In this virtual session, host of the Build Your Dream Network podcast Kelly Hoey, discusses one of the most stress-inducing, yet critical components of a career search: networking. Watch the video to learn how to build, expand or reconnect with your network.
Kelly Hoey's career story is one of transformation - through networking. With her law degree and business cards in hand, Kelly advanced along a predictable corporate career path until a unique opportunity in 2009 encouraged her to stop playing it safe. Working alongside the visionary leader of a global business network for women, co-founding a startup accelerator, angel investing, an interim CMO position (and reporting to a founder/CEO twenty+ years younger) – these roles are all part of Kelly’s career journey to becoming a published author, keynote speaker, and host of the Build Your Dream Network podcast.
0:00 Katie Mack: Alright, we are live. Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of Unity Hour. As always, we are so grateful that you are here today and have taken time out of this, which out of your very busy week for yourself to really focus on yourself and your development professionally. We're really excited about today's session. But before we get into it, as always, we're gonna do a quick little PSA, we build these Unity Hours for all of you, so if you have feedback, suggestions on anything you'd like to see here, please please please shoot us an email.
We are checking that inbox and love your suggestions and thoughts, 'cause you guys know what you need, best, additionally, for those of you who might need any help, might have been impacted by any virus-related furloughs or layoffs...We also have our Unity Coaching Program that is currently available. We have a stable of amazing career coaches and resume professionals and mentors that have so generously donated their time to our community, and they're offering out free coaching sessions for people who need it, so we can drop the link to that program in the live chat.
1:30 Katie Mack: And you can check out what the program's all about... We're here to help, we wanna make things easier for you in these challenging times. As always, I guess I can introduce myself at the beginning, I'm Katie, I'm on the community team here at The Mom Project, and today's session is the art of networking. This is something that...networking is not necessarily a dirty word, but we've heard from a lot of you that it's a bit of a grey area, people don't know where to begin, people don't know exactly what it means, people aren't sure how to begin networking if they haven't been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years or ever.
So we figured this session would clear a lot of that up for all of you, and we are so grateful to have Kelly Hoey here today, who is an author and podcast host of Build Your Dream network, she has tremendous experience and really all the leading insights that you could possibly need to navigate this world of networking, so we're anchoring this whole chat in questions that were submitted by all of you, but as always, please, please, please feel free to drop more questions into the live chat, we're checking it and reading those in real time, so we can pepper some of those questions into this conversation, so we can get started. Hi Kelly!
3:02 Kelly Hoey: Hey, how are you?
Katie Mack: Great, so glad to have you here. And yeah, I think we're gonna kick things off with just, I think, a basic question, let's start from the top. What defines successful networking?
3:22 Kelly Hoey: Okay, Okay, here's where we're gonna start that... Write down on a piece of paper what you think networking is, and if you think it's that dirty schmoozing. Oh my God, I need to do that 'cause I am in need of a job, a business lead, if you're like, Oh my God, it's this power imbalance, it's this icky thing, whatever you think it is. The negative ones, write it down, and then I want you to rip that piece of paper up once you've written it down, 'cause to me, Katie the successful networking is how you show up every day.
And every human interaction to me, is an opportunity to build a network versus thinking of it as this other thing that we pull out, only when we need it. You never know when you're gonna need relationships, you never know who in your network and community of relationships who can help you, so do you show up every day as someone that other people are gonna wanna help. And part of the reason I think of this in this way, that might sound a little bit woo woo, Or whatever else. I started my career as an attorney.
4:33 Kelly Hoey: And for any members of The Mom Project community who know that world and probably know it intimately themselves, your time is, what you spend... You have to bill hours. Your productivity, everything about you is how much work are you doing at the same time you're expected to build relationships...
I graduated from law school in 1991. So there was no, there was no Blackberry. For those who remember those, we may be, Oh, we had a Palm Pilot a few years later, we didn't have the internet, but you had to build relationships, and so how could you do that when you had this conflict of... I need to be behind my desk doing work. And so every phone call, every voicemail, every piece of client work delivered, every little touch point had to be meaningful, because I didn't have...like any attorney, I didn't have an abundance of time to be running around and networking.
So how do you look at it differently? So for all the women on this session, think about your life and you think about it in the pre-covid days, you can think about it, these post-pandemic days where so many things are restricted. Where are all the touch points in your life where you interact with other people, and there's probably Community Service, there's probably volunteering, there may be church, there may be a sports league, there may be you know mom and me, baby and me there, stop and pause, you probably get your haircut, maybe you go to a gym.
6:16 Kelly Hoey: All of those things are networking and chances to build a relationship, so the first thing with...for me, successful networking is taking that old paradigm and that old notion of what networking is and flushing it.
6:33 Katie Mack: Love it. It's true, I mean, it's true. When you think about it as a separate thing, you need to work on it’s really hard. Right, you can weave it into what you're doing all day...
Kelly Hoey: Right...we do it every day. We do, however we show up.
6:51 Kelly Hoey: And I know we're gonna talk about this later if people haven't been in the workforce for a while, but who are you the person in the workforce when you were working... Were you that collegial team player that others might be quite happy to hear from again, but we'll get to that.
7:09 Katie Mack: Yeah, no, good insight. Do you have any specific Dos and Don'ts around this that you wanna share or are we gonna...
