Business
Business School
As summer internship applications start to open, networking suddenly becomes one of those words you start hearing everywhere. Career panels tell you it matters, older students tell you most opportunities come through connections, and LinkedIn becomes flooded with networking evenings and people being thrilled to announce.
Before I went to my first networking event, I assumed the people who seemed comfortable in those rooms knew something I didn’t. They looked so certain of themselves; where they were going, what they wanted, who they were supposed to be talking to. One of the most common things I've heard from students who find it difficult is the assumption that networking is something other people are naturally equipped for. However, most of what looks like confidence in those rooms is really just familiarity. Consequently, this raises an uncomfortable question for anyone waiting to feel ready before they start.
Confidence doesn’t come first, it's a byproduct of showing up, not a precondition for it.
Why it feels so intimidating
Over 70% of jobs aren’t advertised publicly and are instead filled through networking, despite it being one of the most frightening parts of the process. (Talentgenics, 2025)
I don’t think it’s just about being shy in a room full of people.
It's the feeling of walking into a room as a first year and standing next to someone in their third who already has an internship lined up. It's the sense that every conversation is quietly being assessed, like there's a hidden checklist running in the background. And underneath that sits something quieter: the worry that you’ll come across as awkward or unprepared, that reaching out will read as purely transactional, that they’ll clock immediately that you want something from them. The fear that you'll bore them, or worse, that they'll be politely waiting for the conversation to end. Beneath it all, I think it's something closer to What if I just don't measure up? What makes it worse is that preparation doesn't always seem to help. You know your elevator pitch. You've looked up the company. You have questions ready. And yet the moment the conversation starts, there's this background noise that won't quite switch off.
Is this going well? Am I coming across right? Should I have said that differently?
What networking actually looks like
The word itself is part of the problem. “Networking” sounds transactional, which is why people end up treating it like a performance instead of a conversation.
Adam Grant's research in ‘Give and Take’ dynamics finds that the most effective professional relationships are built on genuine curiosity, not strategic positioning. Across workplace studies, he found that the strongest professional relationships weren’t built through polished self-presentation, but through genuine curiosity and a willingness to give before expecting anything back. One of Grant’s more interesting findings was that “givers” (those who help others without immediately calculating return) end up either thriving professionally or becoming overwhelmed by helping those around them. This suggests that strong networks aren’t built by the most self-promotional people, but by those who accumulate trust over time through repeated acts of contribution. The pattern suggests that what compounds is not impression management, but relational depth. The people who end up with strong networks are rarely the ones who arrived with the most prepared pitch, they are the ones who asked better questions and treated early conversations as explorations rather than transactions.
As a result, that shifts the purpose of the interaction. Instead of How do I make this person interested in me?, it becomes Is there anything here worth continuing?. It removes the pressure to optimise every conversation and replaces it with selection over time: you don’t force value out of a single interaction, you look for signals that a relationship could naturally deepen. In Grant’s terms, successful “givers” are not indiscriminate, they are discerning. They invest where curiosity and reciprocity are mutual, which is what prevents giving from becoming self sacrificial.
Networking as social infrastructure
Sociologist Mark Granovetter argues in The Strength of Weak Ties (1973) that many professional opportunities surprisingly emerge through weaker social connections, including acquaintances, peers or people encountered briefly at events. Close friends tend to occupy similar social circles and therefore possess overlapping information whilst weaker connections act as bridges between otherwise disconnected groups. In university contexts this matters as opportunities often circulate unevenly through informal channels before they ever become publicly visible. Internship recommendations, society positions and introductions to recruiters frequently travel through peripheral connections rather than intimate relationships. This effectively reframes networking from being an exercise in instant rapport to something more cumulative.
The value of attending events is not necessarily that a single conversation changes your trajectory overnight, but that repeated exposure gradually embeds you within wider social networks. What initially feels artificial can slowly transform into something more organic through frequency alone. Importantly, Granovetter’s theory also challenges the assumption that every interaction must be deeply meaningful to hold value. Many relationships that later become professionally significant begin as forgettable, low-stakes exchanges. In that sense, networking is less about extracting immediate outcomes and more about increasing the probability of future connection through continued participation in shared spaces.
What I’m taking into this term
I still don’t feel fully comfortable walking into networking events, and I doubt most people do either. There’s always that moment at the door where you clock the room and wonder whether you belong in it.
But I think the framing most of us start with is the problem. When networking is treated as a performance, as something to execute correctly and leave with something measurable to show for it, it becomes exhausting before it even begins. Every conversation carries too much weight. Every exit feels like a verdict.
What Grant and Granovetter both point to, in different ways, is that the relationships that actually matter professionally aren't usually the ones that felt significant in the moment. They're the ones that accumulated quietly: through repeated presence, small acts of genuine interest, and showing up in the same spaces often enough that faces become familiar and conversations become easier.
So maybe the shift isn't about getting better at networking. It's about redefining what a successful interaction looks like. Not a business card exchanged or a LinkedIn request sent, but a conversation that didn't feel forced. A question that landed. A room that feels slightly less unfamiliar than it did the last time.