Career Switch Podcast: Expert advice for your career change · Lixandra Urresta

59: Taking the work out of networking (especially for introverts)

·29 min·1 clip

Karen Wickery says quality matters more than collecting business cards at a conference.

Alexandra Uresta opens by naming the discomfort many people feel around networking. Karen Wickery answers with a more workable way to think about it. The conversation moves away from loud venues and crowded events and toward smaller, more deliberate contact. Networking is described as something that can feel tiring, especially for introverts. That pressure is exactly what the episode tries to ease. Wickery suggests treating outreach as occasional rather than constant. A quarterly or bi-monthly note to yourself can be enough. The goal is not to stay in touch every day, every week, or even necessarily every month. It is to make follow-up feel realistic. The episode then shifts to the idea of a brain trust. That means a small group of trusted people who know you well. They do not need to be a public audience. They can be three, four, or five people who offer good advice and listen closely. Wickery recommends reaching out to them individually. The ask stays simple: ask for advice on a specific career change or new field. The conversation makes space for work relationships as well as friendships. It points to people you have trusted in work settings and been in the trenches with. From there, the episode widens the frame. Networking is split into tasks instead of treated like one big wall of strangers. That makes the process feel more usable. Wickery says people are usually looking for new ideas, connections, and contacts too. You are not alone in needing connection. The episode also references Phil Terry's book Never Search Alone. His message is repeated clearly: do not search alone. The discussion mentions volunteer groups and job search councils as one way people support each other. Those groups turn the search into a shared effort. That fits the episode's larger goal. It wants career change to feel less solitary and less intimidating. The advice stays calm and specific throughout. It never asks the listener to become extroverted. It asks them to work with how they already operate. By the end, networking looks less like an event and more like a set of small, repeatable choices.

As heard by us

A calmer, more usable take on networking for career change.

Networking is treated here as something steady and ordinary, not a big social performance. It begins with the pressure of public mingling, then settles into a simpler pattern: build a trusted brain trust, reach out to a few key people one at a time, and keep follow-up occasional…

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Why you'd press play

Turn networking into a few manageable moves instead of a whole social performance.

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