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I have been listening to the building a network podcast yet again because little bits of it raise questions in my mind.

I am happy with the podcast overall, but I cannot come to terms with the idea of building volume.
I would assume that if you always did that then you would end up with far too many people to manage and realistically maintain contact with.
So how do you manage a large network that has been created by adding people indiscriminately that then becomes very difficult to manage ?

Any advice welcome, cause I'm sure I'm missing something here

brianr5's picture

Before I hear this cast I did this once or twice a year. Now I'm working hard to do this 2-4 times a year depending on the relationship (with 3-4 times the norm).

If you do this with two people a day, five days a week, you could stay in touch with 120 people every three months. And it wouldn't take long. I'm doing this with a little over 80 people. I'd like to do better, but 80 is far better than 0, and I need to balance this with building/maintaining new skills too. With practice with this it gets easier and takes less time to do. The benefits are big, and you get a chance to help connect people, help people with questions, with finding work, learn about what is going on in your industry and at other companies. It's been a lot of fun reconnecting, and spending some time with many of the people I've reached out to. I've been surprised by how many people are happy you reached out. I've met up with many of them for lunch, dinner, outings, or just had a phone call.

If you're pressed for time do this for as many people as you can, or maybe stretch the interval a bit. That's a lot better than not doing it. I'd really like to hear how others do this too.