Building an Online Network

Not everyone has a current and thriving network of first- and second-degree connections. If you’re newer in your career, you may not have one at all. And that’s okay.

A lot can come out of identifying and reaching out to people online—even if you've never connected with them before. The lesson below covers how to find these people and how to engage with them.

How to Find the Right People to Connect With

First, you need to find the right people to connect with. You can’t just connect with anyone. You want to be strategic about it and identify individuals who work at companies you’d like to work for, or who hold job titles you’d like to have. (Or, aspire to one day have.)

One strategy is using interesting job postings you find online as “leads.” Then, find developers/hiring professionals who work at these companies.

You can also use LinkedIn to find people who work at companies you’d like to work for and/or individuals who have your “dream” position.

Here are some other places where you can research people to connect with online:

• Social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)

• Their blogs

• Online communities/forums (Meetup groups, StackOverflow, Reddit)

• GitHub (Software Engineering or Data Science) or Behance (Design)

• Professional associations and societies

To keep track of your research, create a spreadsheet. In an earlier lesson, you created a job search tracker - you can keep this research in a separate tab if that’s helpful for you.

So how do you actually find these contacts? Let’s go over two approaches.

Approach 1 - Using companies to guide your outreach

1. Make a list of companies that interest you (have a specific reason — maybe you love their blog, maybe their tech stack is particularly cool to you, or perhaps you’re an avid user of their product). Start with 20 companies. If you’re not sure what companies are out there, or what companies might interest you, poke around on themuse.com, glassdoor.com, inc.com, forbes.com, techcrunch.com, and linkedin.com to get some inspiration.

2. Next, look up people who work at those companies via an advanced search on LinkedIn. Not sure how to do this? We have a future lesson on just that, but here are some quick tips below.

   • Do an advanced search where you look up people with that company on their profile and a specific job title or keyword. Focus on practitioners in your field of study, and people who work in Human Resources or Recruiting (sometimes called “Talent Acquisition” or “People Operations” or even just “People”, i.e. “Director of People”).

   • List at least 1 of each kind of employee (1 practitioner and 1 person working in recruiting/HR) in your job search tracker on the “leads” tab. You can reach out to both on the same day or stagger your outreach, whichever you prefer.

3. Locate the contact information for these people. This article can help you figure that out.

4. Draft emails to the people you plan to reach out to. Again we’ll cover communication best practices in future lessons, but here’s an example of an upcoming lesson that’ll help you with this.

5. Send those drafts to your Career Coach.

6. Once you get feedback, send your polished emails to these potential new contacts!

Approach 2 - Using job postings to guide your outreach

1. Make a list of jobs that interest you using sites like LinkedIn, StackoverflowCareers, Indeed, and other niche job search sites. Start with 20 jobs.

   • Next, look up people who work at those companies via an advanced search on LinkedIn. Not sure how to do this? We have a future lesson on just that, but here are some quick tips below.

   • Do an advanced search where you look up people with that company on their profile and a specific job title or keyword (people sitting in the jobs/holding the job titles you want you want), and people who work in Human Resources or Recruiting (sometimes called “Talent Acquisition” or “People Operations” or even just “People”, i.e. “Director of People”).

2. List at least 1 of each kind of employee (1 practitioner and 1 person working in recruiting/HR) in your job search tracker on the “leads” tab. You can reach out to both on the same day or stagger your outreach, whichever you prefer.

3. Locate the contact information for these people. This article can help you figure that out.

4. Draft emails to the people you plan to reach out to. Again we’ll cover communication best practices in future lessons, but here’s an example of an upcoming lesson that’ll help you with this.

5. Send those drafts to your Career Coach.

6. Once you get feedback, send your polished emails to these potential new contacts!

Notice that both of these approaches are very similar. The main difference is in the first step. Are you looking at companies? Or are you looking at jobs? And if you’re looking at jobs, then it’s a good idea to prioritize finding the contact info of someone who works in HR since the company is actively looking to fill positions.

How to Find an Email Address

Great, you compiled a list of people you’d love to meet and/or connect with. Next, you need to find the best way to reach them. In almost all cases, your first outreach to a person will be via email. Unlike sending out a tweet or LinkedIn message, which can easily go unnoticed, an email will go directly to a recipient’s inbox, and is more likely to be seen.

Here are some of the most common ways to find an email address.

• Website/blog - - If they have one, look on their “Contact” or “About” page. Alternative options including looking on pages such as “Our Team” (see if their email addresses are embedded there) and “News”/”Press Releases” (companies will often list the email address of their internal PR person at the bottom of press releases).

