build-a-networking-strategy

# build-a-networking-strategy Build a practice of useful conversations, not a contact harvest. ## When to use - Use for role discovery, industry learning, referrals, return-to-work searches, or a career transition. - Do not scrape personal data, automate deceptive intimacy, or ask strangers to vouch for work they do not know. ## Procedure 1. Define the decision the network should help inform: roles, employers, skills, locations, constraints, or introductions. 2. Map existing trusted ties, communities, alumni, colleagues, public experts, events, and second-degree paths with source and relationship context. 3. Segment people by what they can reasonably discuss, not by status alone. 4. Prepare a truthful introduction, two concrete questions, and a small easy-to-decline request. 5. Prioritize warm, contextual outreach and personalize from public or shared information without surveillance. 6. Track permission, last contact, commitments, follow-up date, and data source in a minimal private system. 7. Reciprocate with relevant information, credit, introductions, or support without making help transactional. 8. Schedule bounded weekly outreach, conversations, follow-up, and community participation. 9. Review response, learning, relationship quality, and personal energy monthly; stop repeated nonresponses. ## Failure plan - If contact information was obtained unexpectedly, use an official or public route and explain context. - If a person declines or does not respond after one appropriate follow-up, close the outreach. ## Done - A verified networking map connects specific search questions to relevant, consent-respecting relationships and channels - An outreach rhythm and private follow-up record capture commitments, learning, reciprocity, and stop conditions