7:19 Kelly Hoey: We’ll weave it in...those will come out in all of this, and don't fall back on that old notion of networking, that's what... we’ll leave it at there.
7:28 Katie Mack: So as somebody new to networking, how should they get started? Should they... like you said, start with people they already know?
7:39 Kelly Hoey: Always, always start with who you already know, who already cares about you, who already knows what you know, who already knows like the challenges you have and may wanna help, that doesn't mean you may not have to build new networks, one of the case studies and examples in my book, Varelie Croes, she was like moving up the ladder, one of the big four accounting firms, and she wanted to do something different and she knew her nearest and dearest, the family friends would be like, Are you nuts? You're just about to make partner, what are you doing? Don't give up the job.
And so she knew she had to build a new network of like minds, but that's when she already kind of took a look out and said, Who immediately around me understands this change, but start with who you already know, and don't assume that someone you already know can't be helpful. So by way of another example, one of my friends, pivotal introduction, came from a personal trainer. You know what? So do you talk to those people about what you're doing, think about who you're interacting with and who they are interacting with, because this personal trainer was kind of a linchpin and kind of said, Oh, I think one of my other clients is involved in that...
9:00 Kelly Hoey: Shall I find out and let you know? 'cause I could make the introduction. So are you sharing what you're doing, are you sort of crossing these boundaries, so to speak, 'cause often enough, we think someone is just my personal trainer, just my hairdresser, just my... the “Just My” category, so we don't share these things. The third example, and this one kinda goes both ways, so when you think about how you're sharing things with your network, part of the sharing is how are you listening and how are you taking an interest in somebody else 'cause that's a really key pivotal piece.
And one of the stories I absolutely love was a woman who returned to the workforce, she was an attorney, took time out to have children, returned to the workforce and was working in a smaller firm. Her neighbor understood that she had gone back to work, and the neighbor one day was like, Hey, you've gone back to work, how’s it going? Now, think about just hearing that question and you might go... Yeah, you'd say, Oh, it's going well. Thanks very much. How are you, right? She's like, it's going really well. Thank you for asking.
10:03 Kelly Hoey: This other person, this guy was kind of like, Oh, tell me more. Right, so when someone gives you an answer, listen in on it. Because when he did that, she leaned into the conversation and she talked about what she was doing at work as opposed to like, Oh, we could just... We could just brush it off, Oh it's... Oh, it's just really good. And how...we can shift the focus off ourself.
So don't be afraid to talk about it. So this woman talked enthusiastically about what she was doing, and the neighbor finally said, Oh, he said, You know what, I know how hard your job is when you... So someone understanding somebody else's job, like what goes on in their place of work, and so he said, I know what it's like, lawyers and how you have to bring in business, and I know how your industry works, and this guy happened to work for a pharmaceutical company, and he said, You know what, I know how hard it is, so let me help you out, let me do something for you, it's probably not big, but it's probably enough to keep these new people you're working for kinda happy.
11:10 Kelly Hoey: Shows that you’ve got the business development chops and stuff. I could leave the story there, but I'm gonna give you the punch line on it 'cause it's really kind of funny, that little thing, that little thing you didn't think was gonna go anywhere, ended up being the silicone breast implant litigation... Wow, the largest class action at the time in US history. But the point of the story is, you can probably pitch yourself in similar exchanges where you didn't ask a next question or you just... Oh, work is great, how are the kids? Hey, my job is great. How was your day?
Rather than saying, I can have a conversation with my neighbor about my job, and guess what, I can have a conversation that I listen to about their job, because who knows, the neighbor might have brought up something that enabled you to tap into someone in your network that you had been wondering how to tap into. So listen, share, don’t be afraid of being enthusiastic about what it is you did or want to do...
12:13 Katie Mack: Yeah, no, I think that's really important. We've said this in the past, I will say it again, but it's... talking about it makes it more real. As soon as you kinda hear yourself talking about it, I think there's a bit more of accountability that all of a sudden kind of like is there like, Oh, I’m speaking about this to another person rather than just thinking about it. So yeah, that story is...
12:41 Kelly Hoey: It cracks me up to this day. 'cause there is an element of this dude kinda going, it's not gonna turn into anything big... Oh no, only the largest class action in US history at the time. Yeah, but anyhow, but the point was he wanted to help someone... he knew and he knew and understood their pain, and we'll probably come back into that theme as we pursue all this other stuff.
13:04 Katie Mack: So kinda building from that, are there nuances that you can share around networking depending on the format, in person versus digital, I know we're kind of in a unique situation currently, would love to hear your thoughts on that.
13:22 Kelly Hoey: I think these things should work seamlessly side by side, and too often we think it's like one or the other, and there's the marketing of ourselves online versus how am I human online? 'cause what we've seen with generations you've seen before pandemic covid, some of the biggest adoption on social networks was coming from the boomer plus generation, some of the increase in real-life networking was coming from the younger... The digital first generation.
So while one generation was getting off, getting some often real person online to connect with their network, the other one was saying, I need to figure out how to deal with humans, so put me in a co-working space and give me maker spaces, and I wanna do whatever. So I think these things have always been sort of merging to this middle that we work together, both things, so the relationships that you've had in the past, or the relationships that you've made in real life, how can you enhance them with the digital touch points and vice versa, how do we use digital to... I wanna say sort of mimic in the way that we would behave in person, so by that, I mean, you know, sometimes you meet someone once and you're instantly friends, but don't assume the easy click to connect means that you're connected, right?
