Networking tends to feel like a chore: formal, a little awkward and mostly transactional.
As college students, we attend career fairs, networking lunches and connect with people on LinkedIn in hopes of advancing our careers, or just starting them. Sometimes those relationships end after one conversation, leaving us wondering if they were worth having in the first place.
Part of what makes formal networking uncomfortable is the pressure to make a good impression in a short amount of time. These conversations can be a starting point, but meaningful relationships rarely develop from a single interaction.
Recruiting events can help us meet professionals, but they’re only one way of building a network.
In college, we’re networking all the time without even realizing it.
Through our classmates, professors, friends and campus activities, we’re forming connections that develop over time. We have opportunities to get to know people’s personalities, interests and goals through shared experiences, something a 30-minute coffee chat can’t always authentically offer.
We often think of networking as something separate from our personal lives, overlooking how the relationships we build every day can influence our professional futures.
A classmate might eventually become a colleague. A professor could become a mentor, or the person who convinces us to take a class we end up loving. A friendship might introduce us to an entirely new industry, or a new way of seeing things.
These relationships aren’t necessarily formed with professional intentions, but that doesn’t make them any less valuable.
We never know where they’ll lead; our connections have connections.
Wearing a Lehigh sweatshirt to the airport might spark a conversation with an alum. Maybe they work somewhere we’d like to learn more about.
Even something as silly as a cornhole competition can be networking in disguise. We’re getting to know someone through a shared experience without thinking of it as networking.
These moments might not lead to a job offer, a new internship or even a second conversation. That doesn’t make them a waste of time. Not every person we meet has to play a role in our professional future for the interaction to have value.
And there’s nothing wrong with recognizing that connections can lead to opportunities. But that also doesn’t mean we should approach every relationship wondering what we might get out of it.
When we’re so focused on making the right professional connections, we risk overlooking the relationships we’re already forming. The relationships we build through ordinary interactions can be just as influential as those we deliberately seek out.
Recognizing this might also change how we approach everyday relationships. We might be more willing to get to know someone we sit next to in class or continue a conversation with someone we just met.
Every interaction gives us an opportunity to learn something, whether it’s about another person’s experiences, a different perspective or an opportunity we didn’t know existed. Not every connection will lead to something professional, but that doesn’t mean we have nothing to gain from it.
According to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, loneliness and social isolation increase the risk of premature death by 26% and 29%, respectively.
Networking might be boring, but it can make you live longer.
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