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How to Network Authentically in Your Job Search, with Angie Callen

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Does networking feel icky to you? If so, you’re doing it wrong, according to Find Your Dream Job guest Angie Callen. Networking is simply building and nurturing relationships with others, and we all do that with friends and family every day. Angie suggests being proactive but not aggressive and focusing on long-term relationships. She says it’s a mistake to only seek someone out for what they can offer you. That is inauthentic. Build authenticity by being true to who you are and finding others who are like-minded or whom you want to know more about. 

About Our Guest:

Angie Callen is an award-winning career and business coach and the founder of Career Benders. Her company helps professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs navigate today’s workforce. Angie also hosts the No More Mondays podcast.

Resources in This Episode:

Transcript

Find Your Dream Job, Episode 495:

How to Network Authentically in Your Job Search, with Angie Callen

Airdate: April 2, 2025

Mac Prichard:

This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want, and make a difference in life.

I’m your host, Mac Prichard. I’m also the founder of Mac’s List. It’s a job board in the Pacific Northwest that helps you find a fulfilling career.

Every Wednesday, I talk to a different expert about the tools you need to get the work you want.

Last week, we talked about how to overcome your discomfort with networking.

But how do you remain true to yourself as you reach out to others?

Angie Callen is here to talk about how to network authentically in your job search.

She’s an award-winning career and business coach and the founder of Career Benders.

Her company helps professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs navigate today’s workforce.

Angie also hosts the No More Mondays podcast.

She joins us from Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

Well, Angie, let’s talk about the benefits of networking before we talk about authenticity. Do job seekers who network have an advantage over competitors?

Angie Callen:

Oh, absolutely, hands down. If anything, I would say that not networking is one of the biggest disservices you can do to your job search and your long-term career development because relationships open doors and people still are the ones who hire people, even in a competitive market.

Mac Prichard:

Say more about that. Why do relationships matter to hiring managers when they’re reviewing a stack of applications and trying to make decisions about who to interview?

Angie Callen:

Well, there’s that idea that if you get along with someone who works in a company, then you’ve already overcome a little bit of a hurdle around culture fit. That’s a very, very specific example of it, but humans are relational beings, and we tend to trust people who come through a network or who are referred by another human, and so, it gives you a leg up over someone who’s just a bunch of black and white characters on a piece of paper because you’ve come in as an already vetted, slight stamp of approval human being who someone actually said, “Hey, you should talk to this person for this role.”

It gives you a leg up over the rest of a very unhuman process.

Mac Prichard:

Say more about why that matters, though, Angie. Why can an introduction make such a big difference, especially if you’re competing against somebody who might have more impressive credentials or qualifications?

Angie Callen:

There’s a few different reasons, and I’ll get to the competitive qualifications in a second. The first thing is that we are in an employer market, which means competition is high, even just from a quantity perspective. Networking, human introductions, and internal referrals, which come from those networking efforts, are a great way to kind of circumnavigate what can feel like a black hole if you’re sitting and applying online. What’s more, if you’re able to get in front of someone and talk to them and build rapport, they will see you in a different and even potentially stronger light.

Networking can open doors to career change or higher level roles, or can help you be just as competitive to somebody who on paper is highly qualified because you have shown that you are a personality fit for a team or are somebody who they’d want to work with, and that is just as important if not more important in hiring today as the hard skills that you bring to the role.

Mac Prichard:

Let’s talk about networking myths. You work with a lot of clients, You’re a career coach. What are some of the most common myths you find among job applicants about networking?

Angie Callen:

The biggest one is, “I’m going to look stupid. People are going to think I’m asking for help. It feels icky.” Which isn’t so much a myth, but just the feelings that hold us back from networking is this idea that there is no way to do it without coming across as disingenuous, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Mac Prichard:

Why is that, Angie? How can you network without feeling icky?

Angie Callen:

Well, and that’s where we get to bring my favorite word into the conversation, which is authenticity. If you approach people – authenticity = be a human; if you approach people with a genuine curiosity and as your authentic, natural self, and with the intention of starting a conversation, building a relationship, and establishing rapport, networking will feel fine.

