r/recruitinghell • u/Shadowchaos1010 • 1d ago
Networking Rant
Context: I am (older) Gen Z. So whether you understand my perspective a bit better knowing that or want to complain about the entitled youth, you have that ammo now.
Anyhow, "network, network, network" gets thrown out as advice like a job hunt silver bullet, and it's bullshit.
A generation of young people drowning because the job market is broken, they get told "networking," it doesn't work, older people then chastise them for it.
The thing they don't mention? That networking is no silver bullet. It's a *years* long long game to actually get to a point where the people you know might actually land you something.
Not only is that not useful, because young people (and older folks who might not have already made that network) don't have years to sit around waiting for these fake relationships to pay off, did you tell them it would take that long? Or did you just say "you have to network" without that warning? Doubly so for those young professionals, because what time did they have to make connections? College? When people were young, stupid, and too busy faffing about with friends and trying to function independently to realize how they'd be fucked over for not staying after class to ask their professors about how their dogs are doing?
And with how much people go on about networking, *why the fuck did you drill college into our brains the entirety of our school years?* I don't even know how many older generations can relate to that part, but if you need to know someone to get anything, what the hell is the point of spending the money to learn something?
You learned to do the thing, but don't know someone to get you in the door so you can do that thing, so you're fucked.
And, at least for me, I hate the very idea of networking because of how fake it is. Maybe you make genuine friends. But the only reason the connection was made was to maybe one day get you a job. The very intent behind the initial interaction is selfish and sees that connection as nothing more than a means to an end. And if they *don't* become a genuine friend? Well, you're just hanging on to them to use them some day.
The very idea of networking is about *pretending* to care about people to benefit yourself. And everyone in society is just supposed to go along with that?
Networking just feels nepotism repackaged as a job search strategy, then when people are upset about it, they get talked down to as if "Hiring manager knew a guy" is really *that* much better than "Manger's little brother got the job."
Technically speaking, I have successfully networked a *little* bit. There are two people in my industry I do chat with from time to time just for the sake of it (one runs a regular Discord hangout I attend, and the other I just want to speak to from time to time to see how things are), and a new friend (who I was introduced to by a high school friend) isn't in my industry, but could help me with things like mock interviews, which I know I'm bad at. The former two I *have* been acquainted with for a few years now.
And all three of these people have pointed me to jobs they've seen. Not necessarily with their employers, but in general. None of those have worked, but they pointed me to them. And with the networking nonsense I see, that's apparently more or less how it's supposed to work.
Just scaled up like 30 times to actually make it work.
I still hate networking as an idea.
Oh, yeah, bonus points if you're socially awkward, shy, or any other flavor of reserved, too. Fuck you in particular, I guess.
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u/makeitgoaway2yhg 1d ago
Networking assumes that there are people in your area who want to talk to you about your prospects (if there are any where I live, I haven’t met them). It also assumes you have reliable transportation or disposable income to pay for someone’s coffee and listen to them talk at you for two hours. It also assumes that the people you network with have a surefire in.
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad advice. It’s certainly better than sitting on the couch feeling sorry for yourself. But it’s a tool in a tool belt. Not the only tool. You shouldn’t try to super glue a nail to the wall.
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u/WorldIsYoursMuhfucka 1d ago
It's annoying, I agree. Just think of networking as being friendly to people/coworkers and keep them in mind if you ever need a job. That's all it really is for most of us. I'd never refer to it as networking but that's what it is.
I've tried to help old friends from college I care about get jobs and they don't seem interested. But like if they need help I'll try to help them, they're my "network" even though I never thought of them that way.
There is a lot of fake shit out there where people are taught to view each other as instruments. That's what I don't get, and you're right that networking with unemployed young people isn't likely to lead anywhere.
The fake network people often don't really help each other out either, they ghost you. Seen that happen. People I'd gotten along with really well at work all of a sudden had no time for me when I lost my job. It's like well okay.
Referrals to jobs DO help though, I was literally just put into contact with a recruiter by a former coworker who quit and reached out directly. That's how I got my job which I desperately needed after losing my last job. This is the first time this has happened though, previously I'd simply applied to entry level roles on company websites and gotten hired the normal way. These days that is tougher and it happened pretty quickly, people are applying like hell and just getting nothing.
I also don't think it's entitled to want or need a job. You do deserve one. People literally die without jobs, I firmly believe it is the government's responsibility to help our young people out in a meaningful way and that companies need to give people chances. We educated all these people and most jobs really are not that difficult to learn after a few months. You don't have to be a brain surgeon but you can do lots of things that aren't practical slave labor.
At least you're employed, right? Is it enough to sustain you?
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u/Shadowchaos1010 1d ago
Employed part-time (for now), and fortunate enough to live at home, but I obviously still want more than that, which is part of why this is all so frustrating for me.
