PhD Networking 101: 5 Steps to Boost Your Future Academic or Industry Career

Stop wondering how you can start networking as a PhD student and apply our top tips today. According to multiple experts, networking could be the most important soft skill you need for building a career in both academic and industry environments.

In many aspects, this strategy overlaps with the concept of social capital. Referring to your capability to attract different resources for your goals via the networks you belong to. Be it the financing for your innovative start-up or a large-scale research project requiring multiple stakeholders. The success of such initiatives may easily depend on your ability to make the right calls, motivate others to help your cause, and secure the necessary support.

From a practical perspective, strong PhD networking can be the ‘make or break’ factor in deciding the fate of your vision. In the modern world of increasing interconnectedness, you simply cannot realise complex projects on your own.

Networking as a PhD student goes beyond some ‘professional communication’ skills taught at management courses. It covers all areas of your life, from having good friends you can call in the middle of the night to help if you get sick to having multiple alternative employment options to choose from at any moment of your career. If there is a single soft skill that you can invest all your resources into, networking may be a good choice due to its universal nature.

Unfortunately, no universities teach PhD researchers how they can develop it. You spend dozens of hours being lectured on advanced statistical analyses and selecting the optimal thesis structure, but zero hours on how you can build a strong network of contacts to find participants, promote your research in the academic community or apply your newly acquired degree to boost your academic or industry career. In this article, we will suggest 5 steps you need to take to develop strong networking skills by the time you complete your PhD project.

1. Find Motivation for Networking as a PhD student

Some people don’t recognise the advantages of having vast networks of contacts in academia and industry. Many researchers are inherently focused on exploring facts and figures in isolation and do not particularly enjoy socialising and visiting large groups of people. This is the main barrier to networking success.

You must start by making a list of 5-10 tangible advantages that can make these activities beneficial for your personal goals and aspirations. Let’s be honest here, forcing yourself to communicate with others and develop networking skills can be a challenging task. To successfully realise it, you will need some strong motivation to remind yourself why you are doing this in the first place. Otherwise, it will soon feel mundane and you won’t convince yourself to engage in networking activities day after day.

One of the psychological barriers associated with this aspect is the deeply internalised feeling that networking means ‘using people for your purposes’. While some individuals are abusing their communication skills in this sphere, you don’t need to follow their example. Instead, try to imagine how your networking capabilities can help other people and contribute to the greater cause you consider important.

If you could successfully engage more researchers to join your project, would its results contribute to society at large? Will open innovation industry initiatives help more people enjoy the fruits of science? You must find solid and tangible reasons for the development of your networks of social contacts that will not create internal cognitive dissonance.

2. Become More Helpful

One of the problems associated with the ‘egoistic’ view of networking is the whole concept of social value as ‘being able to borrow resources from others for realising your own goals’. This definition omits an important component of ‘giving things first’. If you have friends who are ready to rush to your house when you are feeling sick at 2 am, chances are you have been a good friend to them previously.

The secret trick to building better networks is giving people value before you ask for contributions from them. A good start for applying this method is to join multiple PhD student forums and industry forums and help newcomers. While many thesis writers are suffering from impostor syndrome, your current level of knowledge in your field of interest already surpasses that of 90% of other people. This gives you the unique capability to be an expert for them and help them find the answers they seek.

If you spend one hour per day answering messages on such resources and assisting others, you can easily be promoted to an official moderator or administrator of that group or community. Moreover, people obliged to you will probably thank you and try to add you to their contacts on social media. This allows you to get at least 20-30 new contacts in academia and/or industry within the first 3-6 months of such activities.

Be consistent, and you will not believe how much helping people is beneficial to your own success. Moreover, an expert status in professional communities also helps your exposure and attracts new offers from academia and industry fields. You can also receive some lucrative offers or positive word-of-mouth in professional communities via the 6-handshake rule.

3. Visit More Conferences and Industry Events

Socialisation becomes much easier when you find yourself in places specifically designed to promote communication between academic and industry practitioners. Conferences and industry events are usually promoted by supervisors as a way of promoting PhD projects to larger audiences. This way, you can attract the attention of other practitioners who may be willing to support your research, co-write articles or offer you potential job positions in the future.

With that being said, you can do the following and seek new academic and industry contacts proactively.

• Listen to others’ reports and select 3-4 persons with interesting research directions.
• Find them afterwards and thank them for their presentations.
• Ask some questions to demonstrate your interest in their sphere of study.

