My name is Sirisha Kuchimanchi. I'm a former tech executive. I've worked for over 17 years at Texas Instruments with various career breaks. I host a podcast, Women, Career, and Life, which actually revolves around women and leadership. It shares stories and advice for women to achieve their career and life goals.
It's a top 30% Spotify podcast. And just a side note, actually, though the title says women, 30% of the listeners are men because the advice does apply to their situations as well. I also do a local radio show for largely targets of South Asian community where I talk about career, financial and some life advice.
So today's topic on how to expand your network. I wanted to take a sort of a step back and walk through my own story. So I've been podcasting now for about a year and a half. So about for the first year of podcasting, I did it essentially, yes, you can see behind, this sort of room setting where I just talk to my guests and published episodes, and I didn't really have a community around me and podcasting in some ways, if you talk to other podcasters or anyone who does creative arts can be very isolating because.
Oftentimes, especially during COVID when a lot of us probably got started. We only connected virtually, so we didn't really meet anyone. And one day on LinkedIn, I saw this feed pop out where someone posted that there was a podcast movement conference in Dallas and we were wondering anyone else was going to attend.
So I found out about podcast movement, which is this huge podcasting conference. And while it was down the street from me, because I live in Dallas itself. So I booked. Ticket for four days to attend the event. And what I did before going to this, and this is the reason I'm telling this story is really about how do you set yourself before going to a huge conference or a meeting where there might be hundreds of people and you're walking into a room where, you know, nobody.
So I found people and did search on LinkedIn and look for podcast movement or PM 22, as it was being called, and found a lot of people who are posting about it, people who are responding to those posts and send a note, connecting myself to them. And my note was fairly straightforward and simple. It just said, hi, Jeff.
This is my first podcast conference. I'm really excited to attend it. I host a podcast, women, career, and life, and just finished a year. Look forward to connecting. I probably sent 70 applications and got like 50 responses back for those within the first few days. In that sense, I got a lot of positive responses.
People were also trying to schedule time. And you know what? Very intentional about following up. So a few of them, I could schedule time and those people became my mentors. One of them, Maddy actually even listened to my podcast before I met with him and gave me very specific feedback on my podcast.
So I really appreciated these connections I was making. And it really also enabled me to get to this forum, in this huge hotel and meet people and have some agency, basically there was some familiarity as I walked in here. So that was the step to networking. So like I said, I'm from Dallas, so if those of you who are here, can you drop it in the comments where you are listening from?
I'm interested in seeing where all you are visiting from on this chat. So as I walk through the podcast conference, One of the other things that I took away was mentorship. It gave me access to a huge community that I've started to build on. I'm actually signing for a board position in one of the podcast conferences.
We'll see how that goes, but it's given me opportunities to connect with so many people. And that becomes very important in how you expand your network. Fantastic. I used to go to Columbus when I was in grad school in Pittsburgh, hop on the Greyhound and take the bus. Every long weekend to visit family.
Nice to see someone from there. So one of the things that I did, and I want to talk about networking is there are a couple of reasons we network. We network probably for job opportunities. Maybe we want to pivot in our career. Maybe we are looking for mentors, maybe entrepreneurship. There can be a lot of reasons, but these tend to be some of the more common ones.
And oftentimes we hesitate around networking sometimes because. We may feel that it's transactional or kind of this discomfort around it. Say, like I was telling you, one of the ways to approach a new venue, a conference, a meeting, something you're going to, a big one, is to virtually connect with folks so that you can set up some time and already meet them ahead of time.
So you know some people in these organizations when you walk into the room. But on, on the other side, if you're going to a get together or a party or even a working event that does not always have, maybe the LinkedIn connection is not doable. How do you network within a room? Like not in a big conference with multiple rooms, but in a single room, one of the ways you can do it is there's actually a way to set yourself on how you stand and where you interact.
And there's research around this which I find incredibly fascinating. So there's, you do not stand very close to the door because the closer you stand to the door, what happens is people are, checking out the room. They're trying to get comfortable themselves. So you cannot, it's not best to connect in a custom right there.