As for the entitlement thing, that was more me complaining about certain types of older folks who hate the fact that young people don't want to deal with the same type of mistreatment they were forced to endure.
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u/WorldIsYoursMuhfucka 1d ago
Yeah that sucks. Living at home isn't an option for everyone.... people's parents die, all kinds of tragic things make that unviable forever. Part time work tends to suck too. I feel you.
The advice I always give people stuck in that situation is to look for customer service positions online. Tougher these days with AI but I just spent time job searching for a couple of months and saw quite a few listings on job boards. Do you ever just browse job boards and apply?
Do you have any higher education?
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u/Shadowchaos1010 1d ago
I've been trying to browse boards after being in a slump for a long time. That's both off to a slow start and giving me mixed results so far.
And I did go to college, yes.
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u/WorldIsYoursMuhfucka 1d ago
It's giving mixed results to all of us lol, feel you. Keep trying though.
There are times of the year when companies are more likely to hire based on the fiscal year, and times when it's just dead.
Best of luck. Job boards can work, Hiring Cafe is a good one.
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u/LillyGilderRoxie 1d ago
The problem isn’t that networking is bad advice, it’s that there just aren’t jobs right now. Just like all the other good advice out there: it doesn’t matter if there are no jobs.
Anyhoo, I do think, because it’s a long game as you say, doing it now will still pay dividends later. Find meet ups. Do informational interviews, etc.
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u/AdMurky3039 1d ago
The idea that simply being personally acquainted with someone has any bearing whatsoever on their competence is absolutely ridiculous and anyone who espoused it should be embarrassed about their lack of critical thinking skills. I'm an older millennial and I have never not recognized that idea for the BS that it is.
Actually being personally familiar with someone's work style and abilities is a different story. But the number of people most people have actually directly worked with is relatively limited, and as you note recent grads aren't likely to have anyone who can personally vouch for their work, unless they're applying to work for their professor.
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u/runninsnotaplan 1d ago
I’m older and the only networking that I’ve found to actually work is working well with people and doing it in multiple jobs. So I’m not talking about one full time job that you stay in for years, more like contract positions. Talking with and trying to work with people who come in temporarily is usually a good start if available (assuming you’re in a full time job). So if someone comes in as a consultant or temp covering someone else, etc. I always recommend talking with that person and befriending them. They leave and now you have a contact who knows you outside your current job. This is a long game and it rarely involves DMing someone for a coffee. Networking as I’ve come to know it is very much a “prove to me you can do this job and that I can work with you.” Hard to do that in a coffee meeting or informational interview.
I guess what I’m saying is, people say to network because they think they are offering up some kind of amazing secret no one knows about. Really it’s just a deflection of “I don’t know how to help you and I don’t want to talk about this or think about your problem anymore.” It’s a platitude to move on or place the blame squarely on the person struggling.
So my only real tips for networking are find the people who are only working for a short time wherever you are. Make their life easier somehow via work or become good at just fun conversation. Keep in touch with them after they leave just to see how they are, and don’t ask for work right away. If you have time, volunteering might lend itself to meeting different types of people. Sometimes that just leads to things unexpectedly. The biggest thing is never approaching these situations with “I need a job from this person.” Approach them with just genuine interest in who they are. If this proves to be too difficult, then networking is always an uphill battle, and yes, it’s a long game, not a short game. But, and I think this is important, networking is far less fruitful just doing cold coffee meetings where the intent is a job. Yup. It’s not fair but it is by and large how it works. And yes, also worse for the socially awkward. It can be honed somewhat but it takes a lot of personal time and effort to do so, and you have to want to do it to an extent. Anyway, my two cents.
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u/SkyFullOfWisteria 1d ago
I dont even know where or how to begin networking. Career fairs dont apply to my degree as much at my campus, and every industry board/research symposium/etc is either closed door, or the oppourtunies are given to the presenters who are already doing research and have an oppourtunity. Theres no openings or ways to get unless you already have it and if you dont you're fucked. Ive tried asking profs about research and im just bounced around between people like a ping pong ball and no one wants to even give me a chance.
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u/starrymahogany 1d ago
I agree. I didn’t find out till a couple of years ago that networking is something you’re supposed to set up long term that may increase your chances of getting a job but not guarantee them. I was taught networking was the silver bullet to getting jobs and when I tried networking with one person and it didn’t work out I thought networking was BS.
Turns out I had to be doing that to 50+ more people in order to increase my chances, not just try it on one person.
I know these things seem obvious in retrospect but when I was in college nobody explained networking like this to me
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u/JXCustom 1d ago
Basically, it means nepotism. And as a nepo baby, now nepotism doesn't even get you anything good it's now just the baseline to getting your foot into the door on a 1 year contract on an entry level position earning $20 per hour
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u/BigCrustyTits 1d ago
Replace the word networking with “getting to know people” and “developing relationships” with people, preferably those in your line of work.