• LinkedIn profile - Many people will include their email address in their contact or summary section on LinkedIn. (Also, in the “advice for contacting” section usually found at the bottom.)

• Industry communities - Many people will list their email address on their GitHub or Behance profile.

• Google - Use Google to identify the email format/convention of a company. In other words, once you confirm one email address of someone at a company, you can usually deduce that it is the same format for most everyone else at that company. To identify a company’s common email format/convention do the following:

1. Open up a new Google Search window and type: email @company.com [include a space between the word “email” and the “@”]

2. Next, scroll down the first page and look for any results that come up that are a person’s email address at that company.

3. If the first page doesn’t yield any desired results, search the 2rd, 3rd or even 4th page of results as well.

4. If this doesn’t work try a new search, using: contact @company.com [add a space between the word “email” and the “@”].

If the approaches above prove fruitless, there are a few other things you can try:

• Mailtester.com - checks whether an email address is attached to a specific domain

• Snapbird - allows you to search Twitter to see if a person ever shared their email address in a Tweet

• Connectifier - a web browser plug-in that pops up whenever a user views a profile on a social site like LinkedIn or GitHub to provide additional information like email addresses and phone numbers.

• Hunter - lets you find email addresses in seconds and connect with the people that matter

• RocketReach - Find email, phone, social links for over 250 million professionals, across 6 million companies, worldwide.

It’s pretty easy to figure out a company’s email convention (e.g. [e-mail]). If you can figure out the email address of one employee at a company you can likely do some detective work online (google or the company's website) and figure out the email address of a person you’re trying to contact if you know his or her full name.

For more tips on finding an email address, look here.

How to Engage with Them

Once you find an email address for a contact, it’s time to reach out.

Remember, building a professional network is a long-term strategy. The idea is to build relationships over time. So, before even sending a message, make sure to research them. What they do, where they work, if they have a blog (or not), and anything else you can find.

When you’re ready to send an email, here’s a few things to keep in mind so you come across as helpful, not a nuisance.

• Send a customized email. It's really obvious when an email message is a boilerplate template, copied and pasted to many people. Send a personal message! Sit down, and take the time to write a well thought out, and meaningful email - it will go a long way!

• Explain why. After briefly introducing yourself, share why you’re reaching out to them. Make your intent crystal clear (i.e. Do you want to learn about the reader’s technical background? Are you interested in whether the company is hiring? etc.)

• Find a commonality. If possible, find some kind of mutual connection (“I also know Sally!”), interest (“I’m a Vegan, too.”), location (“In fact, I went to college in Boston! I loved it there.”), etc. When you can’t find something personal, use your passion for your craft and/or interest in the company as a mutual ground.

• Show interest. In them, their job, their blog, company, industry, etc. Be specific about what it is you’re interested in. If you like a person’s blog, cite a specific post they wrote and why it resonated with you.

• Provide value. Even if it’s as simple as complimenting their website’s design. You could also include an article you’d think they’d like (say, if you know they are vegan, a recent article that talks about all the benefits of being a vegan).

• Make your ask specific and not too big. Your initial email should have some kind of “call to action” or ask. Essentially, an action you’d like them to take. However, make sure it is something small enough that they could do in a few minutes or less. If your ask is too big, the person will probably save the email for later. And then there’s a great chance they’ll never get back to it. So, you want to make the ask simple enough that they can respond right away. Review ‘The Ask’ content in the previous lesson.

• Be respectful of them/their time. Remember: you’re approaching them. They are going out of their way to help you. So, be respectful of their time. If they say they can only do a 15-minute phone call, don’t press for a 30-minute one.

• Don’t forget to thank them. Thinking into the future once you’ve established contact and had a coffee meeting, don’t forget to follow up with a thank you. In future lessons we address the specifics of these. Additionally, should this new contact actually be responsible for introducing you to your next job, you need to go out of your way to thank that person. Even consider sending them a small gift (like a plant or a bottle of wine) as a token of your appreciation.

It's All About Relationship Building

You don’t need to be face-to-face to form strong professional relationships —you can take part in relationship-building online. What matters is how you approach them. In the end, be clear, concise, and respectful of them and their time. Just like meeting in real-life, first impressions are also formed digitally.

Resources

How I Got Interviews at Facebook, Google, Apple, and Uber in One Week

How to Write a Perfect Cold Outreach Email: 5 Elements to Consider Before Hitting Send