So don't assume that following someone automatically enables you to throw a big ask in their face, 'cause would you... I’ll think Twitter, for example, and I always think of Twitter like a cocktail party. Would you walk up to someone you had just seen and maybe said something at a cocktail party, would you immediately rush up to them and in a loud voice, ask for work? Probably not. So why would you do that on Twitter?
You know...The case study, the example I refer to you all the time, particularly with social media, is and why I'm a fan of it for all the flaws of social media... Why, I'm a fan of it. Because for women, it democratizes our access. You know, you show your expertise, you show your the type of person who shares good ideas, you show that you’re the person you're willing to... Eager... people wanna talk to you. And we can get into the rooms that were previously closed to us, and one of the examples I use, and I use it frequently, is the author Tom Peters. So Tom wrote In Search of Excellence, best-selling business book for like 40 years.
15:56 Kelly Hoey: God bless. All of us authors would dream for that. But Tom is very active on Twitter, and he and I have become friends because of Twitter, and as a result of becoming friends on Twitter, he wrote the forward to the paperback edition of my book. Now, when I say we became friends on Twitter, that was like a six or seven-year journey, of following someone liking their stuff, having that little banter online, like being the person that someone wants to invite into a conversation, and gets excited to see when they come back to a conversation.
So think about it that way, as opposed to just being, Oh, I can just quick link and get in their face and ask them for that like as a woman that's the behavior we avoid when we go into bars and other places. So don't be that person online. So think about... Digital as enhancing in real life, thinking about how in, in real life, can continue to be engaged by using digital, digital. And the other thing I'd say is advice I give in my book, each of the social platforms we’re the same person our same personal brand, but we bring a different tone of conversation.
17:11 Kelly Hoey: So I think of LinkedIn as the office, Facebook as friends and family. Instagram is probably a mixture or both, and Twitter is the cocktail party. So say it’s something like you... You've just gotten... Katie you’ve just gotten a promotion. Congratulations, I don't know if the rest of the folks at The Mom Project know that, but I've just promoted you.
How you would describe that promotion on LinkedIn and that might be thinking about LinkedIn, that's work. Maybe that's your alma mater from college, maybe that's your past work colleagues, how you would tell them about a job promotion versus how you would tell your family around the dinner table versus how you would do it if you were hanging out with your girlfriends in Starbucks, it's... Same news, same information, but the language is nuanced, and so understanding that with digital platforms, I think will hold you in good stead.
18:08 Katie Mack: Yeah, no, that's important, and I love how you break it down and make it akin to different spaces, 'cause I think it's so important, like...
18:16 Kelly Hoey: Yeah, yeah, I always sort of think about physical spaces when I think about... Alright, just because it is Twitter or just because it is Instagram, or just because it is Facebook or LinkedIn. There's human beings on the other. I wanna talk to human beings, and just because it's an avatar or just because it's 280 characters doesn't mean it can't be a human interaction, and how do I make it human? And so part of that for me is the visualization of the physical space...
18:45 Katie Mack: I love that. That's so powerful. So I guess kinda going a layer deeper on that, so right now with us kind of being in this remote-only, digital-only space, there's a lot of people out there right now that are all of a sudden needing to reignite their networks or build a network, and yeah, do you have any thoughts about how to really stand out and make an impact in this digital-only space we’re in right now?
19:15 Kelly Hoey: Yeah, let's just talk about some simple things. First off, I... First impression for a lot of people before covid-19 could have been your digital presence, so before you do anything, go Google yourself, what shows up? Just... the first impression is not necessarily the email, that's what they do with it, they go and click over and look at your... they go...what?
I don't know this round...you know, blue black, think about... Think about the blue background, white outline, no face or the head shot that is taken from 20 feet away and not enough details on a LinkedIn profile to make any sense, it's like... Go and say what the first impression I send that email. What do people find? So I say the first networking thing is check your online profile and make sure it's what you want it to be.
And if you need to clean it up, if you need to put things... Some things on private, whatever, and I would say do it across the board, because you may be part of niche networks like this one, with your kid's school, with after school activities, with community, is it all working in unison? Because your next opportunity may come from mommy and me, it may come from that as opposed to the polished LinkedIn profile, so in terms of where to start right now, I'd say start there.
20:59 Kelly Hoey: And maybe this goes back, Katie, to being a lawyer and having that limitation... Constraints on my ability to network. So I like to say I'm an inside the box thinker 'cause alright, here's the box, we have... What do we do with it? So these are the tools we have. So fix up that online profile, make sure that's working for you.
Secondly, these are the tools we have. So when there is a chat function on an event, do you... and sometimes they're public and people can see them, do you introduce yourself to other people, do you treat it like walking into a conference... Hey, I'm Kelly, I'm from Manhattan, Creative Mornings is an amazing community for this in terms of this generosity in this dialogue that goes on.
When there is a public chat function, say who you are... Hey, I'm Kelly, I'm an author, I live in New York. My questions for the panelist is...because other people are reading that chat function right now, you've networked, not only with the panelists and the moderator and the event organized organizers, you've networked with everybody, seeing everyone else out there, so start using these imaginative ways of this existing technology and then the third piece I'd say on this Katie.
