity to help others instead of asking others to help me gave me the boost I needed to get over the anxiety of the process. If you find yourself feeling anxious about it, try reframing things this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addendum: I have had the books of Orville Pierson<\/a> recommended to me in the past regarding both networking and general career search skills. He is full of great advice about networking and I plan to write more about him in a future post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am an enthusiastic advocate of networking as a method to identify contacts that can help you progress professionally. I have not always been this way, however. Until 2012, I was filled with anxiety at the prospect of reaching out to anyone to talk about my skills and what I might offer a prospective employer. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career","tag-networking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colinprincipe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}