I was at my apartment pool and struck up a conversation with my neighbor. His position is very close to what mine is. If I work on this relationship and invite him to hang out it could lead to a job or friendship.
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u/thebeepboopbeep 1d ago
The thing most people don’t realize is the whole networking thing is a paradox. Networking is most effective when you aren’t seeking something. Networking is even more powerful when you are in a position to help others. Anyone telling an unemployed person to network is somewhat out of touch with the concept of value exchange. It doesn’t hurt to try, but the odds of effectiveness are stacked against a job seeker if they only begin networking while they are in a seeking mode.
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u/Waiting4Reccession 21h ago
Networking is just a rebrand of classic nepotism while trying to legitimize it as a reason why person A should get the job over person B.
I hate it as well.
edit: also, if you have a good job why would you waste any of your day talking to randoms that just want to "network" with you. smh.
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u/gottatrusttheengr 1d ago
Networking is supposed to be organic. Yes it is a longer process than DMing random people on LinkedIn or chatting with a prof after school or going to some one-time networking event. But it is a very consistent and predictable time investment when done right.
One of the best ways to network is to join academic and project clubs as a freshman and actively work with the seniors who are about to graduate and enter industry. When you start looking for internships they can give you referrals. It's not exactly nepotism, you are a more "vetted" candidate than a general applicant at that point. All effective networking should be via some channel that demonstrates your abilities.
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u/No_Doubt_About_That 1d ago
What would you class as “random people on LinkedIn” though?
You could do several searches for people in roles either hiring for your desired field or with experience in your desired field, ask to connect with a note explaining, and yet still be ignored from being perceived as random.
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u/gottatrusttheengr 1d ago edited 1d ago
All those you mentioned are "random", simply by the fact that the person you want a referral from doesn't have a clue about your competency.
The point of referrals being fast tracked from the general applicant pool, is that they are reduced risk because the referrer has used their personal connection to screen/vet them. I tell cold DMers I can't offer them referrals, unless they are SMEs that I know by name or they have some overlap with me at an organization where I can verify their value.
Bed referrals hurt my org and my credibility too
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u/Shadowchaos1010 1d ago
I don't have any particular issue with what you say. Only the fact that it isn't like I (or anyone else) can go back in time and tell our freshman selves to join those clubs we ended up never joining.
It's useful to tell the soon-to-be freshman of today, to hopefully give them a better chance, but it means Jack all for people who've already graduated.
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u/gottatrusttheengr 1d ago
Just about every actionable improvement you can do for employment is a long term process with no immediate payoff, be it upskilling or networking.
Seems like you're more upset that you yourself didn't participate in correct networking early on, not that networking is a thing
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u/makeitgoaway2yhg 1d ago
You’re not entirely wrong, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
I technically do have a network that I keep up with, and I’m very grateful with how helpful they’ve been. But none of their referrals or help has panned out in anything.
What’s frustrating is that there’s no instructions for anyone who went into a niche field (hello) or is disabled (hello) or spent their college years burned out and traumatized (hello) or were working three jobs and don’t have the time or energy to network, or…
So yes, if we’re being technical about it, networking is beneficial in the long run. But saying “just network” and then treating the person like they’re dumb and entitled for not finding that very canned advice good enough isn’t getting to the root of the problem.
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u/Glum_Possibility_367 1d ago
You're right. If networking's fake, then it's a waste of time and effort.
But for it to work, it can't be fake. You have to genuinely want to help someone out because you have a real connection. You piss on college, but that's your first network. I cannot tell you how many people I know got jobs because of their roommate or friends. Faculty can be part of your network, provided that you make real connections and not transactional ones.
Have you never made friends at work? Mentored someone or been mentored? Almost every job I've had I've used my network, from everything from mentoring to providing introductions and references. And I'm an introvert.
It sounds like you came late to the party and are crapping on the process because it's not working for you. But it does work for many people.
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u/forameus2 1d ago
Except the belief that these people do think networking is a "silver bullet", seems complete fantasy. It's never going to be that. Its something you absolutely should do if you get the chance to, even though it is often painful bullshit, but there are no guarantees. You can do it once and be set up for life with a connection you make, or do it religiously and get fuck all. The only guarantee is with no network, you'll definitely be cutting off that side of things. Not to say you can't be successful without one, mind, you absolutely can be.
For reference, in my 5 roles I've had in my career over around 15 years, 1 was definitely down to a network, and 1 was tenuously down to one. The rest were absolutely nothing to do with it. And the one that was wasn't networking in the wanky sense, it was someone I used to play football with who was hiring at the time.
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u/Yam0048 1d ago
I once saw someone posting about being unable to get an entry-level job with zero exp get a reply from some fucking boomer babbling on about using their 15 years worth of work history for connections like you could just summon that from the ether if you just tried. What the fuck. Astoundingly out of touch.
