This happened 2-3 years ago in college when I was looking for another internship. My career advisor mentioned that networking is so important and I will pretty much only find a job with networking.
She explained that I need to make a good Linkedin profile. Then, I need to find my college’s alumni. Then, I need to message them about my interest in jobs in their company and ask to meet with them for a conversation. After that, I should ask for referrals.
When I first heard this, I already decided to ignore this. Like it sounds like a massive waste of time. I don’t even know how to easily plan out these alumni meetings with their work and my class conflicts. I just continued with my idea to just apply to as much jobs as possible and avoid networking.
I would meet with my career advisor kind of regularly regarding resume and job questions. I remember that she always thought my resume was good, but again stressed the importance of networking as the way to find the job. Like she mentioned that she saw I made no new Linkedin connections and I never joined the college corporate events. Again, those sounded like wasted time for me.
When I later got an internship at a top company and met with my advisor, she seemed extremely surprised that I just applied, interviewed well, and got the job with 0 time spent on networking on Linkedin, meeting alumni, college corporate events, etc.
But was her idea good? I have no idea if that works. I don’t think it is time-efficient. Isn’t it a better idea to just mass apply to jobs?
Comments
Kind of depends on the field. If you’re in finance, I’d recommend reaching out to alumni on LinkedIn. I constantly get emails from recent grads from my alma mater. If the conversation goes well, I will give out referrals or at least point them in the right direction.
Is it necessary? Probably not. Would it help? Yes.
Why is it one or the other?
I mean, I’m not a big fan of the alumni thing, but that’s going to depend on how tight your college was. But that doesn’t mean networking through any means, LinkedIn, in-person, etc, isn’t a plus.
You’re sort of asking a couple different questions. Is networking important (as opposed to just mass applying)? Hell yes. Is it through LinkedIn specifically to alumni that matters? It can’t hurt, it could help, but you need to do more than just that for networking.