Here’s Why Your Networking Is NOT Working

 A distant acquaintance recently contacted me on social media to ask for a reference for a company she was applying to. I had met this person briefly in a class I taught five years ago and aside from the five-minute encounter (in a group of 100 people), I had zero interaction with the individual since that time.

Clearly I declined since there wasn’t any way for me to give a detailed or honest professional reference that would help her to land the job (in fact, my vague reference would likely have hurt her chances).

While most jobs with computer science degree seekers immediately understand that this person skipped a few important steps in the networking process, even if you’re following the best advice, you may still not be getting the responses you expect.There’s no question that networking is part science and part art. So, simply checking all the boxes that you’ve been taught to follow may not be enough to yield helpful results. In that case, it’s possible you’re missing the part of networking that falls on the “art” side of the equation.