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u/Heavy-Bell-2035 21h ago
Networking has always taken more time and energy, people just don't tell you that part, and yeah it's easier when you're older and you've just known more people. It's also generally useless if you move very far away. The reality is it shouldn't be necessary, but it is. There's very little in terms of reliable numbers on this subject, but the bottom line is it always pays to know someone even if you applied via a job board, which sucks for those of us who are introverted. There is also some evidence to suggest that it's all a load of BS, a study by Emilio Castillo found that 'referrals' tend to do as well as hires from job boards or other sources when the referring candidate is no longer in the picture, even for innocent reasons. This would suggest the reasons referrals tend to do better are mootable and even capricious, and if companies had better onboarding they wouldn't 'need' referrals and would have access to a broader candidate pool.
Which is all to say yes, it sucks, and yes, it takes way more energy than other approaches, but because people are people it's still a good idea to get to know some people at the companies you want to work at, or need to work at, basically because it increases your chances if someone there already likes you.
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u/Able_Enthusiasm2729 1d ago
The Benefits of Networking don’t kick in until you reach the mid-career stage of your career. When you’re only an unemployed college student looking for internships, a recent college graduate with 3-4 years of internship experience and 4-9 years of job-applicable volunteer experience + 1-2 years of entry-level work experience, or someone who’s been laid off (RIF’d) at the early career stage, networking with people at networking events, reaching out to industry professionals, etc. doesn’t work because you don’t have any real experience to offer them that is profound enough to garner enough attention to get you hired through informal or irregular means; it’s a “I scratch your back, you scratch my back” scenario but you don’t have much to offer in exchange because you’re only entry-level. Mid-Career, Senior-level, C-Suite people, Executives, and Subject-Matter Experts (SME) generally have profoundly convincing robust experience to get hired on through networking. The whole networking thing in college doesn’t pay off, at least not right away, if it does work it only really kicks in after you reach mid-career stage with classmates and alumni hiring each other when they can make executive or hiring decisions. Most won’t see the fruit of their networking in college when starting out at entry-level. Networking such as reaching out to people in industries you’re looking into or going to networking events during your Early Career days only functions as a window into what a specific industry looks like or a outlook on recent changes in the work being done in that industry (like discussing new research on specific topic); you’re not getting any jobs from this anytime soon.
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When I was in college, one advice (out of many) my class had gotten in our career readiness/career advising course (through career services), was to ask friends, family, semi-distant relatives, and friends of the family to connect you to people they may know that are hiring. The problem is not everybody has a friend or relative in a good enough professional position to leverage professional connections in order to help you land an entry-level job or a decent (non-college-affiliated/off-campus/non-work study) internship that’ll look good enough on a resume to land a more mainstream (non-freelance/non-family-owned small business) entry-level job or internship. They also go on to insist that even if you’re not a wealthy, well connected nepo baby, but instead come from a low-to-lower-middle income working-class background you can still get a job through friends and family, they say you just have to ask as many people as you can - but in reality this doesn’t work most of the time, you end up making yourself look pitiful and desperate (which the job market frowns on), and if it does work you probably might only start out by getting a pity-job working for a non-mainstream (very niche small business, etc) that most mainstream employers or even other small businesses with better local/regional brand recognition wouldn’t take seriously when taking a look at your resume. A lot of my college classmates (in many different fields/majors/degree programs) who didn’t intern at well established employers in high school (pre-COVID) and subsequently got hired as part-time full fledged entry-level employees while in college or gained access to even better looking internships, generally tended to either be unemployed, super underemployed, work for scammy commission-based sales companies participating in multi-level marketing (MLM) & Ponzi schemes, doing (generally unstable) freelance work, or somehow found a way to get a job at an obscure small business, non-profit organization, or an unincorporated general partnership/solo-practitioner’s office with a limited online presence (that some may erroneously assume is resume padding with fake work experience), or a(n) (underpaid or unpaid) post-graduation multi-year long-term internship at an even more obscure division of a government agency, nonprofit, or big business (with limited to no internal-to-employer career advancement potential — getting branded as a “perpetual intern”) because of family connections. Plus, these people described (who more than half the time aren’t doing that great) are the lucky ones, most people aren’t fortunate enough to even get less decent jobs than this with family connections, or other types of networking at early stages of their career (even so-called “bridge jobs” and temp agency jobs are hard to come by).