The most brilliant part of all the digital is we now have all the information in front of us, and as digital as within real life networking, we all worry about what we're gonna say, worry about how you're gonna listen, because with everyone sharing information, you can gather a whole lot of insights on who someone is or what robs their world, what time of day they're busy, and in all of that information, you might find a really strong and powerful way to connect with someone that wasn’t evident before.
22:55 Katie Mack: Yeah, yeah, that's important. You keep hitting on that, the listening piece, it's not just a one-way thing, so... yeah.
23:04 Kelly Hoey: Yeah, exactly. Go go back to Tom Peters, he always writes the word listen on his hand when it goes into a meeting, so he actually listens. But yeah, we sort of forget that we leave so much data out there now that if you just kind of think about someone you wanna connect with the various aspects of their life and go and look, this is sort of... When stalking on the internet is the right thing to do. Kind of look around and see what they say and do.
You can get an idea of how to communicate with someone, and it can be as simple as you say you are someone who’s actively posting. Some of the people you wanna connect with and talk to about a job, what are they liking and talking about... With what you're posting, what time of day? Back in the day when people went into offices, I noticed with someone in my network, she would always tag and like certain posts of mine at a certain time of day, and not later in the day, and then I just sat there and I thought, let me think about her work in her life, and then I sort of like, Okay, I'm gonna make a calculated guess, my guess is she goes into the office early, grabs a coffee, sits down, part of before she organizes her day, she does some of her own professional networking on LinkedIn.
I bet if I called her right now, she’d answer the phone. Bingo. I was right. Right, so it's like, take all the pieces like a sleuth like sort of Nancy Drew, right be a little sleuth and put the pieces together and make a calculated guess based on that specific person you're trying to reach
24:46 Katie Mack: I mean even... I feel like we got a lot of questions on like cold LinkedIn connection outreach, which is a whole different thing, but do it, put a little... Don't just hit... do some research, figure out what you can offer to them and throw it out there to... very helpful. So, kind of shifting gears a little bit. Seems like a lot of people out there would consider themselves an introvert, but they still need to network, so what sort of tips do you have for introverts that can help them level up their networking?
25:33 Kelly Hoey: Okay so for all the introverts. Here's my first tip. When someone sends you an article that tells you how you can network like an extrovert, I want you to hit delete... I don't want you to ignore it. And here's why, so Katie, I'm writing my book, it's all case study driven, and I selected examples where people I had seen that they had, I wanna say, moved up the corporate ladder, landed a board position, cold email, 'cause we can get to the cold email example, they built a book of business, crowdfunded successfully, and I had them work back their stories.
Because for me, the thread that I could see in their lives was networking and networks of relationships, and not running around schmoozing madly and handing out business cards. But how over the course of their careers had they purposely built relationships and networks, and intentionally networked... I didn't ask them one question, I didn't ask anybody what their personality type was, and it wasn't until I was getting the answers back that I was like, Oh great, I've interviewed a bunch of introverts. And like 80% of the people I interviewed in my book are introverts.
Katie Mack: Yes, yes.
26:49 Kelly Hoey: So yeah, I think in this day and age where we are time-poor, where we are 24/7, where we are bombarded with information, FOMO, all of that kind of stuff, people who are more deliberate and intentional and focused are better network-builders. Now, we all need someone in our network, who's got the gift of the gap because the next time we're all sitting around a table together, and it's Uncle Harold who no one wants to sit next to and make small chat with, you're gonna wanna have that person with the gift of the gap to sit next to them, but do not confuse the apparent ease of working a room with being a good networker... For me, a good networker is someone who is caring about other people and has to build a community around them that they can tap into and help. So yeah, so introverts don't change.
27:55 Katie Mack: That's an important distinction. It's like even it goes in a meeting, just 'cause somebody's talking the whole time doesn't mean they're necessarily saying the right things or not the best idea in the room. Yeah, I think there's power in being intentional and strategic and very deliberate about what you're doing there.
28:17 Kelly Hoey: Yeah, yeah, well, you know, there's sometimes when you do need to throw it all out there because when I think of my own example, when I started a start-up accelerator, I mean, you would have thought I like had my chicken with my head cut off, running around New York at every single start-up event, but I needed to figure out which ones were worth my time, and I could only do that by standing in the room, so I mean, I've had four or five events in a night, but I would walk in...
And if I immediately was like, eh, I'm out of here. And then I knew where to focus, so sometimes you gotta start with that big marketing funnel or that big networking funnel and say, Right, here's the places that's worth me spending my energy, my time, my limited resources, but yeah, otherwise it's like... I'm sort of like a three-year-old child. Why, why? Anytime someone wants me to do something, I need to understand who and why and what is going on so that I know it's worth my time.
29:15 Katie Mack: For sure. I feel like, especially right now, everybody's so pressed for time and space to focus on anything, so yeah, that being able to answer the issues... So moving on to the next question. A big part of what we do here at The Mom Project is helping women re-enter the workforce after taking a pause for two, five, 10, 15 plus years. What networking tips can you share for those who maybe don't have active professional connections or have been out of it for a while and are looking to...get back out there and get back into it?
30:00 Kelly Hoey: Well, first of all, you do have networks and you have networks that can lead to professional opportunities, don't just assume they’re your friends don't just assume that it's the other moms in a group like, listen and talk to other people and let them know what you're up to... Because that's how you start planting those seeds and those people who have seen and interacted with you again are more invested in your future than fill in the blank, someone you know, whatever.