Let them step into the room. One of the better places is just past when someone grabs something to drink. And, just when they've got their hand with a drink in their hand, it's a good time to connect with them. And not near the. food table because your hands are full, your, your plate is full and you can't really shake hands.
So setting yourself somewhere near a table or where, persons got something occupy one hand and they're able to talk is a good place to connect with them. And oftentimes, many of us can be introverted, shy, not comfortable in these situations, right? You don't know anyone. So maybe you make yourself a single goal.
I'm going to meet one person and talk to one person today. And you find that one person and you have a conversation. And maybe that's all you do and you leave. But the opportunity also lies that one person may see someone else in the room and that's how you may meet a few more people. One of the incredible things, and I'll talk about this at the end, is really how to leverage LinkedIn to connect with people in that space itself.
And, I'll show you how you can pull it up on LinkedIn and do this connection. We just talked about how do you connect with someone in a conference or a meeting or how do you connect within a room and where do you set yourself up for this. Discussion. One of the other things I find is if you're a university or a college student, you're looking for jobs.
Maybe you're graduating or thinking of graduating or an internship. How do you network? Because there's so many avenues. Career services, is a In incredible place to meet people, meet companies, meet organizations that are hiring, but alumni networks need to be leveraged. And actually this is not really just for university or college students, right?
Sometimes I'm reaching out to alumni also to connect with them. Maybe I have a common interest or I want to learn about something. That's when I reach out to my alumni, almost all universities, schools, colleges, high schools, wherever you went in the world. Has probably a space on LinkedIn or maybe somewhere else.
And you connect on wherever, whatever platform they may sit on. You might be part of a professional organization. Like maybe you're an engineer and a woman engineer. You could be in SWE. You could be in various organizations, so you can join these professional organizations. And connect with people there if you're able to run for a leadership position, it just opens so many more doors Because that gets you access to people at the national level that you could connect face to face with At these conferences that i've gone.
I met Many different people who come, you know who volunteer who are in different roles You come to these forums and that's how you connect with them and also when you're looking for these, you're looking for mentors, you're looking for sponsors, you're also looking for information interviews.
So one of the things I've had a couple of career breaks and one of the breaks I had was for three years when I was a stay at home mom. And when I came back to work, I wanted to move roles and I was looking for different roles to move to. And what I did was what they call informational interviews. So I was introduced to the first person I met with, this lady who worked in product development.
She gave me a description of her job and all the informational interviews. I did this for about a year. Because I talked to almost every organization that the company had to see where I wanted to segue to next. So from the first person, I would ask them for an introduction. I would get a connection. I would finish the conversation with them and almost all my information interviews end very similarly.
I would ask them if they needed help with something, or maybe they'd brought something up and I might have an idea or ask them if they needed help with something. Sometimes they want feedback or insight on your own organization. The other thing is also, very often, I would ask them for the next connection, who else I should talk to.
And then they would connect me with somebody else. And depending on how the conversation went, I would, I would ask if I could use their name for a referral or if they could send a note. So that gives you a little bit of a boost to connect with somebody you don't know, and they're likely to accept it.
So that's how I would set up all these information interviews. And if I was looking for, say, I was, I, I was talking to people in marketing. So the first person I talked to, I had no idea what marketing was. By the time I talked to the third person, I started to understand some of the lingo that they were talking about.
So it just helps prepare. And before all these meetings, I would do some preparation. So I had this standard slides. I have two versions that I would use. Depending on who I met with somebody who I had some connection or I'd worked very, like adjacent or from a distance, it might be about my projects, especially if it was upper management conversations, or it could be about my different experiences and what I'd done over the years.
And always I set up calendar invite meetings, I never sent emails, especially if I'm in a work setting, and I have access to their calendars. Because we all get like hundreds and hundreds of emails. This very hard to pass through it. And I would say 80, 90% because most companies have these open door policies.
