How To Use Networking To Explore New Career Options

Welcome to my series dedicated to helping you find your ideal job using my 5-Step Career Design Framework. This is the framework I used to go from stuck and frustrated in an unfulfilling legal career to feeling clear, confident, and fulfilled as an executive coach. You can download the Career Design Guide here. You can go to Part 1 of the series here.

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When I was a lawyer looking to make a career change, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do next. But after going through a specific internal reflection process which I described in the previous article I had some good ideas about how my values, interests, and strengths aligned with various industries and roles.

However, I wasn’t going to make a career decision based on a superficial understanding of these new roles. I wanted an insider perspective. I had to speak with people who were doing the work to hear what it was really like. I had to do my research and explore new career options before coming to any conclusions.

Networking Can Feel Scary

But reaching out to people whether you know them or not can feel scary and vulnerable. Networking can feel overwhelming for a lot of reasons. I commonly hear the following questions and concerns from my clients:

• Will people really help me?
• What do I say?
• What if they say no?
• I don't like asking for help.
• I don't like bothering people.
• I don't know anyone in the roles I'm interested in.

In this article, I want to introduce you to step 2 of my 5-Step Career Design Framework.

Step 2: Connect

Step 2 Connect is about getting over your fear of networking and connecting with people who do what you think you want to do. Getting to hear the day-to-day experiences of people in these roles will help you determine if these roles are right for you or not.

Connect To Learn Not to Impress

To get over any fear and insecurity around networking you have to reframe your thoughts. Your goal is to learn about new career options, not to impress people with your knowledge about those career options.

"But I don't want to sound stupid. What if they ask me a question and I don't know the answer?" I hear you say.

I agree. You don't want to sound stupid but take the pressure off of yourself to sound like you know exactly what you want to do. Instead, you should approach this conversation like you would a research project.

People are generally willing to talk about their experiences and share lessons learned. Your job is to ask them questions about their experience so that you can learn if their role is right for you.

Send The Right Outreach Message

The trick here is to make sure that your outreach message is clear about what you want. You are asking people for information, not a job. While looking for a new role is your ultimate goal, at this stage of your exploration process you are first looking for information to validate whether you want to work in this role or not.

Here is an example of a message I would send to someone on LinkedIn if I were looking for a role in talent development at a tech company:

“Hi X, I’m an executive coach who works with leaders in the tech industry. I am considering going in-house in a talent development role. I see you have been in talent development at Google for the last 7 years. Would you be open to connecting so I could learn about your experience? Best, Mo”

This message is short and straight to the point. I introduce myself, let them know why I’m reaching out, and make the ask. Notice that I don’t hide the fact that I’m looking for a new role, but I make it clear that I’m not asking for a job, instead, I am looking to learn about this person’s experience.

My networking approach helped me learn about new career options and led to me meeting the right people that helped me land my first role outside of law and it has been my go-to approach for making career moves ever since.

To learn more about my outreach strategy and what questions to ask in an informational interview download the 5-Step Career Design Guide.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mo Chanmugham, Esq., ACC is a former entertainment lawyer turned executive career coach and the founder of MGC Coaching. He helps ambitious, purpose-driven professionals who are feeling stuck gain the clarity and confidence they need to find better jobs and become better leaders.