| Author went to Princeton.[1] Another Princeton grad "found him" through the alumni directory. Sounds like networking to me. Then, in the fall of 2006, a guy named Austin Merritt looked me up in the Princeton University alumni directory. He was about two years out of school and had just moved to Big Sky to ski, enjoy the outdoors and hopefully find a job in the construction industry. Apparently, we were two of only three alumni in the area. He asked if I wanted to grab dinner sometime, and we did. As we drove home that night, Lauren said, “You know you have to hire that guy.” I knew I did. That would mean paying his salary from my personal savings, which was scary. But somehow, I knew it would be worthwhile. The author linked to another other article about his company, describing his difficulties hiring good developers and "eventually" stumbling upon SEO, around 2006, when he got lucky finding a college student in Montana. [2] SEO was pretty common by 2006, especially in places like San Francisco. I'd imagine that if he had done more networking (even in Montana) he might have figured this out sooner. He might also have had a better time finding development resources instead of having to stumble through 10 different outsourcing agencies. [1] http://wins.softwareadvice.com/how-software-advice-got-start... [2] http://wins.softwareadvice.com/how-software-advice-got-start... |
It's hard to measure the results of networking. My first awesome gig here in Colorado came as a result of networking with no clear goal: Made a friend in the local scene, and ran into him as we were leaving a conference, where he introduced me to someone else. Ended up with a nice high paying gig from that, as well as a great item on my resume.
At this point I've done enough networking that the jobs are finding me. But people only know that I create value because I've talked with them and told them. Doesn't mean the networking was useless since I don't do it as much any more.