Make sure that your queries are relevant and do not look laboured on your part. This is usually achieved through extensive preparation, helping you learn more about this person’s interests and field of knowledge.

If they politely answer your questions but do not support further communication, so be it. However, some speakers may be highly interested in discussing their sphere of interest with you. Some of them may even visit your own presentation after that, which may lead to new industry contacts. When you take a look at the history of both science and entrepreneurship, you find it difficult to believe how many success stories started with a single conversation between two practitioners visiting the same event.

Being proactive in this matter can open more doors to you than you can imagine. The best thing is that visiting conferences and industry events and approaching people with follow-up questions is almost 100% free. It is approved and encouraged by supervisors and universities. This is a win-win scenario for all involved parties.

4. Write Follow-Up Emails

Traditional marketing is largely based on the concept of the ‘marketing funnel’. It implies that you approach 100 people with your offer. You get some response, with 30 of them showing some form of interest. You start working with these ‘leads’ and get 10 sold items as a result. If the response is minuscule, you can introduce some changes to your offers but the main premise of the marketing funnel is ‘generating sales through extensive communication’.

While many PhD students manage to overcome their shyness and start approaching more people, many of them ignore the second component of this model. Having to close the deals. You encounter 10 fellow researchers at a conference. You hang out after and exchange contact details. The next time you get back to this topic is when you are browsing through your phone’s stored numbers while trying to remember who all these people are. This is clearly not the best networking strategy.

You must approach this activity like growing a business. Make a list of your already existing contacts in academia and industry spheres. You may suddenly realise that you have more people you know than you expected. Next, try to look through their recent publications, news or personal information posted on social media. Identify some possible topics for writing an email and send an email to each of them. You can congratulate them on getting a degree, ask them about their recent publications, or simply offer an informal meeting if they reside in your area.

Maintaining a network of contacts is actually an activity that requires time and resources. You can’t simply put new phone numbers into your notebook and wake up being a popular person one morning. Make sure that you maintain ongoing communication with your contacts to develop long-term relationships. If they do not respond to follow-up emails, that’s okay. However, many people will be glad to hear from you and will be willing to meet you or communicate with you.

5. Be There for Them

Building social capital is not limited to the capability to draw resources from your networks when you need them. It is also about being there for them when they need it the most. If you maintain ongoing communication as suggested earlier, you will receive some requests from your contacts. Answering these calls for help may be the best relationship-building advice we can provide to you.

Have you just learned that your fellow researcher’s audio recorder broke just before some important data collection interviews? Lending them your own device can be extremely generous on your part. Your fellow researcher struggling to collect a research sample will also feel obliged if you decide to join it as a respondent or repost their survey on your social media and ask your friends to also complete their forms. Visiting others’ lectures and conferences to provide emotional support to the speakers or help them with their presentations is another rare opportunity to transform your acquaintances into your long-term friends.

The best thing is that these activities rarely require substantial investments other than your willingness to help and expressing your sincere interest in others. They also expose you to new people and new ideas in the process. In some aspects, this form of networking is similar to volunteering. Make sure to try to give others more than you get from them. Nobody likes a freeloader.

If you want your networks to be a source of assistance you can rely on, you better not ‘cry wolf’ too often. Help others but ask for help sparingly. Also, prioritise information and expert recommendations over tangible requests. It is easy to ask a person for advice and let them feel knowledgeable and experienced in the process. However, asking them to spend their time and resources to help you fill in some forms or assist you with other academic tasks is a win-lose situation. Try not to ask for favours too often and appear as a person who can handle their own life goals on their own without external aid.

Final thoughts on networking as a PhD student

As with any other strategic activity, networking takes time to see tangible results. You cannot send 100 emails and become an academic world celebrity overnight. Moreover, this is something that mustn’t be rushed if you do not want to lose your acquaintances and be perceived as an intrusive person. When in doubt, be as polite as possible. Networking is built upon being useful and helpful rather than obtrusive.

Also, try not to send hundreds of follow-up emails at the same time. If some of your recipients communicate with each other, this may be seen as spam rather than your sincere attempt to establish meaningful communication. Proceed slowly and make sure that you give networking opportunities time to emerge. If you play your cards right, you will encounter more and more possibilities of helping others, asking new questions, and engaging in joint projects as you proceed.

Start small and expect tangible results 2-3 years down the line. This way, you will gradually develop a strong network of contacts in academia and industry by the time you need to put your newly acquired PhD degree to good use. Good luck!