How to Build a Professional Network From Scratch

Starting a network from scratch rarely means starting from nobody. When people say they have no contacts, they usually mean no contacts in the field they want to enter, while they already know classmates, former colleagues, teachers and neighbors, each of whom knows others.

So how to build a professional network, in short: work outward from the people you have, in a steady order, asking for little and giving first. The asking is easier than it feels. Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake’s 2008 experiments, run mostly with Columbia University students, found that people asking for help underestimated how many others would say yes.¹ Six steps:

1. List the people you already know
2. Set one simple goal
3. Join one or two places where your field gathers
4. Offer help before you ask for it
5. Make small, specific asks
6. Follow up on a schedule

The steps suit anyone starting with few contacts, such as students, career changers and people new to a city or country, and several come with an example message. Related guides sit in the networking section.

Why contacts matter most when you are new

Personal contacts are one of the main routes into jobs in many countries, and much of what they offer is information that job ads leave out. Summarizing earlier studies for a 2016 study of referrals in Germany, the economist Christian Dustmann and his colleagues put the share of employees who got their current job through family or friends at a third or more.²

The reason is information on both sides. A contact can tell you what a team is really like, whether an opening is coming and whether your background fits, and can tell an employer something about you that a CV cannot. Dustmann and colleagues argue that referrals give employers exactly that; in their data from one large German metropolitan area, referred workers started on slightly higher wages and were a little less likely to leave early. Shares also differ by skill: in a German survey focused on people loosely attached to the labor market, low-skilled workers relied on contacts more than high-skilled ones.²

The payoff is not the same everywhere. Across Europe, Michele Pellizzari found that jobs found through contacts paid better than similar jobs found formally in some countries, such as Austria and the Netherlands, and worse in others, such as Italy and the United Kingdom, with no clear difference in the rest, including the US.³ Some university career pages also repeat a figure attributed to the US National Association of Colleges and Employers: that four out of five jobs are never advertised.⁴ We could not trace the survey behind it. The studies above measure something different, how people found their jobs, and the share found through contacts differs by country and by job.

Myth

Most jobs are never advertised, so networking is the only way in.

Fact

Surveys suggest contacts lead to a large minority of jobs, with shares that vary by country and skill level. Applications and contacts work best together.

Much of the new information will come from acquaintances rather than close friends. These weak tiesweak ties: Relationships with little shared time, emotion, confiding or exchange of favors, such as a former colleague. Because acquaintances move in other circles, they are more likely than close friends to pass on news you have not already heard, including about jobs.Full entry in the glossary reach circles your friends do not, so they hear news you would not.⁵ Mark Granovetter’s study of how job changers heard about openings is the classic account. Picture two graduates applying for the same analyst jobs. One only applies online. The other has also talked briefly with a few people already in the work, so she knows which teams are hiring and how to describe her project in their terms.

Build a network alongside your applications, and expect its value to come mostly from information and introductions rather than favors.

How to build a professional network when you know almost no one

To build a professional network from scratch, careers services such as those at the University of Cambridge and UC Berkeley advise starting with people who already know you, being clear about what you want to learn, and keeping in touch afterwards. The steps below put that advice in order; step 5 rests on experiments, the rest mainly on practitioner guidance.

1. People you already know: classmates, former colleagues, teachers, neighbors and people from your community
2. The people they can point you to: an introduction or a name, reached by asking who else you could talk to
3. Places where your field gathers: an association, a meetup, a course or an online group, where you see the same people again

1. List the people you already know

Berkeley’s career center points out that you can network with other students, family friends, professors, supervisors and people you meet in daily life, as well as professionals at events.⁶ Write the names down in groups: school and university, past jobs and internships (part-time work counts), your community (clubs, faith groups, volunteering, neighbors) and online groups you take part in. Do not filter yet; the aim is to see what you already have.

Then mark the few who work in or near the field you care about, or who might know someone who does. Old contacts belong on the list too: reconnecting with someone after years of silence is usually better received than people expect. The Cambridge Careers Service notes that it is easier to approach someone who has been suggested by a mutual contact, and that it helps to say how you heard of them.⁷

A first message to someone on the list can be short. It names the shared past, the reason for writing and a small request:

2. Set one simple goal

A goal tells your contacts how to help. The Cambridge Careers Service advises that people can give you what you need more easily if they know your aims, your timetable, how much you already know and what experience you have.⁷ “Get a job in marketing” is too broad for anyone to act on. “Find out how people with a science degree moved into health communications, and which employers take graduates” is something a contact can answer in one conversation.

Write the goal as one sentence you could say aloud. Berkeley’s career center offers a five-part self-introduction: who you are, what you care about, what you can do, what you are after and one thing you hope to learn.⁶ To turn that into a few spoken lines, see the guide to writing a short elevator pitch. Review the goal every month or two; it will sharpen as you learn.