Almost everyone accepts your invite. And you set it up and usually maybe 30 minutes or an hour before, depending on who I met with, I would send them a quick bio or maybe a resume. If it was for a position and have a meeting with them, prepare for it. Just like I said, have this conversation and have a follow up.
And it's so informating. I, it's not like I connected with them on LinkedIn. That became more intentional because I think LinkedIn didn't, was it's an infancy at that point. But I continue to then, I would connect with them on LinkedIn and keep in touch. And to go and follow up on these conversations, that's how you start to build your network.
It's always a give and take, right? You're trying to partner with somebody and not just take feel like you're just, it's a one sided relationship. I think that's why we may sometimes hesitate around it. And the other thing to remember is... Networking is not about people who you know, or who only you have access to.
It could be anybody. It could be like those seven degrees of separation they're talking about, right? Often we have a second person or a third person on our network. And if someone can do that introduction for us, that's a great way to partner. So one of the things that I do when I'm talking about give and take is, I have these colleagues, friends, and other experts I've connected with in the field of supply chain.
So I, when I meet them, I've connected them both. So one may be a podcast and one is a senior exec in an organization. So I put these people together and connect them, and whether they follow up is on them for them to follow through on it, which they all connect and keep in touch because we need these new introductions, right?
We are all connecting with people in different avenues and it's a way for us to have a bigger. Please do network for opportunities and just to have a bigger impact. Maybe in this case, the podcast host may be looking for guests. The person who... Is a senior exec might get, learn more about all the supply chain in the different industries and what's going on.
So it's a great way to segue and get to know each other. I also have connected and also sometimes gotten requests from colleagues I worked with in the past that I might know, asking me to connect them with maybe a job opportunity on someone else who's on our network. And if I know them well enough and I can vouch for it.
I'm more than happy to put these two people together and tell them to connect. And also sometimes I may find articles on job postings that I find or something that I think resonates with someone on my network and may not have the opportunity to see this. So that's something I might. So there's so many ways for us to think about connecting with people when we're looking at networking itself.
One of the things about leveraging these partnerships is it's very important for us to think about how we bring people together because that's what it's all about. If I'm looking for mentors, I can reach out to them. If I'm looking for information interviews. So say I want to move from engineering to marketing as an example that I was using before.
I might find someone on a network in a different company that I want to connect with and. LinkedIn makes it very precise. You can only use 300 characters, so there's not a lot of space to be very verbose, so you have to be very specific with your ask. It might be, in this case, maybe I'm emailing Yvette and I say Yvette, I see that, Yvette, you work in Aberdeen manufacturing in marketing and I want to learn, I saw that you're releasing this new product.
I wanted to learn more about how the marketing role is. I saw that you made a transition from engineering to marketing. I would love to learn from you. This is my like one line experience. Hope you have time to connect. Most likely I will get a response back because they're very specific asks. I've had some really horrible emails I've sent out to folks that have not been the best.
They have not there's no retracting those emails back. I wish we could it's helped me connect with a lot of people this way and make those connections. And get some feedback as well. And in this case, if I'm connecting with Yvette on marketing, then she can let me know, what I need to do and what transitions I can do.
And if I have that connection, then I set up probably a 15 minute call or a 20 minute call with someone to follow up on a video call so I can get more information. So that's what becomes really important. One of the things that, you've heard me talk about LinkedIn so much because LinkedIn is this rich platform.
Goldmine. It's like this real estate that's sitting out there. And one of the things on LinkedIn is if you go to the home and click on the search bar on the top, there is a button which has a QR code right there. And if you click on that QR code, you can save it on your profile. And that's what I use every time I go out nowadays.
And I meet somebody that I want to connect with. I pull up my LinkedIn profile. And I click on that button on the QR code, and that way someone can scan my profile and connect with me. And that's how I build connections when I'm working with someone. I met some, earlier this week I met with some podcasters that we might, collaborate on a project.