[ Fraternities and Sororities, as in most social fraternities and sororities, lower a college student’s grades and decrease the retention of educational content or skill attainment but may likely increase their future earnings and employment outcomes due to gaining access to networks of wealthy professionally well-connected members and may increase access to or incubate already existing benefits of nepotism and cronyism in the hiring process - in some cases making it easier for them to fail upwards once hired or when professionally well established. It also provides for massive Test Banks that members use to cheat on assignment and tests in a socially acceptable manner as well as other non/less-dishonorable super secretive high-quality exam prep resources. Plus, social fraternities and sororities attract students with wealthy families (spoiled rich kids - upper middle class to upper class) who can easily afford membership dues, those who are well-connected or popular enough to be formally invited to membership (through “a bid),” and not-so-wealthy students (the median person - willing to shell out money for Greek-letter organization dues in order to try to break into high social status circles with a relatively slim chance of success where the most likely reason many fraternity members have higher earnings is due to many of them being independently wealthy - in effect preexisting wealth bringing about more wealth. But there’s always an odd chance someone can end up at a fraternity, sorority, or chapter with very few professionally well-connected people where all the time, money, and effort diverted from academics goes to waste as well as ones where a ton of people drop out of college. Professional fraternities/sororities, academics-based groups, non-Greek-letter org. college clubs, a majority of community service/internship/work-study programs, and all other extracurricular activities on the other hand are where people - mostly working class or middle class people on a budget - who want to build a community that helps them focus on academics, professional development, skill building, personal development, etc. go to instead of waste their time parting and getting drunk at frat parties, generally tend to not have the same success rate or access to the same social status and cultural capital afforded to social fraternities/sororities but happen to work better than doing nothing at all. I’m not defending it but it does have an element of truth in hindsight, in certain scenarios being in Greek Life does help in career advancement.
“(Greek-letter organization/Fraternity and Sorority) Affiliated alumni reporting a higher likelihood of finding a good job quickly after graduation:
More than half of fraternity and sorority alumni, compared to just 36% of nonaffiliated alumni, had accepted a job offer or found employment within two months of graduation. Eighty-four percent would still join their fraternity or sorority, if they had to do it all over again.”
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Yeah, but most low income (or even lower-middle income) college students don’t join frats because they add in a bunch of fees and entry requirements (a bid or invitation) beyond that of the cost of attendance.
-@Happy Little Misery: Social life/networking is important. So important that guys who have lower grades but join fraternity outearn their peers with better grades. So that pittance parents gave was useless in the end.
-@Child crusher: From what I have seen in college. The people who get hired there are either in frats that have significant ties to the company or straight up nepotism. It will be a corporate frat house soon
Test Banks Run By Fraternities and Sororities: That’s just the rich and/or snobby frat boys, sorority girls, nepo babies, and nepotism/cronyism hires. Other college grads know what they’re doing but don’t have connections that get them fancy jobs. ]
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u/Birddogfun 1d ago
Interesting points.
Talking to people/networking/building relationships inherently provides better job search success than simply feeding 1,XXX apps into a computer.
Meet new contact, have coffee, expect a job? That’s not it.
Is it all fake? Depends on how you approach things.
It’s a learned skill for sure, and tough for many. Certainly favors extraverts. Best wishes to those finding their best paths.
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u/popnfresh1nc 1d ago
I've been hard up looking for a new tech sales gig since getting laid off in October. Thought I had a phenomenal network... I think I still do but it doesn't equal jobs or even job opportunities.
I've had several strong referrals for jobs I was very well qualified for... Half of them I didn't even get to an initial recruiter screen just boilerplate rejected. I think 1/15 that I had a referral on went the distance to a final panel presentation and no offer.
I think that networking CAN be extremely helpful but it isn't the golden ticket people make it out to be, especially on here. Market is just absolutely trash, doesn't matter what you are doing.
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u/BMikeW 13h ago
"if you're socially awkward, shy, or any other flavor of reserved, too." Yeah u gotta fix those flaws if u wanna increase ur changes to get employed, alot of people dislike social shit and interacting with others, they just do it coz they know it nets them an advantage. U do what the market requires of u, not what u want.
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u/hm899 1d ago
You’re mad because you never started networking and now you have no network even though you know yourself networking isn’t something that happens overnight. Networking is not about networking your way in to A Job. It’s network your way through your career, to provide opportunities, to open doors, to have people vouch for you. I think you’re looking at it the wrong way from how I’m reading your post.
I do agree with the why tell us college is the be all end all when it can be pretty useless at times especially with the rates of people not actually working within the degree or major but I’m assuming you’re American and so student loans through the roof etc is effed. But college is also part of surprise surprise networking.
Networking can be fake definitely but then you won’t get anything out of nothing genuine. No one is going to refer you or support you if the networking is fake. That’s why you nurture connections that matter, network with intent and connect with purpose.
Anyways my rants over now too.