So you have those networks. You have alumni networks and not just ones from college, but there is probably formal or informal alumni networks of places you used to work, you know, you can find in those... On LinkedIn, you can find those on...networks, you can find those on Facebook, go and see what they're up to and about... Are there those networks there that you can tap into and leverage and use those? The other thing I'd say is get really clear on what it is that you're looking for, and why I say that is, we're already... You've noted from staying at home, we're all pretty damn busy…
Katie Mack: Really.
Kelly Hoey: Like, how’d my week get so full like...God anyway.
31:18 Kelly Hoey: Anyway, so all of a sudden it's like, Where am I going on all of this... So you want...
Katie Mack: You were saying get clear on what...
Kelly Hoey: Oh yes, thank you. So I'm like, all of a sudden I was like, Where was I going? Thank you. So get clear on what it is you wanna ask, because we are also busy, someone just landing in an inbox and asking a very general question, now creates stress on the person receiving it, and the clearest example of that is asking for a job. Or saying, Hey, can you help me? I'm looking for a job. If you just stop and pause and think, how does that make you feel?
And you're like, I don't know what to do when someone gave me... 'cause it begs a whole bunch of other questions, and making a whole bunch of other questions involves mental energy, which requires physical energy, which nobody's got right now, and so you're just gonna write, there's that level of fatigue, which makes this more urgent, so decide exactly what you need and do not be afraid of being specific, so instead of saying, I'm looking for a job, what is the exact job you're looking for? And once you can define what's the exact job you're looking for, you can start thinking about your inner network, who in your network may or may be likely to be somehow connected in something in that world?
32:50 Kelly Hoey: So if I said, I'm looking for a job at Goldman Sachs. Alright, who, in my network is connected in the investment banking world? Or there may be someone who's connecting at Goldman Sachs, I'll try that route when that doesn't work, who may be connected in Investment Banking world directly, who may be indirectly? And then who are just people when they say, Hey, how's it going, Kelly? It's like, good. I've really got clarity on where I wanna go for a job search.
I really want, and I saw a posting and it was for senior vice president of financial products at Goldman Sachs, and that's the job I want, and they all may look at you and go, Great you got clarity. That's super. Wow, you know, but you’ve now planted the seed, and who knows who they're talking to a day later, two days later, two weeks later, they're like, Oh, oh, I found someone at Goldman Sachs... You wanna meet them, right. So get really specific, think of it like a dart board, when you play darts, us, we always aim for the bulls-eye, no one plays darts to win by firing out on the outer edges, right.
34:01 Kelly Hoey: You may hit the outer edge, but the point is aim for the bulls eye when you're asking your network and then you give them a radius to give you answers, but if you're just sort of out there and looking for a job. Is that Walmart or Walgreens, or like, what are you looking for? And that's too hard for them at any point in time, and extremely so now.
34:23 Katie Mack: Yeah, that's something that comes up and even the past sessions here or from our talent team that's working to place our community in jobs, so it's like when you're applying and telling your why me pitch why you should be considered for that role... Yeah, the more specific you can get, the easier can we get on them without having to come back to it a bunch of questions 'cause... Exactly. Like nobody has time right now.
Kelly Hoey: No, no, yeah, exactly. And let them... Again, this goes back like why not aim for that bulls-eye even if you're talking to your personal hairdresser... Personal trainer. Your hairdresser, right.
34:57 Kelly Hoey: Hey, what's going on with your job search? You know what, I've narrowed it down. Here's the... Here's what I'm looking for. They may look at you and go, I have no idea what that is. Or they may say, Oh, my neighbor does that. Oh, but she's not at HSBC, she's over at Bank of America. Would you wanna talk to her even though the roles at HSBC... Oh, hot damn. Yes, please, make the intro, so be specific and don't be afraid of sharing it.
35:26 Katie Mack: No, that's great insight. So kind of piggybacking off of that a little bit, what... If you want to re-engage with colleagues or connections that you haven't spoken with in a while, how can you reignite those without coming off as like desperate or... Just so out of left field, I guess.
35:52 Kelly Hoey: Yeah, yeah. Alright, so let me give you the tale of two in-mail messages... Okay, so these are personal ones, this happened to me. And they came from around the same time, both from colleagues, former colleagues from when I had worked for a global law firm, both in the capacity of professional development and then in marketing. So one was a marketing colleague and one was associate at the firm who I had been their manager of professional development, and it would probably have been seven or eight years since I'd seen either of them. Okay, so there you got the context.
The marketing person... This is all happening on LinkedIn. So everyone visualize that. Hi, Kelly, what are you up to? I'm like, Oh, this is interesting, right? Personality is showing themselves through... I said, Well, I wrote a book. Comes back, no way. What's it about... And I'm thinking to myself, we’re on LinkedIn, you don't have the courtesy of going and looking at my profile, and then there was like the big juicy ask to help someone out from someone that he wanted to do a favor for, and I was like, leopard doesn't change its spots does it?
37:15 Kelly Hoey: Right. And so... But okay, so you don't wanna be that person. Use the tools. Find the information. The second example... Okay, let's go back to remember... Same firm. Same time period. Hey, Kelly. And it was like, it was like a beautiful hand-written note, and it was, Hey, I've been watching what you've been doing, and congratulations on this and not saying you have to blow smoke up people’s you know whats but she acknowledged what I had been up to. And the career changes.