Okay, it’ll feel a little awkward. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world as you’re getting started, but if you can rip that bandaid off, I’ve actually had clients say, “Holy cow, I was so intimidated by this but this is way more fun than sitting and applying to a bunch of jobs online,” and I was like, “Yeah, no kidding.”

If you can get through that lift, you’ll actually find that if you can find your approach that feels authentic, the whole networking game changes, both in how it feels for you and how people respond to you.

Mac Prichard:

Why is that? Why does authenticity trump an online application?

Angie Callen:

Well, just in general, authenticity in any part of life, whether it’s a job search, whether it’s leading people, whether it’s in personal relationships, takes way less energy than trying to be someone that you’re not, and I think in networking, specifically, we can get in our heads or try too hard, or we think we have to have the perfect message or we go too far and throw too much information out at someone in a message. When all you need to do is say, “Hey, I want to talk to you.”

It’s just like you would if you were in a room with them, and you’re humans. If you had your number one “I want to meet you” member of your network standing across the room from you at an actual live event, and you worked up the courage to go introduce yourself, what would you say? That’s all you have to do if you’re networking remotely or using LinkedIn as a tool, and a lot of times, we get in our heads and think that we have to have these well-thought-out scripts. You don’t.

You just need to start the conversation in the most natural way possible.

Mac Prichard:

What stops people from doing that? It sounds simple, but so many people don’t take advantage and walk across the room and talk to that person or send that LinkedIn message. What’s stopping people from doing that, Angie?

Angie Callen:

Well, one of the primary human fears is a fear of rejection, and I think that’s what keeps us from stopping any kind of outreach and connection like this, and here’s what I say to that is networking is either neutral or positive; it’s never a negative in your world. What I mean by that is, what are the chances that you’re going to walk across the room, shake the hand, and that guy goes, “Who are you? I don’t want to talk to you.”

The chances of that are so slim that they’re almost zero, and so if you’re able to look at the reality instead of the chaos scenario that we develop in our heads, we realize that there’s very little to lose. Same with reaching out to somebody in a LinkedIn message. The chances of them saying, “Go pound sand,” are almost zero. The chances of them not responding are pretty high, but that’s not even a negative action; that’s just a neutral. They probably don’t respond to anybody because they don’t get it.

If you can wrap your head around the idea that you don’t have much, (if anything), to lose but you have a whole lot to gain by reaching out and taking that step and reaching out, it can definitely downplay a lot of those fears that come into our head when we create these scenarios that we’re going to get blacklisted or we’re going to be told that we’re stupid, or all of the other things that we make up in our heads.

Mac Prichard:

How do you make your networking support your job search because I can imagine a job searcher listening thinking, “Well, this sounds great. I can walk across the room and speak to this person and introduce myself and be myself, but how is that going to help me get a job?”

Angie Callen:

There’s a few things there. What I’ll say is, once you start networking, don’t stop because if you’ve gone through the lift, you might as well continue to do it so that you no longer have to network in conjunction with a job search and you’re just continually meeting people, nurturing a network in front of people which tends to bring opportunities to us more proactively and then we don’t have to go out and be as aggressive. I want to preface everything by saying that. Once you start, don’t stop, because then the second part becomes moot.

The second part is if you’re starting to network because you’re job searching, think about this as a potentially multi-point conversation and relationship building. Don’t go into a networking introduction or outreach or meeting expecting to walk out of it with something. Expect to walk out of it with a warm connection that might go somewhere.

In other words, you don’t go on a first date with a diamond ring in your pocket. Don’t go to the start of a networking conversation with the, “Hey, will you give me a referral for this job,” anywhere in the scope of the conversation or in your introduction message because that’s disrespectful. People who get networking know that that’s what networking can do; however, if you approach respectfully and authentically and human to human, those people are responsive because you have shown an interest and a curiosity in what they know and therefore, through relationship building, they become willing to support you. Don’t expect that from the get-go.

Mac Prichard:

Well, terrific. We’re going to take a break, Angie.

When we come back, Angie Callen will continue to share her advice on how to network authentically in your job search.

We’re back in the Mac’s List studio. I’m talking with Angie Callen.

