The Importance of Networking for Your Career: 9 Habits That Actually Worked for Me

Every single job I’ve had in my career came about as a result of someone I knew.

Not a cold application. A person.

Over two decades in program management, I’ve turned that observation into a set of concrete habits. None of the outcomes below were planned. I wasn’t executing a five-year plan in either example. I just put myself in front of new people, stayed open to what happened next, and followed through when it mattered.

Here are nine networking habits, with two real examples of how they’ve played out in my own career woven in.

Put Yourself in the Room

The first thing that matters is showing up.

1. Say yes and volunteer, even when the benefit isn’t obvious

In August 2013, ahead of Google’s 15th birthday, my site lead in Dublin asked me to volunteer to lead the celebration project. I was already overcommitted at the time, and there was no obvious professional benefit to taking it on. But it sounded like a fun diversion, so I talked to my manager, renegotiated a few existing commitments so nothing would drop, and said yes.

You can’t always predict where a project will lead from the outset. This one ended up changing the direction of my career in a very positive way.

2. Work with people you’ve never worked with before

I was asked to co-lead that birthday project with a colleague I’d never worked with, and we spent the following month planning a celebration built entirely around the number 15: Lego towers, a 15-story stair climb, a board game night with 15 games, a costume contest for the most creative interpretation of the theme. You get the idea.

That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about program management. Every project is different, and you get to work with a new set of people each time.

This particular new relationship turned out to matter a lot. My co-lead’s day job was supporting the engineering directors in Dublin, and not long after our project wrapped, one of them reached out to talk about a program management role on the Site Reliability Engineering team, a role I never would have thought to apply for on my own, since the job description made the technical requirements sound intimidating. It turns out SRE is not just about technical skills.

After years leading engineering programs, I stepped away to write and create independently full-time. This site is supported by readers: when you buy books or tools through the Amazon links here, I may earn a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.

That conversation opened the door to some of the coolest work of my career: supporting the production services underpinning Google’s ads pipelines, kicking off a project to expand SRE’s university recruiting in Ireland, and eventually co-editing the SRE book.

3. Show up to social events, especially when you travel

You’ll meet a broader cross-section of people at a social event than you ever will sitting at your desk. I make an extra effort to say yes to invitations when I travel for work (one of my top bleisure travel tips), since it’s often the only time I’ll cross paths with people outside my usual team.

Ask, Offer, and Follow Through

Beyond putting yourself out there, you need to speak up.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Soon after I joined SRE, I spun up a 20% project to expand university outreach in Ireland, and because it was only a 20% project, I needed to beg, borrow, and steal whatever resources I could find.

While scanning an internal mailing list, I noticed a colleague on another team looking for material for a similar outreach presentation in the US. I reached out, and since I happened to be heading to that office a couple of weeks later, I asked if he’d be up for grabbing lunch to compare notes.

I think of internal mailing lists as something like old-school classified ads: worth a quick daily scan, but not worth endlessly scrolling. That one scan turned into a genuinely useful working relationship.

5. Take people up on offers to help immediately

At that lunch, he offered on the spot to come to Ireland and help with the outreach program I was trying to kickstart. I followed up within a couple of days rather than letting the offer evaporate, and he ended up spending two full weeks in Ireland working alongside me and the local SRE team. Together we ran an open house for 300 students and did four campus visits.

An offer made in a moment of enthusiasm is easy to lose if you don’t lock it in fast.

6. Give back before you’re asked, and be persistent when the first answer is “not yet”

Once that outreach program wrapped, I looked for ways to return the favor and volunteered my own time to help set up a new training program he was building. Later, when a full-time role opened on that team, I asked if the role could be based in Dublin rather than requiring a move to the U.S.

The answer was initially no. I asked again a couple of months later, this time backed by a one-page case for why my background and experience were a perfect fit, and worth bending the location requirement for. Being helpful and persistent is what got me the role, as the program’s second hire.

Persistence, backed by evidence, moved a “no” to a “yes.” That role launched a decade-plus run leading internal and external education programs for Google SRE and I’m forever grateful for that initial opportunity.

Build the System Behind It

Often, it’s easy to state the ‘what’, but determining ‘how’ is the key to making progress. This holds true for projects, and for networking.

7. Set a ‘people to meet’ goal

Program managers tend to be organized people who don’t mind a bit of structure. I set myself an objective to meet with a certain number of people outside my core team every quarter, whether that’s someone I’ve never met before or someone from a previous team I want to stay in touch with.

8. Map your stakeholders, and speak up about your own goals

When I was looking for a new role in Dublin, I made a list of every team based in the office, who I already knew on each one, and where the gaps were. Then I filled those gaps deliberately. When you arrange a meeting, always ask if there’s anyone else that person would recommend you talk to. It’s much easier to make a new connection when you are referred by someone else rather than “cold calling.”

It’s also important to say what you want out loud. During that 15th birthday project, I told my co-lead I was job hunting and that making my work visible mattered to me. I never asked her to make an introduction on my behalf. She simply knew I was looking and that I was an excellent project manager (as I had demonstrated in our work together). When an opportunity came up, she knew a meeting would be welcome and took the time to vouch for me.

9. Keep a running list of contacts by location

I keep a running list of people I know in different cities. When I’m planning a trip, I pull out that list and set up time for 1:1s, lunch, or coffee. And if I meet someone I think would benefit from knowing someone else in my network, I pay it forward and make the introduction, with permission from both sides first. I don’t like to “unleash” connections on folks in my network unexpectedly. I always ask if they are up for me making an e-introduction first.

The Bottom Line

You never know where a connection or a chance meeting will lead.

Trust and credibility are a program manager’s most valuable currency, and that holds just as true when it comes to networking as it does in delivering on a project. People remember who showed up, who followed through, and who gave help freely long before they ever asked for anything back.

I’m The Reliable PgM™ because I’ve built my career at the intersection of Program Management and Site Reliability Engineering, and if there’s one lesson SRE has taught me that applies directly here, it’s that you shouldn’t wait for a single point of failure to become a crisis. Build redundancy into your network before you need it.

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