And she said now... And part of it is like, Hey, Kelly, you may not remember me. This is when we worked together. By the way, everything you've done and everything you've done since we worked together, Oh my God, all those changes... Whatever... By the way, this is what's happened with my career since we worked together, talked about how her life had changed and then boom, Where the intersection was, my life was very much in the startup world at the time, hers was in the start-up world, and she had a question and she said, If it wouldn't be an imposition... Here's the question I have, and I'd love, you know, 'cause Hey, you are the person...
38:33 Kelly Hoey: And she was, I was the person she used to go to with career questions before she said, I kind of would trust your advice on this. And I'm kinda grateful that you... Anyway, you get the point. I was so ecstatic to get... It’d been seven or eight years, and it was really, really nice to get this message, and this was not someone who I was staffed on, I was like her Manager of Professional Development, so I saw her as an incoming associate, and then I had to do performance reviews and I had to be like, I'm sorry, you haven't done this stuff, so it was just on the basis of who... reputation and who showed up at work every day and kinda was pleasant and collegial and all that, but we weren't buddy pals, so this wasn't like, Oh, the guy was a kind of a douche and this woman was nice. You know, who do you trust?
Who do you wanna give your social capital to, who produced really good work and was the kind of colleague others wanted to work for, but at the same time, this intersection of all this information, so on a cold emailing one that I think of as senior executive advisor who I was interviewing, he had noted that he was meeting for the first time with a new hire who got into the pipeline to be a hired advisor because of a very thoughtful cold email.
39:58 Kelly Hoey: And again, whether it's your network that you're reaching out to a former colleague or for a cold email, like doing that research and showing why you're the one... Why the personal interest, what you know about that other person's business, what's on... What's going on with their life? And the intersection with a very specific ask, and that is something people can deal with and that is something they really do appreciate.
Katie Mack: Yeah, I guess if you ever get those random messages whatever you're just like, no context, just super blunt, and it's like, What is this how the whole engagement is gonna go, right?
Kelly Hoey: You and I were chatting before, and as you said, I put together a list of resources for all the attendees and anyone who signed up and couldn't make it today, and one of those on there is a piece... It was for courts. I'm gonna make sure I've got it on here. I'm sure I put it on here. Yes, it was for courts. And they asked me, When do you accept a LinkedIn request to connect? And whatever. And I said, Well, it's really easy for me. Someone doesn't put the context, I just delete it, because now you've given me work to do.
41:16 Kelly Hoey: How do I know you? When did we meet? Whatever, and it doesn't have to be much. It could be very simply like me emailing you after this on LinkedIn and just saying, Oh my god, Katie loved doing the webinar with you. Thank you so much, let me know if there's anything else The Mom Project community needs from me. That's all it needs to be. It doesn't need to be some big long story and all that kind of stuff, but no, those random ones on LinkedIn, delete, delete, delete.
41:43 Katie Mack: I feel like maybe they work for some people 'cause they happen every day, but yes, I think... Yeah, just even one thoughtful line to accompany it clears up a whole heck of a lot.
41:56 Kelly Hoey: Oh, you think if 80-90% of the world is just doing, Hey, let's connect on LinkedIn and just buying that lazy route, that effort just takes you into another stratosphere.
42:10 Katie Mack: It’s true though. If 80% of people out there just hitting the connect button and that's it, you're ready by typing in basically anything at all. Any context. Yeah, you're ready to... Yeah, yeah, it's a really good way to think about that. I mean that...
42:28 Kelly Hoey: It's so sad that the bar is so low, but from all my years, listen, this is gonna be the thing that's gonna keep me employed talking about networking 'cause we’re humans we’re weird we’re squirrely, what we like one day is not what we... Like this is what makes networking hard, and there's so much trite advice out there that says, Oh, if you just do these 10 things... No, we're human beings. We're weird. We're unpredictable like, No. And so this is what makes networking hard it... And the day you think it's easy, you probably check yourself and say, Am I doing enough?
Katie Mack: Interesting, interesting.
43:08 Katie Mack: I mean, yeah, I guess it's something you should constantly be thinking about and revising what you're talking about, we always... We say that to our community, whether it's your resume or your picture, your vision for what you wanna accomplish, that's changing week to week, month a month, year to year…
43:31 Kelly Hoey: Gonna throw out this idea for when we're all back together again, so... Years ago, so looking and thinking about the friends I hadn't seen, it was like, Why am I... Oh, here's why I'm not seeing them. They've all had children, they adopted or they... had kids or their kid. And I was like, This is why we're not seeing them. What am I gonna do about it? So my ex and I used to have these events that I used to referred to as cocktails and kids, and it was sort of 4:30 to 6:30, 7 o'clock.
I made sure there was dinner for the kids, around the dining room table, I would do cocktails for the adults in the living room and I said to the adults, I'm feeding your children, I'm not feeding you. And if you wanna get a babysitter for yourselves and drop your kids off at home and meet my ex and I for dinner at a restaurant where we've made a reservation, go right ahead. But otherwise, you're all getting kicked out of here at 7:15, 'cause we've got a 7:30 dinner reservation, but I wanted to see you, so here's how I'm going to do that.
