The Essential Skill of Schmoozing
In a world built on networks, Networking is missing from the curriculum
An essential role of public education is to prepare young people for successful futures. Schmoozing can be an invaluable skill in this pursuit and kids deserve schools that foster their growth in this area.
Odds are you or someone you know has landed an opportunity that wasn’t publicly posted. I know I have.
“At least 70 percent, if not 80 percent, of jobs are not published…the vast majority of hiring is friends and acquaintances hiring other trusted friends and acquaintances.” — Matt Youngquist, President of Career Horizons, to NPR.
In just the last 24 hours, I’ve seen three posts in my Facebook feed related to job opportunities, including one that offers “the potential to earn $100k+ in the first year.” I recently saw a post from a CEO friend in which he asked if anyone knew a high school student who would be interested in a Summer internship. My friend is a frequent contributor to Forbes and guest on TV market and finance shows and his company is doing cutting edge work in a field it helped invent. This was an amazing opportunity and being connected to his network was the best way to access it.
While some of these are likely posted on company websites and job search engines, a key takeaway for me is that my own connectedness efforts lead to a lot more dots on my radar than someone who is less committed to networking. It’s led to countless new friendships, exposed me to volunteer opportunities and novel arts and entertainment events. These have been powerful contributors to my own happiness and success. Networking has directly helped me get every internship I’ve had and several jobs. It’s also helped me to help others.
I’ve realized all of these benefits from networking because my parents instilled in me the value of meeting people, getting contact information and following up with them. But this is not a secret family recipe; schools can and should be sharing this sauce with kids.
Schools are doing a good job of preparing students for networking but that only helps once they are networked.
Most students learn in school the importance of a making eye contact and offering a firm handshake. They learn how to write resumes and cover letters. I believe schools are also attempting to instill the values of work ethic, self-direction and showing up on time. These are important skills. The problem is they are of the most utility after one gets her foot in the door. What’s missing is fostering the Networking Skills that will help her get in the door and actually apply her learning.
This is a light lift for schools
Fortunately for our students, the greatest barrier to incorporating the art of schmoozing into teaching and learning is our own willingness to do so. It’s a life skill for which many adults in a given school house are already well-equipped to provide authoritative support. We needn’t invest in expensive curriculum or training. When outside resources are desired, ample OERs are a google search away.
5 Ideas to get started
This is by no means a comprehensive checklist nor do I have illusions that they are even good (please do correct for my inadequacy with your own suggestions in a response post!). Nonetheless, I hope they offer a starting place or at least spark ideas that help you get to a better starting place:
- Get students on LinkedIn starting in 9th Grade. In the U.S., the minimum age for a LinkedIn account is 14. Have students create accounts and consider ways to get them regularly updating their profiles and checking their feeds.
- Set networking milestones. Perhaps it is through gamification, incentives or old fashion requirements, but think about ways to foster growth in students’ networks. For example, one my wife’s grad school professors in business school has an assignment based on students having at least 500 LinkedIn connections. An additional piece of the grade is the percentage of those connections that hold executive level positions. What might be reasonable milestones for teenagers that are attainable while also pushing them to grow?
- Require research sources that include first-person interviews. Somewhere close to 100% of high school students will have papers and projects that require them to cite expert sources. What if we required that at least one of these sources on a given assignment had to be a first-person interview with an expert? In our connected world, we may not always gain access to every expert we seek out, but determined students will always succeed in accessing an expert. In addition to interviewing these experts, students could be expected to connect with them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or even to connect the old school way with a hand-written note that is mailed.
- Reach out to authors of assigned texts. In addition to directly communicating with experts, students could reach out to authors of the texts we assign them. “I read your article about x for one of my classes and would like to connect!” could be the LinkedIn request students send. Even if their requests go unanswered, they are authentically practicing and acquiring a helpful skill for getting connected.
- Establish mini-externships around networking events. I’m a big fan of the growing trend of externships for students. These largely tend to be focused on career exposure and workforce experience. The model could easily be appropriated at a more granular level to attending networking events of interest. On meetup.com alone, there are more than two dozen events listed in my area in the next 10 days. Students could be tasked with seeking out one event of interest (and they aren’t limited to Meetup!) and meeting two people with whom they are to establish a connection.
Personally, I believe the value in exercises such as these (and the superior ideas you’ll suggest in a response post) is enormous in its potential to impact students’ successful futures. I would discourage fixating on the size and quality of the networks that students build and focus more on the actual creation of networks and the skills that will help students productively grow them as they themselves grow.
This isn’t the sole responsibility of schools. And that’s not an excuse.
Diversity in hiring is a hot button topic right now in nearly every industry. A lot of time, energy and resources are being poured into innovations in expanding hiring pools to be more inclusive. And rightly so.
But for our students who’s parents don’t have colleagues, Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, golf and Mahjong partners to swing open the doors of opportunity, we can’t afford to wait for employers to figure this out and get with the times. We know Networking is an essential skill and schools have a responsibility to help our students position themselves to take advantage their networks. The first and most urgent step is to get them networking.
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As always, your own thoughts, ideas and pushback response posts are appreciated and valued. In addition to following me here on Medium, you can find me at SenorG on Twitter.
Lastly, if you dig that Creative Commons citation of the photo, I created it with Alan Levine’s handy dandy flickr creative commons attribution plug in. It’s free, easy to use, and can be added as a widget to your browser to automate the attribution process. It is available here.