3. Join one or two places where your field gathers

One-off events can do less than people hope. In a 2007 study, Paul Ingram and Michael Morris tracked a mixer attended by about 100 business people with electronic name tags: guests made fewer new contacts than might be expected and were much more likely to meet up with friends they already had, even though beforehand they had overwhelmingly said they came to meet new people.⁸ It is one event, known to us only through the paper’s abstract.

Repeated contact is what turns a name into a relationship. Jeffrey Hall’s studies of friendships in the making, among relocated adults and among students in their first university year, linked more hours together with closer friendships; the abstract describes an association, not a cause.⁹ So choose a group that meets regularly: a local chapter of a professional association, a meetup, a course, an open-source project or a volunteer committee in your field. Two such places are a manageable start, and often enough to keep meeting the same faces.

Where people gather online depends on the country. LinkedIn is widely used in many markets, but XING focuses on the German-speaking market,¹⁰ while LinkedIn was banned in Russia in 2016 and in 2021 replaced its networking site in China with a jobs-only app that closed in 2023.¹¹ Ask two or three people in your field which associations, forums or messaging groups they use where you live, and start there.

A practical tip: take a small role, such as helping at registration or writing up a talk for the group’s newsletter. It gives you a reason to talk to people and a reason for them to remember you.

4. Offer help before you ask for it

Networks run on give and take. Social psychologists describe a norm of reciprocity: people tend to respond to a friendly act with one of their own.¹² For someone new, that is good news, because the help that starts a relationship is usually small.

You have more to give than you think. You can share an article with a note about why it made you think of someone, which Yale’s Office of Career Strategy suggests as a low-pressure way to stay in touch.¹³ You can pass on a job ad to someone looking, congratulate a contact on a new role, summarize a talk others missed or introduce two people who should meet. A student or newcomer can also offer a fresh view: how a new tool works, or what recent graduates look for in an employer.

5. Make small, specific asks

People agree to small requests more often than askers predict, and the clearest evidence comes from Flynn and Lake’s experiments on direct requests.

The study

Moderate evidence

Flynn and Lake: asking strangers for help (2008)

In the first study, Columbia University students had to get five strangers to fill in a short questionnaire. Those asked to predict expected to approach about 20 people; on average they needed about 10. The same underestimate appeared when students asked to borrow a phone or to be walked to the campus gym, and among US charity fundraisers asking people, some of them close, for donations.¹

Flynn and Lake’s explanation: someone asking for help thinks about the cost of saying yes, while the person asked also weighs how uncomfortable it would be to say no.¹ That cuts both ways: some people agree partly to avoid an awkward refusal. The studies involved mostly small favors, largely from strangers in the US, so they do not show that a senior person will give you an hour.

Ask, and make the ask small and easy to decline. The Cambridge Careers Service suggests precise questions rather than broad ones, since a busy person can answer “Which firms besides these three do this kind of work?” far more easily than “How do I get into your industry?”⁷ Berkeley suggests ending a conversation by asking whether there is anyone else you should talk to, and whether you may mention their name.⁶

Over time, one of these conversations may grow into something more, as the guide on how to find a mentor describes.

6. Follow up on a schedule

Following up is what keeps a new tie from lapsing after the first conversation. The Cambridge Careers Service advises sending a short thank-you note that tells a helper how things turned out (a helper is often curious, and the note reminds them of you) and keeping notes on each contact and conversation.⁷ Yale’s career office lists similar low-pressure ways to keep a contact warm: a note after meeting that mentions something specific you appreciated, congratulations on news such as a promotion, and a check-in that asks for no favor.¹³

The rhythm below is enough for most people. Nobody has tested it, so adjust it to your own pace:

1. 1Thank themwithin a day, naming one thing that helped
2. 2Report backonce you have acted on their advice
3. 3Check inevery few months, with something useful or an update

Then repeat from “Thank them”

Ties that go quiet tend to weaken, one reason studies of how many relationships a person can keep up stress regular contact. A report-back note can be three sentences:

It asks for nothing and gives them the pleasure of having helped.

Four weeks of network building

• List everyone I already know, in groups
• Mark a few people in or near my field
• Write my goal as one sentence
• Join one group in my field that meets regularly
• Share one useful thing with a contact
• Send one small, specific ask
• Thank each person within a day and note the conversation

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Which steps have research behind them

Support for these steps varies a lot. The finding that people underestimate how often others agree to help rests on several experiments; the role of contacts in hiring rests on large surveys; the rest is careful practitioner advice that no trial has tested as a whole.

The asking step has the firmest support, so it is worth doing even when it feels awkward, and a single event is a weak bet on its own.

The bottom line

A professional network built from scratch starts with the people you already know. Give yourself a clear goal, join a group that meets often, offer small help, and ask for small things. Then keep each new tie alive with thanks and occasional updates.