44:29 Kelly Hoey: It had never crossed my mind to do that sort of thing, but it was like, put the pieces either, why am I not seeing these people? Oh right, they all have kids. I can make chicken fingers, I can do that, I can make mac n cheese, I can get kid food in the house, I can make this happen. So you always have to think, Okay, what would be helpful to someone else, and maybe that helpful thing at some point is gonna be helping them, I don't know, clean out a garage, maybe networking with your friend is doing their kids math homework 'cause you're the math person I don't know. That's why it's hard 'cause you've already... You gotta take the attention off yourself for a moment...
45:07 Katie Mack: It's so true. It is a give and a take.
Kelly Hoey: Constantly.
Katie Mack: Well, cool. We have a few questions that have come from the chat. As Kelly said, she has curated this amazing resource guide that we are going to email out to everybody after this ends, so yeah, a lot more pieces of advice and articles to read that’ll really provide you guys with additional clarity and insight... 'cause obviously we could go on for hours.
45:38 Kelly Hoey: Yeah, I'll just say before you get to the question, 'cause some of the things when I look through the questions in advance, there's questions on how to handle informational interviews, ways to showcase your skills and talents when you're pivoting or re-starting your career. There was questions on sending the cold email, there was a question on thanking context, there were some more questions on online networking, so between blog posts as well as podcast episodes, and for everyone watching and listening later, as I did note to Katie, I have a podcast.
I have put the times of how long the episodes are, 'cause the last thing anyone here needs to be told is I have an hour-long podcast... I don't have an hour-long podcast, my podcast is usually around 10 minutes, so you're gonna see 13 minutes, eight minutes, nine minutes, 'cause that's how short my podcast is, and if you take out the probably minute for the stuff at the front and the back, it's really short, really focused. Really simple.
46:38 Katie Mack: Great, I appreciate that you can digest it and not like...you know sometimes there’s just like so much information that's like I don't even know one key point to walk away with...
46:51 Kelly Hoey: Right, right, right. Or you put them on and you're like, Oh, okay, I'll just put it on when I'm doing errands or I'm doing...cleaning the kitchen or doing whatever, and then you miss so much of it. You know, so, yeah.
47:04 Katie Mack: Okay so here’s an interesting question, how to build a network in a new city where you don't know anyone, so if you're starting fresh...
47:12 Kelly Hoey: Oh yeah. That's a terrific question. Well, first of all, to go back to the people you already know, because they may have friends, relatives, they may have moved from there, they may be part of a community that is... Got locations there. So that's part of it is, don't think you don't have a network where you are now, there may be people in your network that can tap you into networks there.
There may be the networks you belonged to before that you could say, right. Hey, I was really involved with the YWCA in New York City. Is there a chapter... Is there a location now that I live in Tulsa, find out some of those things you did before, maybe going back to people who you collaborated... Volunteered with and saying, Hey, I moved and I'm so sorry I'm not there to be there for you. Here's where I am now. Do you know of any organizations because not-for-profits talk to each other, you know community service, spiritual organizations, they know people and who can they tap you into?
This is again where I'd say where you're on programs like this, where you can ask questions, that's why I also say, where you are and where you're from, and this happens...exact question happened on an event I did for Creative Mornings, and I said to everyone, while you're introducing yourself in the chat feature, please say hi, say hello and where you're from.
48:46 Kelly Hoey: And I said also, when you ask a question, please say, where are you from what you do and what your question is. And one of the attendees said, I'm from San Diego. I live in San Diego, and I'm wondering how you build a network network in a new city, and everyone's watching the chat, then the next thing you know, you get, Hey, I'm in San Diego, Oh I’m San Diego...I can help...hey here, I’ll message you. And I was like, Oh, right. Some of the stuff is already there. And just find these little nuanced ways, but start with who you know, start with activities you used to do in the city you were in before, and you had those close relationships, and see what starts from there.
49:33 Katie Mack: That's great, great. Another one that seems to seem to come in the chat, and I don't... You said you kind of included some points about this and what we're gonna be on, but anything you can share right now on this livestream about networking for a new industry that you are thinking about jumping into, but you have no connections into...
49:56 Kelly Hoey: Oh, I've been there and done that. I've been there and done that. Well, first of all, some of these industries and stuff, there's industry associations, there's organizations. Go and see what's going on with them, so many people doing free online, you might be able to kinda tap in and watch what's going on in that industry or that association without having to pay some heavy duty association fee or conference fee or all that kind of thing.
I'm just trying to think like, okay, so when I went back, so I was a lawyer and wanted to get over into the management side and realized, and this was in the same industry, but I didn't have the network to do it 'cause it was entirely word of mouth it was like, Okay, what's precisely what I wanna do? So I did informational interviews to narrow it down, so I had sort of thought I wanna be on the training, maybe recruiting, maybe the marketing, and I did a couple of informational interviews that people I already worked with set up, and then I could eliminate... I'm like, I don't wanna do that, I don't wanna be that, Okay, this is what I wanna do.
51:03 Kelly Hoey: And then it was, then I thought to myself, Alright, I wanna do this specific thing, professional development, where are places that... Where's the information on this? Where from my informational interviews, where were the gaps in my resume that I needed to fill, so I went and did some continuing professional studies, which then expanded my network to other people who... Oh, I'm in training and development, but I'm in an accounting firm. So there was that aspect of it.