But it was through these avenues, either finding them online through Google or on their social media platform, and being very intentional about expanding the network. One of the ways to stay engaged on this kind of platform is likes, share, comments. I think for a long time I lurked on LinkedIn and of course because of what I do now and spend a lot of time podcasting, I'm much more active on that space.
And the more you comment, the easier it is to make the connection, but it's also sometimes harder for us to get comfortable with that space. But, that's a little way to start. Maybe you do one a week, or one a week, one a month. And make yourself maybe a goal. You'll connect with one person. In LinkedIn, maybe once in two weeks or once a month, a new connection.
I think that's a nice goal to start with and then you can start building on it and going ahead so you can get more connections. So those are basically the various networking tips that you can do to expand your network and leverage your partnerships. So one of the things I would like each one of you to do who's on the call, it's put your LinkedIn profile.
On the chat session so others can connect with you and please feel free to connect with me as well. And I would like to hear what questions you have. Are you going to be attending an event? Are you going to be doing something different? And do you have questions that you would like to answer?
So please feel free to put it in the chat. Hi Cathy, I see you. So please connect with Cathy. She works on women in STEM and in the utility industry. So she's a great connection. So start putting your connections on the feed. Are there any questions? I know this has been a bit of a challenge with the technical difficulties, but I figured out how to do it well next time.
So I hope to see you all, but let me know what questions you might have. Did anyone have any other questions? I believe LinkedIn probably records this and posts this, so there's probably a ton of editing that needs to be done and then repurposed, but yes. So I'm a graduate student and actually I'm going to post this.
to show up. I'm a graduate student and just recently started using LinkedIn. I like the idea to make it a goal a week to find a connection and just talk to people and organizations. Absolutely. And they didn't have it when I was in grad school, start with your alum, start with, I don't know what you're studying, but in your field of study, you find professional organizations, connect with people.
Usually university alumni networks have their own connection spaces too. So you could connect with them then and connect with them on LinkedIn also. Because then you have potential access to the networks or, other opportunities that you're looking at. And yes, a goal a week, I would do that. And there's a way to update LinkedIn.
So there's a lot of space. So take a look at my profile. There is a banner behind the photograph that's prime real estate to use your picture, what you put as your description, not just graduate student, but what your field of study and, different descriptors, Hashtags. About section.
There's lots of places to use those very carefully. And then you can probably search and find how you need to update LinkedIn. And it's always a work in progress. I'm constantly changing it and updating as I need it. And I'm glad you have a picture because sometimes in the beginning people hesitate, but it's very important to have a photograph because it makes it easier to connect with someone.
So welcome to LinkedIn. So while you might be on the chat, I'm going to pull up my LinkedIn and show you something on how to find your QR code if you don't know how to do it. So here is my LinkedIn profile as you can see. I click, if I click on home, you see the search bar here. You click on the search bar, you see this little picture here, that's your QR code.
Now I click on that, and that's what shows up. And it gives me the option to save it to my photos. Or share my code and I save it to my photos and often I mark it as favorites, but let's be clear I also end up downloading it and every time I meet someone that I want to connect with I ask them if they're on linkedin Pull this up and it's easy to connect It makes it so much easier like in the past you had to type their name find them But this is so much faster and easier So I would suggest every one of you download this qr code or at least know how to pull it up when you need it If there are no more questions, I'll give it a minute or two and then feel free to email me or DM me if you have additional questions.
I will drop this in the feed and put it in my podcast as well. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and I'd like to learn more about what you do. Thank you everyone. Hope to see you on the next LinkedIn live chat as well. Have a great day. This is an indie podcast and if you really enjoy the content, you can help me with production by supporting me.
You can buy me a cup of chai. I'm not really a coffee drinker. Or you can enable me by subscribing for either a monthly or an annual plan as well. Thank you for doing this. And don't forget to share this episode and put in the reviews what you liked. What was your key takeaway? That's really what I want to know.
I want to know how this is impacting you and what's Infitismal changes you're seeing in your life. You can always reach me through instagram by sending me a dm at women career and life Thank you so much for tuning in. See you next time