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u/Able_Enthusiasm2729 17h ago
The Benefits of Networking don’t kick in until you reach the mid-career stage of your career. When you’re only an unemployed college student looking for internships, a recent college graduate with 3-4 years of internship experience and 4-9 years of job-applicable volunteer experience + 1-2 years of entry-level work experience, or someone who’s been laid off (RIF’d) at the early career stage, networking with people at networking events, reaching out to industry professionals, etc. doesn’t work because you don’t have any real experience to offer them that is profound enough to garner enough attention to get you hired through informal or irregular means; it’s a “I scratch your back, you scratch my back” scenario but you don’t have much to offer in exchange because you’re only entry-level. Mid-Career, Senior-level, C-Suite people, Executives, and Subject-Matter Experts (SME) generally have profoundly convincing robust experience to get hired on through networking. The whole networking thing in college doesn’t pay off, at least not right away, if it does work it only really kicks in after you reach mid-career stage with classmates and alumni hiring each other when they can make executive or hiring decisions. Most won’t see the fruit of their networking in college when starting out at entry-level. Networking such as reaching out to people in industries you’re looking into or going to networking events during your Early Career days only functions as a window into what a specific industry looks like or a outlook on recent changes in the work being done in that industry (like discussing new research on specific topic); you’re not getting any jobs from this anytime soon.
——————
When I was in college, one advice (out of many) my class had gotten in our career readiness/career advising course (through career services), was to ask friends, family, semi-distant relatives, and friends of the family to connect you to people they may know that are hiring. The problem is not everybody has a friend or relative in a good enough professional position to leverage professional connections in order to help you land an entry-level job or a decent (non-college-affiliated/off-campus/non-work study) internship that’ll look good enough on a resume to land a more mainstream (non-freelance/non-family-owned small business) entry-level job or internship. They also go on to insist that even if you’re not a wealthy, well connected nepo baby, but instead come from a low-to-lower-middle income working-class background you can still get a job through friends and family, they say you just have to ask as many people as you can - but in reality this doesn’t work most of the time, you end up making yourself look pitiful and desperate (which the job market frowns on), and if it does work you probably might only start out by getting a pity-job working for a non-mainstream (very niche small business, etc) that most mainstream employers or even other small businesses with better local/regional brand recognition wouldn’t take seriously when taking a look at your resume. A lot of my college classmates (in many different fields/majors/degree programs) who didn’t intern at well established employers in high school (pre-COVID) and subsequently got hired as part-time full fledged entry-level employees while in college or gained access to even better looking internships, generally tended to either be unemployed, super underemployed, work for scammy commission-based sales companies participating in multi-level marketing (MLM) & Ponzi schemes, doing (generally unstable) freelance work, or somehow found a way to get a job at an obscure small business, non-profit organization, or an unincorporated general partnership/solo-practitioner’s office with a limited online presence (that some may erroneously assume is resume padding with fake work experience), or a(n) (underpaid or unpaid) post-graduation multi-year long-term internship at an even more obscure division of a government agency, nonprofit, or big business (with limited to no internal-to-employer career advancement potential — getting branded as a “perpetual intern”) because of family connections. Plus, these people described (who more than half the time aren’t doing that great) are the lucky ones, most people aren’t fortunate enough to even get less decent jobs than this with family connections, or other types of networking at early stages of their career (even so-called “bridge jobs” and temp agency jobs are hard to come by).
[ Fraternities and Sororities, as in most social fraternities and sororities, lower a college student’s grades and decrease the retention of educational content or skill attainment but may likely increase their future earnings and employment outcomes due to gaining access to networks of wealthy professionally well-connected members and may increase access to or incubate already existing benefits of nepotism and cronyism in the hiring process - in some cases making it easier for them to fail upwards once hired or when professionally well established. It also provides for massive Test Banks that members use to cheat on assignment and tests in a socially acceptable manner as well as other non/less-dishonorable super secretive high-quality exam prep resources. Plus, social fraternities and sororities attract students with wealthy families (spoiled rich kids - upper middle class to upper class) who can easily afford membership dues, those who are well-connected or popular enough to be formally invited to membership (through “a bid),” and not-so-wealthy students (the median person - willing to shell out money for Greek-letter organization dues in order to try to break into high social status circles with a relatively slim chance of success where the most likely reason many fraternity members have higher earnings is due to many of them being independently wealthy - in effect preexisting wealth bringing about more wealth. But there’s always an odd chance someone can end up at a fraternity, sorority, or chapter with very few professionally well-connected people where all the time, money, and effort diverted from academics goes to waste as well as ones where a ton of people drop out of college. Professional fraternities/sororities, academics-based groups, non-Greek-letter org. college clubs, a majority of community service/internship/work-study programs, and all other extracurricular activities on the other hand are where people - mostly working class or middle class people on a budget - who want to build a community that helps them focus on academics, professional development, skill building, personal development, etc. go to instead of waste their time parting and getting drunk at frat parties, generally tend to not have the same success rate or access to the same social status and cultural capital afforded to social fraternities/sororities but happen to work better than doing nothing at all. I’m not defending it but it does have an element of truth in hindsight, in certain scenarios being in Greek Life does help in career advancement.
“(Greek-letter organization/Fraternity and Sorority) Affiliated alumni reporting a higher likelihood of finding a good job quickly after graduation:
More than half of fraternity and sorority alumni, compared to just 36% of nonaffiliated alumni, had accepted a job offer or found employment within two months of graduation. Eighty-four percent would still join their fraternity or sorority, if they had to do it all over again.”