And then I found out that some of these organizations, in terms of where you wanna network and meet the people you wanna call future colleagues, they have also... They have needs for volunteers even in the digital age, and so getting very much involved in... For me, it was an association of the bar of the City of New York, but that’s sort of a pivotal Industry Association, and then finding out I could volunteer and then I could really be networking doing things that way, but you could still do that even in the digital era, and then also look for who are the thought leaders who were the people talking about these things, where were their books and blogs and stuff, because I had sort of absorbed all that information so that then I could reach out to them for advice.
52:27 Kelly Hoey: Grounded in everything I'd already read and learned, because then I can ask them a better question. You know, I remember once interviewing someone, because when I ultimately landed the job and I needed to hire a mini me, and I said, Why do you want this job? And this person interviewing, I was like, Oh, it just looks like so much fun, and I thought, you haven't done your research. This is not going to happen.
But you know, versus the person who showed up in the interview and I say, Why do you want this job? And she pulled out the bible in the industry, and she's like, 'cause I've been reading this and I'm really interested in, and I'm like, Okay, now we're gonna have an interview and a conversation, so like live and breathe the job that you want before you get there, and volunteering going to those associations, absorbing all that stuff is a really great way to do it.
53:22 Katie Mack: And I think as part of all of that, the last thing you want is to put in all that time and energy or... And you get there and you're in it, and you're like, Wait, yeah, this isn't a good fit, so guess doing all that research upfront, learning as much as you can.
53:36 Kelly Hoey: Yeah, and I wanna say a part of it for me too was doing all that reading and stuff as I met people who could fuel my career search. I now knew how to stay top of mind with them because I was reading... I would completely immerse myself in the subject matter once I decided that's what I wanted to do, and I went full in, and I didn't assume when I was reading these industry articles that these people that I'd had an informational interview with a week before had read them.
I would send it to them and say, Hey, thought...was just thinking of you, this is a really interesting article on this, or I would do Google alerts on some of these people, 'cause some of these people, it's entirely word of mouth how these jobs happened, so I knew certain people were absolutely pivotal. And once I met them, it was like, How do I stay top of mind with them? So their firms, their names, I had Google search, Google alerts, and so when it would come up, I'd be like, Oh my God, congratulations on that recognition.
54:38 Kelly Hoey: And they would come back like, Oh my God, thank you. You know, how are you doing? Oh, you know what? Oh, I think I saw something the other day and... Right, so it was like, I found ways, but one of the key things was that I didn't assume that these people in these really busy jobs were able to read all the information that I was reading, and so I would send them things and you know, sometimes they answer, sometimes they don't, and sometimes they came back, they were like, Oh my God, I didn’t see this one, thank you so much.
And who looks like the hero then? And then ultimately, I mean the other upside of this is when you do land the job, you now have the industry network, you know have got all the people to tap into to help you get up to speed of what's going on, you know, competitor firms or other companies it's not just landing the job, you can now do your job better because you have this collegial network of other people in your field.
55:30 Katie Mack: Yeah, that's really interesting. You're doing that much work up front, but it will come back and help you then.
55:40 Kelly Hoey: Yeah, helped me on more than a few salary negotiations, let me tell you.
55:47 Katie Mack: That's a whole different conversation, which I'm sure we could probably spend...
55:51 Kelly Hoey: Oh yeah well once I built this rapport with these people, I could call them. Hey, how many people you got on your stuff? Hey, could you just tell me is your salary within this range... Yeah, I had more than enough industry, like direct line industry information to go to my boss with to help him negotiate to get me a better salary... Oh yeah, truth be told.
56:16 Katie Mack: Awesome, okay, so I'm looking and I know we only have a couple of minutes left, so I guess before we wrap things, just if you have any final piece of pieces of advice that you wanna share with everybody that's tuning in today, we’d just love to hear that and then, yeah, this has been super... I think you've really offered a lot of insight about just where to begin and to help us all understand this is something you already are doing, whether you realize it or not, but yeah, just any final pieces of advice or words of wisdom.
56:53 Kelly Hoey: Yeah like just... Just take a pause and think about all the relationships and networks you have and how you're nurturing them and how you're looking after them, and some of the things we just need to do right now is just checking in on each other, so some of the best networking you can do is just literally, as I like to say a JCI, just check in and see how people are.
If you haven't seen someone post on Facebook for a few days and you're used to regularly seeing their update, just send them a little direct message, Hey, I haven't seen you in awhile. I hope everything’s okay. Nothing more than that, and that letting other people know like you want any communication that you're sending out, like someone sees your name, you want that rush of that warm feelings of human emotion, and so just check in with people. And so that's what I would just say and be the person they wanna hear from more than anything else, 'cause I think some of the ways we treat each other right now is gonna have a longer impact than this time that we're spending in isolation and quarantine.
57:52 Katie Mack: That's for certain... No, that's really important. Yeah, just check in. I think people... People need it right now too. So that's really, really great. Well, Kelly, thank you so much for this. Everybody on watching, we will be sending her follow-up guide to you all after this and don’t forget to check out her book and her podcast Build your Dream Network, if you guys wanna dig in even more tips, but... Yeah, thanks everybody for tuning in. We will see you again next week, and for those of you that are celebrating this weekend, have a wonderful Mother's Day. Right, thanks again, Kelly.
Kelly Hoey: Thank you.
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