Why We’re Bad At Networking: Too Much Talk of Networking

Sometimes these posts come out of nowhere.  And they launch series.

I was discussing social capital on Twitter, as best one can at 140 characters a post while taking a walk, and one thing led to another.  Someone brought up why networking wasn’t preached enough (which is the subject of this post) and I realized it’s time to discuss why we’re bad at networking in the first place.

True it may not be “us we” that’s bad, but an amazing amount of people kind of are bad at it.  Worse there’s no excuse for it as we have the tools, technology, information, and we’re naturally social creatures.  If someone can use Facebook to declare their love of beer pong, they can network (as long as they remember to take down the beer pong stuff, seriously people).

So why is it some of us are just so bad at it?  Especially as so many people talk about it?

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How To Work With Your Skills Framework

I remember when Java was a curiosity.  Then I remember when it was going to become the universal language of everything.  Then I remember when it actually got used.  There was about a 15 year period these events were spread among.

Of course, a good programmer knows how to learn any language.  They were ready when Java actually got used.

I remember when the cloud was a curiosity and virtualization was something people only talked about.  Now everything’s cloud, and there’s at least less B.S. and more actual functionality.  That took about ten years.

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The Recruiting Nightmare #1 – The System is Broken

Let’s get this out of the way now – the entire system of recruiting, hiring, and placing people is terribly, terribly broken.  You probably noticed this, but I’m just going to confirm you’re right.

There’s specific ways that its broken – indeed I’ll be covering them – but it’s important to understand right now it does not work right.  People need work, there is at least some work out there, and a lot goes unfilled, goes wrongly filled, and good jobs and good people vanish into the either.

I base this on the fact that pretty much everyone I talk to about recruiting tells me this, often followed by a litany of reasons why.  There’s a weird, almost pathological consensus out there that things aren’t working in getting people into jobs.  What makes it weird is that by now we’re terribly used to it, despite it being a rather large social/economic malfunction.

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