You Want Me To Do What Now? 😰 Networking for Introverts

Let’s be honest, the working world was not made for introverts. I say this from experience being an introvert myself. In pharmacy school, I consistently heard how important networking was but the ways that it was modeled to me didn’t necessarily line up with my personality or my introversion. I can definitely do the “traditional” type of networking when I need to but it’s not my ideal modality of meeting other people professionally. Sometimes you do need to do the traditional type of networking but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way networking can be done.

In my relatively short professional career so far, I’ve found a few different ways to adapt this “networking” thing we’re always told to do into a form that comes more easily as an introvert. This article will highlight two ways that I’ve had success building relationships through networking. If you have any additional strategies, I would love to hear more from you after you read this!

Using Social Networks to Your Advantage

Social and professional networks like Slack, Discord, and LinkedIn provide a great opportunity for professionals (especially introverts) to connect with others locally and across the country. As an introvert, my struggle with traditional networking has always been walking up to someone I don’t know, or don’t know well, and striking up that first conversation. If it’s a person I know well or have at least had a couple of good conversations with, no problem. I can turn this skill “on” if I need it at the moment but let’s be honest….it’s exhausting as an introvert!

Platforms like the three mentioned above take away a lot of the barriers to networking for me and are magnitudes more effective. Not to mention that they’ve allowed me to connect with people I would probably never meet in real life because we live in different parts of the country and attend different professional meetings. Those are relationships that I’d never have, even if I did like traditional networking! These sites also allow for asynchronous conversation (no pressure for keeping a conversation going in the moment), you can gather more information about the experience or interests of the other person (by looking at their profile or conversations they are a part of), and allow you to build your own brand for people to find YOU! I’ve had a lot of scenarios since I started working in data science where people will find me and want to talk about data science and how they can get into it. The one-on-one nature (not in a big conference room) and the initial conversation being asynchronous (on LinkedIn, Slack, etc) makes the process much more effective.

I’d like to give a few tips on how these platforms can be used for networking as an introvert, primarily with LinkedIn. I find LinkedIn tremendous because of the diversity of career experience that you can find on it, especially in healthcare technology. From my experience on LinkedIn, people who work in healthcare technology share a lot of content and are incredibly active. This means that they shouldn’t be too hard to find if you know how to look. The recommendation that I give most people who want to learn about new careers on LinkedIn is to take advantage of LinkedIn’s search feature. The search feature makes it much easier to find people who are in the position you want to be in. Take, for example, someone interested in a career in health data science. I would encourage them to go to LinkedIn, type “Data Scientist UnityPoint Health” (the job they’re looking for and a health system or company in their area), and hit Enter. If the health system or company has any data scientists, they are likely to show up in the results list. The same works for finding pharmacists (or any other profession) who work at a specific company. If I go to LinkedIn and search “Google PharmD” (the company and the degree that signifies membership in a certain profession), I will find pharmacists who work at Google and I can reach out to them on LinkedIn. The biggest advice related to this practice that I would give though is in the connection request once you’ve done this searching exercise. ALWAYS send a note with the connection request on why you want to connect with the person, even if it’s only something about how you are interested in what they do or want to follow their career. You can also ask to have a conversation to learn more about their career in this message. I’m much more likely to accept a connection request, have a conversation, or message you back if you include a note. I would also recommend using a platform like LinkedIn to reconnect with someone every once in a while, learning about how their work has changed or sharing with them things you’re working on that relate to their job. This allows relationship building over time and could lead to a position like it did for me — more on that later.

Network Through Networks

This next section builds off the work that you’ve already done above but also the networking you do in your everyday life that doesn’t feel like networking. In my professional journey, this next form of networking for introverts is what got me my current position. This is a great way to network for introverts because you have someone who can introduce you to others instead of a cold call, cold email, or randomly walking up to someone in person.

Networking with people you already know can involve a lot of different things. You can network with people you know from the community or local organizations you belong to or talk with your pharmacy rotation/APPE/IPPE preceptor about what types of career paths that you’re interested in. Another option would include seeking out individuals whose job you’re interested in within your current employer/organization. This last one is a little different than the first two but the common linkage of working for the same organization is a great way to get past the unease of a cold call/email.

Networking through preceptors was the start of the process to my career transition and my current job working on a data science team! I love telling this story because even a few years later, it baffles me as I think about how perfectly everything had to line up for it to happen as well as the power of networking. When I was on a rotation at a UnityPoint Health hospital here in Des Moines, I mentioned to my preceptors that I was interested in learning more about informatics as a career. My preceptors knew a student from a couple of years before me whose husband worked in the IT department on one of the informatics teams. They were able to connect me to him for a job shadow. While I was shadowing, he mentioned something about the data analytics team at UnityPoint and got me in touch with them since my data analytics minor had also gotten me interested in data analytics and data science. While I shadowed a few people in the analytics department, they told me that there was a data scientist in the department that I might want to talk to. He was on vacation at the time but I set up another shadow with him at a later date. Y’all…after that shadow with the data scientist (my now boss, Ben), I knew that data science was what I was going to do with my career. I kept in touch with Ben off and on for the next 1–2 years (through LinkedIn) which was when a data science internship came open. I applied for it, got the position, and stayed on full-time after that. I might have eventually ended up in data science but the connections I made through my preceptor set up my career to go in a much different path than I was thinking at the time.

Based on this story and my experience, I always recommend that students let their preceptors, advisors, managers, etc know what they are interested in doing for a career. If you’re a pharmacist or pharmacy student, you’ve undoubtedly heard that pharmacy is a small world so there’s a good chance that your preceptor, etc knows someone who does the thing you’re interested in and can connect you. For practicing pharmacists, I recommend either utilizing connections from any pharmacy associations (something else I’d recommend joining for meeting other pharmacists and advocating for your profession) or reaching out to someone in your organization (say an informatics pharmacist if you want to get into informatics) in order meet new people and potentially learn about new opportunities.

Wrap Up

In this article, I’ve given two options that I’ve personally used to network as an introvert. The traditional form / sales-y form of networking has never felt authentic to me as an individual so I’ve always tried to find ways that were more effective for me to meet new people. Through social networks and networking through people I already knew, like preceptors or professors, I’ve been able to stay true to myself and build strong professional connections. I hope that this article will give the fellow introverts out there some easy ideas to start putting themselves out there in ways that come more naturally to non-extroverted folks!

-Dalton