What Is Networking? A Practical Definition for People Who Dislike the Word

Networking, in the sense this page covers, is about people, not computers. In computing the same word means linking machines so they can exchange data;¹ at work it means something older and more ordinary.

So what is networking? It is building, keeping up and using relationships with people at work and in your field, so that you and they can get information, help and opportunities more easily. It is less about collecting contacts or trading favors than about staying in touch with people whose work interests you, and being useful to them in return. A German study that surveyed employees three years running, published in 2009, linked networking to higher pay and faster pay growth, and the habit that best predicted the growth was keeping in touch with colleagues inside the organization.²

In practice it can be as small as forwarding a useful article to someone in another team, asking a former classmate how her new role is going, or thanking a speaker with one specific question. The step-by-step side, from listing who you know to following up, is in the guide to building a professional network from scratch. This page covers what networking is, three low-key ways to start and what the research links it to.

What is networking? A definition from the research

Researchers who study careers define networking as a set of everyday behaviors, not a personality type or an event. Monica Forret and Thomas Dougherty, in a 2004 US study, described it as people’s attempts to develop and maintain relationships with others who could help them in their work or career.³

Hans-Georg Wolff and Klaus Moser of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg sharpened the definition in their 2009 paper. In their wording, the relationships are informal, people grant each other access to resources voluntarily, and the benefit is shared: networking aims at “maximizing common advantages”.² They also separate networking from your network. Networking is what you do; the network you end up with also hinges on your role, for instance whether you supervise others.

Two details in these definitions matter for anyone who dislikes the word. The first is “potential”: Forret and Dougherty count a relationship as networking whether or not help is ever given.³ The second is “maintaining”: both definitions name keeping in touch alongside making new contacts.

Picture an engineer who emails a short summary of a supplier meeting to a colleague in purchasing, because she knows he deals with the same firm. Few people would call that networking, but it fits every part of the definition: an informal relationship, kept up voluntarily, to the benefit of both. So you probably network already.

The three forms: inside, outside and online

Networking happens in three main places: inside your own organization, outside it among people in your field, and online. Wolff and Moser’s model crosses the first two with three activities, building new contacts, maintaining existing ones and using them, which gives six kinds of networking that people do in different amounts.²

1. Inside your organization: colleagues in other teams, departments and offices
2. Outside it, in your field: people at other employers, clients, suppliers, associations and alumni groups
3. Online: professional platforms and groups, used to meet people and to keep in touch

Internal networking means relationships with colleagues beyond your own team. Forret and Dougherty’s version of it, which they called increasing internal visibility, included taking on highly visible assignments and going to lunch with your supervisor.³ External networking reaches people at other employers, clients, professional associations and community groups.

The two forms can pull in different directions. In a survey of industrial and organizational psychologists, Caitlin Porter and colleagues found that internal networking predicted staying with an employer two years later, while external networking predicted leaving, partly through job offers; that comes from the paper’s abstract.⁴ Neither is better. External ties widen your options, and internal ties make your current job work.

Online networking is the newest form and the least studied. In a 2020 survey of working professionals studying in business-related graduate programs, career benefits were linked to how often LinkedIn users used it, not to how many contacts they had, according to the abstract.⁵ Look at which of the three forms you neglect. Many people network outward at events and forget the colleague two floors up, or the reverse.

Is networking just using people?

No. In the research definitions networking runs both ways, and in Wolff and Moser’s German study the two scales about using contacts, such as asking colleagues for confidential advice, had no clear link to salary on their own; building and maintaining contacts mattered more.²

Myth

Networking is trading favors with people who can help you.

Fact

In the research definitions, networking is keeping up informal, voluntary relationships whose benefits are shared, whether or not help is ever asked for.

Reciprocity helps explain why. Social psychologists describe it as a norm: when someone treats us well, we tend to respond more warmly and cooperatively.⁶ A relationship in which only one side takes stops being a relationship. Forret and Dougherty offer a related explanation for a weak spot in their own data: keeping up outside contacts went with career success on its own but not once other factors were counted, perhaps because contacts kept up only with business cards and clippings are too shallow, or too one-sided, to help.³

Two people want to move into product management. One messages strangers asking for referrals. The other spends a few months answering colleagues’ questions about her data work and asks two product managers what their week looks like. The second is networking in the research sense; the first is mostly asking for favors.

Why instrumental networking can feel unclean, and whether generous givers do better than people who keep score, are separate questions that deserve their own treatment. For now, ask of any contact you make: would it be welcome if I never asked for anything?

Three ways in for people who find networking fake

If networking feels fake, change what you do. Three approaches fit the research definitions and avoid the transactional feel: helping first, following your curiosity and keeping up ties you already have.