She’s an award-winning career and business coach and the founder of Career Benders.

Her company helps professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs navigate today’s workforce.

Angie also hosts the No More Mondays podcast.

She joins us from Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

Now, Angie, before the break, we were talking about how to network authentically in your job search. Let’s talk about the networking tactics and one suggestion that I know you share with your clients is that authentic networkers pay attention to how you approach people.

You talked a bit about this in the first segment, but say more. What do you have in mind here?

Angie Callen:

It’s all in the messaging. Let me back up one small step. I think there’s, to make it simple, I think there are 3 channels in which we can network. One would be, a lot of people think about networking events, or let’s say, in-person networking at an event where you’re meeting people that you don’t already know. The second, also a human-to-human, real in the flesh, kind of situation, but using existing contacts to get to new connections, so still face-to-face connecting.

Then the third is, I’m going to say, virtual networking, which is typically what I recommend a lot of clients do, via primarily LinkedIn, because you can be so hyper-targeted and strategic about it.

In any of those settings, how you message your introductions can drastically change how they’re received.

Mac Prichard:

What do you have in mind there? What kind of messaging can turn someone off, and what kind of messaging will get you the response you want?

Angie Callen:

What will turn someone off, no matter which of the three channels they come from, is a “Hey, I’ve never met you before, but here’s a job I just applied for at your company. I’m wondering if you would give me an internal referral?”

That’s a pitch slap. That’s popping that question we were talking about in the first segment, on the first date. It’s too forward, too fast.

What works is more of an opener, to say, “Hey, there’s something about you that I’m interested in learning. Can we talk more?”

What you have done is compliment the person by saying that they have or know something that you would like to understand, and there is nothing that we love more in this world than to talk about ourselves, and now you have opened up a conversation which you’re going to go to, allow them to talk about themselves, which will naturally then have them asking you to talk about yourself, which then, potentially, opens the door for, “Hey, I see a way that you could help me.”

Mac Prichard:

I can imagine a listener thinking, “Well, that sounds like a bait and switch, Angie. The reason that I’m reaching out to this person is that I saw a position online at the company, I’ve applied, I think that this person might be able to help me in some way, I’ll reach out to the person, but the reason I want to talk to them is not to learn more about them, but really to see if they can help me get this job.”

What would you say to someone who might have that concern?

Angie Callen:

Yeah, so it feels like I’m going into this with an ulterior motive. Guess what? All networking has an ulterior motive, but it goes back to how you approach it and how you show respect to someone, instead of just going straight to your ulterior motive, and to me, it’s about intent.

Let’s say, in the scenario that you just said, there’s a specific job opened right now, and you’re going to try to make a connection for it. I would set the intent that the connections that you’re making aren’t necessarily about that specific job or getting your foot in the door of that specific opening but building a relationship with a company that you’re clearly interested in, and if the relationship leads to the door to that opportunity opening up, great, but you go into it with the intent, “Hey, this opportunity flagged a company that I’d like to work for, so I’m going to make a connection for future opportunities.”

It’s a way to use what you see online but then build yourself a little bit of a better network for the future. I like to think about networking as money in the bank. You’re going to put assets in the bank; you’re going to put connections in the bank so that you can withdraw them when you need it because it’s really hard to have a dollar go in your pocket and then there’s a hole and it goes right through. You don’t necessarily want to earn the money the second that you spend it. That’s why we long-term network and that’s also how you can think about not going into a networking conversation.

Expecting an immediate return but having a good intention to build a relationship and it will lead where it leads.

Mac Prichard:

What is the authentic way, Angie, of once you’ve made that connection and you are interested in that position, how can you share with the person that you’re meeting with as your relationship grows that you are pursuing this opportunity inside their organization?

Angie Callen:

I think it depends on how networking-savvy the person you’re talking to is because there’s also a scale there. I said in the first segment: people who get it, get it. That might fast-track the ask, but you can’t just go in assuming that, and so as a quick little summary, what might happen is you reach out to somebody on LinkedIn, and say “Hey, I came across your company, I’m really curious and would love to learn more about your experience working in this department there. Can we connect for a few minutes?”

