Reach Out

Starting a career isn’t an easy thing to do. For the author, things didn’t really kick off until she started to Reach Out – actively cultivating the network of people she knew using emails and social media. As a result of Reaching Out, she was hired by the media giant Hearst – the first breakthrough of her career.

So how exactly do you Reach Out?

Before we move on to specifics, there’s a bit of preparation for you to do.

First, think of everyone you know. These people constitute your network. Naturally, within this crowd of people, there are those closer to you, such as friends and family, and those less close, like former coworkers or a university professor. You can think of the former kind as your strong ties and the latter as weak ties.

Contrary to what you might think, it’s your weak ties that can have the most transformative effect on your career. This is because your strong ties usually move in the same circles, while people you only have a weak connection with tend to know information that you don’t.

Through Reaching Out, you’ll aim to get in touch with these people and increase your number of weak ties.

Put simply, the goal is to expand your network of people who can let you know about an opportunity, such as a job or interesting project. The more people you know, the more likely you are to know someone who can recommend you as a contractor or employee. And that’s something you definitely want – as many as two-thirds of people recommended by a company’s employee get the job!

That sounds exciting, but what if you’re nervous about putting yourself out there?

All the more reason to do it, and do it regularly!

Megan Bruneau, a Vancouver-based psychotherapist, says that the best way to fight anxiety is to face it over and over again to get used to the discomfort. Sticking to this strategy when Reaching Out helped her not to dwell on the non-responses, as she simply had no time to. Like the author, she Reaches Out to a new person once a day, every day – and so should you.

Now let’s see what Reaching Out involves in more detail.