1. 1Help firstsomething useful, with no request attached
2. 2Ask out of curiositya question you want answered
3. 3Keep in touchfollow up and share news

Then repeat from “Help first”

Help first

Start with something useful to the other person: pass on a job ad, share notes from a talk, connect two people who ought to know each other. Reciprocity means help tends to come back, but the point is that the exchange is real from the first step.⁶

Follow your curiosity

Ask people about work you find interesting, because you want to know. Curiosity has a research link: in Wolff and Kim’s 2012 surveys in Germany and the UK, people higher in openness to experience, the trait the authors link to an interest in information, networked more, according to the abstract.⁷ A question you care about makes a conversation that does not need a script.

Keep up the ties you have

Maintaining contacts inside the organization was the habit tied to faster pay growth in the German study.² A message to a former colleague, a congratulation on a new role or lunch with someone from another team counts. If a tie has gone quiet for years, see how to reconnect with someone after a long silence.

How much networking helps a career

Networking is consistently linked to better career outcomes, but the links are modest and mostly come from one-off surveyscross-sectional: Describes a study that measures everyone in its sample at a single point in time. Because the possible cause and the outcome are recorded together, it can show that two things occur together but not which of them came first.Full entry in the glossary. In Forret and Dougherty’s 2004 survey of US business school graduates working as managers and professionals, most kinds of networking went with more promotions, higher pay or a stronger sense of career success.³

The sizes were small to moderate: correlationscorrelation: A measure of how closely two things move together, running from minus one, where one rises as the other falls, through zero, meaning no link, to plus one. It says how strong the relationship is, not what causes it, and it is not a percentage.Full entry in the glossary of roughly 0.1 to 0.35. Even at the top of that range, networking lines up with only about a tenth of the differences between people, so most of the differences come from other things, such as experience and the level of the job. Only some behaviors held up once those were taken into account: internal visibility and professional activities such as speaking at conferences.³

The direction of cause is the real problem. Do people who network get ahead, or do people who get ahead have to network more? Wolff and Moser ran a longitudinal studylongitudinal study: A study that measures the same people more than once over a period of time, so it can see how they change and which thing came first. Following people over time still does not show that the earlier thing caused the later one.Full entry in the glossary to get closer to an answer, measuring networking first and pay later.

The study

Moderate evidence

Networking first, pay later: three survey waves in Germany

The researchers measured how much 235 employees in Germany networked in 2001, then tracked their pay and career satisfaction in yearly surveys to 2003. People who networked more earned more at the start, and their pay also grew faster over the following years. Keeping up contacts inside the organization was the behavior most clearly tied to faster pay growth. Networking went with higher career satisfaction at the same point in time, but satisfaction barely changed over the years, so there was no growth effect to find.²

The authors say plainly that their design cannot prove networking caused the pay growth: a third factor could drive both, and better-paid jobs may simply require more networking. The participants were 32 years old on average and reported their own pay.²

Results also differ between groups. In Forret and Dougherty’s US sample, internal visibility went with more promotions and pay for men but not for women.³ A 2013 survey of public-sector managers in Malaysia found internal visibility linked to income and a sense of career success, with no difference between men and women.⁸

Much of the benefit is information: openings, warnings, advice. Some of that information reaches people through casual acquaintances, the subject of how acquaintances pass on job leads. Expect networking to tilt the odds over years, not to remake a career on its own.

What if you are an introvert?

Extraverts tend to network more, but extraversion is only one of several traits involved. In Forret and Dougherty’s 2001 survey of 418 managers and professionals, extraversion was among the predictors of networking, alongside self-esteem and attitudes toward office politics, according to the abstract.⁹

Wolff and Kim’s surveys add a twist: openness to experience, like extraversion, was broadly related to networking, and agreeableness was linked to networking inside the organization, though not outside it.⁷ Networking draws on curiosity and goodwill as well as on enjoying crowds.

Several of the habits linked to career outcomes suit introverts well: keeping up existing ties, networking inside your organization and helping people you already know. Internal networking happens in ordinary work, not at evening events. An introverted analyst who reviews a colleague’s model and follows up a month later is doing the kind of internal contact-keeping the German study tracked.

So skip the large mixer if it drains you, and put the saved energy into a few conversations and regular follow-ups.

What the evidence on networking supports

The research on networking is consistent in direction but limited in design. Nearly all of it is surveys, many of them of managers and professionals in a few countries, so it supports careful conclusions rather than promises.

No study cited here assigned people to network more and compared them with people who did not, so read the findings as a reasonable bet, not a guarantee.

The bottom line

You do not have to like the word to do the work it describes: building and keeping up relationships that give you and others access to information, help and opportunity. The research links it to better careers, modestly and without proving cause, and the most promising habit is also the least showy: keeping in touch with people you already know. Start with helping and curiosity, and judge your networking by whether people are glad to hear from you.