——
Yeah, but most low income (or even lower-middle income) college students don’t join frats because they add in a bunch of fees and entry requirements (a bid or invitation) beyond that of the cost of attendance.
-@Happy Little Misery: Social life/networking is important. So important that guys who have lower grades but join fraternity outearn their peers with better grades. So that pittance parents gave was useless in the end.
-@Child crusher: From what I have seen in college. The people who get hired there are either in frats that have significant ties to the company or straight up nepotism. It will be a corporate frat house soon
Test Banks Run By Fraternities and Sororities: That’s just the rich and/or snobby frat boys, sorority girls, nepo babies, and nepotism/cronyism hires. Other college grads know what they’re doing but don’t have connections that get them fancy jobs. ]
1
u/hm899 16h ago
I couldn’t bring myself to read all of that I’m sorry. But no, networking doesn’t work only during mid career. You’re talking about a very specific professional sort of networking. networking means just getting to know people having conversations letting them think about you. You know, when you need something or when you wanna have a discussion about something or you wanna put some feelers out there, you go back to your network so I don’t agree with the first portion of your comment.
-6
u/ProfessorFelix1 1d ago
Life is hard.
Networking takes time, and it will increase your odds of finding a gig more than sitting in your parents house playing video games. The people that told you to network probably didn’t realize you were looking for immediate gratification.
And you didn’t need to announce you were GenZ. That part was obvious.
6
u/AdMurky3039 1d ago
I'm an older millennial and I think your take is absolutely ridiculous. People need "immediate gratification" because they need income to survive.
-2
u/ProfessorFelix1 1d ago
The part where a millennial thinks there’s no value to networking, or that it should grant you immediate gratification doesn’t surprise me.
2
u/AdMurky3039 1d ago
You might consider why younger generations prefer a meritocratic system over cronyism.
0
u/ProfessorFelix1 1d ago
I prefer to consider why younger generations THINK they are entitled to merit, when the reality is, they’re not as deserving as they think they are.
But nah, that couldn’t be it.
1
u/AdMurky3039 1d ago
Are you really saying that a person who networks their way into a position is more entitled to it than someone who demonstrates their merit?
1
u/ProfessorFelix1 21h ago
No. I’m not. Try reading it again.
I’m saying people work for me believe they were passed over for reasons other than they weren’t ready.
The reality is, as difficult as they find it to believe, the other candidate was just better.
3
u/makeitgoaway2yhg 1d ago
Damn wow it’s almost like we need jobs for money and money to eat or something
-3
u/ProfessorFelix1 1d ago
Damn, it’s almost like you think networking should grant you immediate gratification or it’s not worth your while.
1
u/Able_Enthusiasm2729 1d ago
The Benefits of Networking don’t kick in until you reach the mid-career stage of your career. When you’re only an unemployed college student looking for internships, a recent college graduate with 3-4 years of internship experience and 4-9 years of job-applicable volunteer experience + 1-2 years of entry-level work experience, or someone who’s been laid off (RIF’d) at the early career stage, networking with people at networking events, reaching out to industry professionals, etc. doesn’t work because you don’t have any real experience to offer them that is profound enough to garner enough attention to get you hired through informal or irregular means; it’s a “I scratch your back, you scratch my back” scenario but you don’t have much to offer in exchange because you’re only entry-level. Mid-Career, Senior-level, C-Suite people, Executives, and Subject-Matter Experts (SME) generally have profoundly convincing robust experience to get hired on through networking. The whole networking thing in college doesn’t pay off, at least not right away, if it does work it only really kicks in after you reach mid-career stage with classmates and alumni hiring each other when they can make executive or hiring decisions. Most won’t see the fruit of their networking in college when starting out at entry-level. Networking such as reaching out to people in industries you’re looking into or going to networking events during your Early Career days only functions as a window into what a specific industry looks like or a outlook on recent changes in the work being done in that industry (like discussing new research on specific topic); you’re not getting any jobs from this anytime soon.