If they say yes, and you’re able to get a 15-minute informational interview with them over the phone, you’re going to make good on that ask by saying, “Okay, tell me more about the company. Tell me more about the department. What’s the culture like? How did you get your foot in the door? What do you like about it?”

You’re asking them about the experience that you told them you wanted to know about. But what will happen in that exchange is a natural shift in conversation where that person starts asking you the same. “Hey, what are you looking for? What interested you in this role?” And that naturally tends to segue to the, “Hey, I would love your tips on how to get my foot in the door at this company.”

That is, in my opinion, magic code for, “Hey, would you help me with an internal referral?” And they’ll either bite and say, “Hey, yeah, when you see another role, I’ll give you an internal referral.” Or, “Hey, you mentioned that there was a role opened right now that’s what whetted your appetite to us. I’ll give you an internal referral to that.”

It could be now or later, depending on how networking-savvy they are, but you worked up to that ask.

Mac Prichard:

You mentioned other channels for networking besides reaching out through LinkedIn and email. Talk more about those channels, Angie, and how to network authentically when you pursue them.

Angie Callen:

The first would be networking events. I’m a big fan of Meetup. You can find a lot of different types of events there, and when you go to them, be sure that you have a good elevator pitch so that when somebody says, “Hey, tell me about you.” Or after you ask someone about them and they start to reciprocate, you’ve got a good little story that will open up a conversation, but don’t expect any real meaningful connection or deep conversations to happen at that event. Take them offline, take them to a coffee meeting.

Gather every piece of contact information that you can, connect with everybody on LinkedIn, and follow up. Expect that to be a 2-step process.

If we’re looking at, say, using existing connections, the inner circle, a lot of times what I tell people to do is pull the first five names out of their Rolodex. How’s that for a throwback? Anybody under the age of 30 is going, what is a Rolodex? If you pick your first five names, now you can say to them, even if they have nothing to do with what you’re trying to do, you can sit down with somebody that you trust and say, “Hey, here’s what I’m looking to do. Who do you know that I should talk to.”

Now, you’re building a web of connections that come through a trusted source to leverage and now go have informational interviews with.

Mac Prichard:

I know another point that you make about authentic networking is that your attitude matters. What kind of attitude makes a difference when you want to network authentically?

Angie Callen:

Go into it with a positive attitude. No entitlement. You’re going into networking with no expectations that anybody is going to give you anything, but you are positively going to learn about people, be curious, and see what comes out of it.

Mac Prichard:

Terrific.

Well, it’s been a great conversation, Angie. Now, tell us, what’s next for you?

Angie Callen:

I don’t know. I’ve always got my fingers in something. What I’m working on right now is really doing what I’ve done for professionals over the last 7 years, for the people serving the professionals. I want to give back to my coach community and get into a little bit of train-the-trainer thing, to teach them what I’ve known, so that collectively we can have even greater impact.

Mac Prichard:

Terrific. I know listeners can learn more about you and your services by visiting your website, that is, careerbenders.com, and I know that you’ll have a special offer for our listeners as well and that you also invite the audience to connect with you on LinkedIn. When you do reach out to Angie there, please mention that you heard her on Find Your Dream Job.

Now, Angie, given all of the great advice that you’ve shared with us today, what’s the one thing you want a listener to remember about how to network authentically in your job search?

Angie Callen:

That you don’t need to be anyone other than who you already are.

Mac Prichard:

Next week, our guest will be Andy Hibel.

He’s the chief operating officer and the co-founder of HigherEdJobs. It’s the established leader in the academic recruitment field.

Andy also co-hosts the HigherEdJobs Podcast.

You interview for a job.

And you decide it’s not the right position for you.

How do you say no?

Join us next Wednesday when Andy Hibbel and I talk about how to walk away from the wrong job offer.

Until next time, thanks for letting us help you find your dream job.

This show is produced by Mac’s List.

Susan Thornton-Hough schedules our guests and writes our newsletter. Lisa Kislingbury Anderson manages our social media.

Our sound engineer and editor is Matt Fiorillo. Dawn Mole creates our transcripts. And our music is by Freddy Trujillo.

This is Mac Prichard. See you next week.