This section will focus on the first steps you can take to grow your networks and suggests many ways to connect with others.
Our alumni and academic staff have shared how they developed their networks:
Alumni quotes
- Disseminate your work proudly
- Engage with media teams
- Always keep in touch
- Be patient
- Use social media
- Introduce yourself
- Use business cards
- Join professional associations
- Take networking opportunities at Imperial
- Set up a new network
- Ask for help
- Develop a programme
- Apply for travel grants
- Ask for mentorship
- Share your work
- Ask questions at conferences
- Use the postdoc network
- Be inquisitive
- Follow up
- Do careers research
- Contact others about their research
- Stand in for your supervisor
- Go to unrelated events
- See other researchers as friends
Hear more from recent fellows and lecturers here.
Making the first contact – on email
Lack of face-to-face networking opportunities can be a big challenge for early career researchers for various reasons. Most commonly, you might be contacting someone you don’t know via email, or a messaging service like LinkedIn. Many senior academics are very aware of this and will be sympathetic to an email approach, asking for a discussion about potential areas of collaboration or similar.
Here are some suggestions for a few simple rules to apply when cold emailing:
Comms accordion
- Be respectful of their time
- Have a clear request
- Explain who you are
- Be referred
- Make it easy for them to reply
- Make it easy to meet
- And if they don’t reply….
Introducing yourself face to face at an event
This can come naturally to some of us, but many find this very awkward. Read Sara Shinton’s great blog on what researchers wish they had done differently when introducing themselves to a stranger.
Tips for event networking:
- If you know that there’s someone you really want to speak to, connect with them in advance to arrange a meeting, so that you’re not trying to ‘work the room’ to get round to a specific individual.
- Challenge yourself to keep your phone in your pocket/bag. It’s too easy to reach for it as soon as you feel awkward in a networking situation.
- Ditch the elevator pitch. Nobody enjoys being on the receiving end of a self-promoting sales spiel. Aim to listen more than you talk.
- Don’t leap in with varieties of ‘who are you?’ conversation starter (e.g., ‘what’s your name?’, ‘where do you work?’, ‘what do you work on?’) – it’s better to build rapport first, and you can always turn to those questions after you’ve struck up a successful conversation with someone. Instead, you could try asking how they’re finding the conference, whether they’ve seen any particularly good talks, what they think of the theme, the programme, the venue, the food, etc.
- Try not to initiate conversations with people who have just piled up their plate with food. They are probably thinking more about eating than networking!
- Joining groups at a networking event – groups of 2 often tricky as might be talking about something confidential or personal, better to be able to make eye contact and then the groups will open up a bit for you. Groups larger than 4 are already getting a bit too big and are like to split naturally into two when you join
- Remembering names: repeat the person’s name when they introduce themselves and try to use it again soon. When saying your own name, try to pause between each name, to help them to hear and understand it (we often have a habit of running names together).
- LinkedIn has a function you can both switch on to look for nearby people so if you are keen to keep in touch after, this is a quick way of finding each other without having to write down names.
- Some conferences, where they know that people struggle with the fear of asking a silly question, put a break between the talk and the questions, to give people time to reflect or check their questions with others. This could be something you would like to adopt if you’re ever in the situation of planning an event.
Networking activities like asking questions at a conference can induce fear in many of us. Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway is a book by Dr Susan Jeffers that looks at how incremental changes and small steps can help you overcome fears. For this example, a first small step could be writing down the sorts of questions you would ask and then seeing if they get asked. The next step might be talking to others about these questions at a tea break. Then asking the questions later of the speaker, either in person or by email. All of these can help you to build up those questions for real.
Maintaining your network: follow up after your first contact
After you’ve made the first contact with someone – whether at an event or by email, you need to start building on that relationship and building trust. Here are some quick actions you can take:
If a conversation doesn't happen in real life in that moment, don't worry. You can follow up with an email or even follow up after a conversation if there’s something you said or even if it's just “great to meet you” or an offer of thanks or gratitude. I think those tiny touches can really, really go a long way. And that has been something that has aided my career development.
- Flora Scott, alumnus
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- Follow up
- Make a date
- Keep in touch
- Ask for introductions
- Thank them
- Connect on social media
- Share your successes
- Don’t worry if they don’t respond
I started building a network, and by building a network I mean, that wherever I met, … a professor or student I was working with, or collaborator from industry, I always kept in touch….. not frequently… if there was not a certain topic, but touching base about how my life has progressed, for example with my supervisor in Germany, to seek advice.
- Maria Papathanasiou
Activities and resources
- Write down three things now which have happened recently which you’d like to update existing people in your network on. Will you share these on social media? Send an email or LinkedIn message to people who helped you with this (perhaps even offering to meet for a chat if the other person wants to?).
- Use this list of Networking opportunities (doc) as a starting point to evaluate and prioritise the networking opportunities around you.
Read these articles and reflect on your own preferences for networking: write down 5 small things you can do to maximise your participation in a conference.
- Wish I’d said that Dr Sara Shinton’s blog sharing reflections from researchers on conference networking chats.
- Top five ways to better academic networking – The Thesis Whisperer on chatting to people at conferences.
- The art of the ‘cold call’ email – The Thesis Whisperer