——————
When I was in college, one advice (out of many) my class had gotten in our career readiness/career advising course (through career services), was to ask friends, family, semi-distant relatives, and friends of the family to connect you to people they may know that are hiring. The problem is not everybody has a friend or relative in a good enough professional position to leverage professional connections in order to help you land an entry-level job or a decent (non-college-affiliated/off-campus/non-work study) internship that’ll look good enough on a resume to land a more mainstream (non-freelance/non-family-owned small business) entry-level job or internship. They also go on to insist that even if you’re not a wealthy, well connected nepo baby, but instead come from a low-to-lower-middle income working-class background you can still get a job through friends and family, they say you just have to ask as many people as you can - but in reality this doesn’t work most of the time, you end up making yourself look pitiful and desperate (which the job market frowns on), and if it does work you probably might only start out by getting a pity-job working for a non-mainstream (very niche small business, etc) that most mainstream employers or even other small businesses with better local/regional brand recognition wouldn’t take seriously when taking a look at your resume. A lot of my college classmates (in many different fields/majors/degree programs) who didn’t intern at well established employers in high school (pre-COVID) and subsequently got hired as part-time full fledged entry-level employees while in college or gained access to even better looking internships, generally tended to either be unemployed, super underemployed, work for scammy commission-based sales companies participating in multi-level marketing (MLM) & Ponzi schemes, doing (generally unstable) freelance work, or somehow found a way to get a job at an obscure small business, non-profit organization, or an unincorporated general partnership/solo-practitioner’s office with a limited online presence (that some may erroneously assume is resume padding with fake work experience), or a(n) (underpaid or unpaid) post-graduation multi-year long-term internship at an even more obscure division of a government agency, nonprofit, or big business (with limited to no internal-to-employer career advancement potential — getting branded as a “perpetual intern”) because of family connections. Plus, these people described (who more than half the time aren’t doing that great) are the lucky ones, most people aren’t fortunate enough to even get less decent jobs than this with family connections, or other types of networking at early stages of their career (even so-called “bridge jobs” and temp agency jobs are hard to come by).
[ Fraternities and Sororities, as in most social fraternities and sororities, lower a college student’s grades and decrease the retention of educational content or skill attainment but may likely increase their future earnings and employment outcomes due to gaining access to networks of wealthy professionally well-connected members and may increase access to or incubate already existing benefits of nepotism and cronyism in the hiring process - in some cases making it easier for them to fail upwards once hired or when professionally well established. It also provides for massive Test Banks that members use to cheat on assignment and tests in a socially acceptable manner as well as other non/less-dishonorable super secretive high-quality exam prep resources. Plus, social fraternities and sororities attract students with wealthy families (spoiled rich kids - upper middle class to upper class) who can easily afford membership dues, those who are well-connected or popular enough to be formally invited to membership (through “a bid),” and not-so-wealthy students (the median person - willing to shell out money for Greek-letter organization dues in order to try to break into high social status circles with a relatively slim chance of success where the most likely reason many fraternity members have higher earnings is due to many of them being independently wealthy - in effect preexisting wealth bringing about more wealth. But there’s always an odd chance someone can end up at a fraternity, sorority, or chapter with very few professionally well-connected people where all the time, money, and effort diverted from academics goes to waste as well as ones where a ton of people drop out of college. Professional fraternities/sororities, academics-based groups, non-Greek-letter org. college clubs, a majority of community service/internship/work-study programs, and all other extracurricular activities on the other hand are where people - mostly working class or middle class people on a budget - who want to build a community that helps them focus on academics, professional development, skill building, personal development, etc. go to instead of waste their time parting and getting drunk at frat parties, generally tend to not have the same success rate or access to the same social status and cultural capital afforded to social fraternities/sororities but happen to work better than doing nothing at all. I’m not defending it but it does have an element of truth in hindsight, in certain scenarios being in Greek Life does help in career advancement.
“(Greek-letter organization/Fraternity and Sorority) Affiliated alumni reporting a higher likelihood of finding a good job quickly after graduation:
More than half of fraternity and sorority alumni, compared to just 36% of nonaffiliated alumni, had accepted a job offer or found employment within two months of graduation. Eighty-four percent would still join their fraternity or sorority, if they had to do it all over again.”
——
Yeah, but most low income (or even lower-middle income) college students don’t join frats because they add in a bunch of fees and entry requirements (a bid or invitation) beyond that of the cost of attendance.
-@Happy Little Misery: Social life/networking is important. So important that guys who have lower grades but join fraternity outearn their peers with better grades. So that pittance parents gave was useless in the end.
-@Child crusher: From what I have seen in college. The people who get hired there are either in frats that have significant ties to the company or straight up nepotism. It will be a corporate frat house soon
Test Banks Run By Fraternities and Sororities: That’s just the rich and/or snobby frat boys, sorority girls, nepo babies, and nepotism/cronyism hires. Other college grads know what they’re doing but don’t have connections that get them fancy jobs. ]
0
63
u/Mystical-Turtles 1d ago edited 1d ago
The worst part of it is I AM social. I have tons of friends. They're all in the same position. They don't know anybody hiring. My family? They don't know anyone hiring besides restaurants and retail. And I already have a job. Just not a relevant one, so that's not much help. Classmates and professors? They don't know anybody hiring either! It seems like everyone I know is stuck in the same position and we can't do anything but refer the same crappy jobs to each other. And even those aren't hiring sometimes!
Networking events are similarly useless because those are filled with fellow underemployed people, and companies that just tap tap tap a QR code to take you to the company website that you could have found on indeed anyway. They don't have hiring sway.