Last Wednesday, I was in New York City, giving a talk about the benefits of online networking for career development to a group of about 40 postdocs from the various research institutes around town. I was invited by Lori Conlan of the New York Academy of Sciences, who spoke first about the ins and outs of in-person networking (thanks again Lori for the invite!).

We all know the benefits of networking: making new contacts and keeping in touch can lead to opportunities (jobs, collaborations, discovery of important information, etc). Lori talked about the importance of going to meetings and other events, striking up conversations, getting someone to introduce you to key people, following up with emails, giving out business cards, keeping your list of contacts organized and keeping in touch with all of them, etc.

But in the Q&A with the postdocs in the audience, the limitations became clear: lack of time and opportunity to meet people, the shyness (and let’s face it, terror) we experience when we walk into a room full of people at a reception.

So I followed up in my talk by saying that online networking could be a way to overcome these obstacles. By joining and using a networking website for professionals and scientists, you can keep in touch with contacts, make new contacts and find out valuable information from the comforts of your lab/home. I think that interacting with people online is a much easier way to start a relationship and ‘break the ice’ then to have to get up the nerve to go up to someone standing by the guacamole and strike up a conversation. And I think Facebook and other mainstream social networking sites have proven how online networking can make it easier to stay in touch with people you already know.

My take-home message was that online networking is a way to get yourself and your expertise out there, to make yourself more visible to the people you want to reach out to…the first step in making good contacts. A profile on a networking website allows for greater connectivity with your community then just having your webpage sitting out there on some university website.

For the next talk I give on this topic (I think I’ll be traveling to NYC again soon to speak with other young scientists and faculty at Columbia and NYU), I want to provide many more anecdotes/success stories about the power of online networking for scientific careers. If you have a story, please post it here or you can email me direct. For example: how many of you ‘friend’ someone on a networking website after you’ve met them at a conference?

In the discussion that took place after Lori’s talk, one postdoc said that she thought the way to get ahead in your career in science is to work hard in the lab, 12 hours a day, and pump out lots of good papers. Networking, it was implied, wasn’t a good use of time.

Lori responded by saying that it behooves all postdocs to spend 10 to 20 percent of their time doing career development activities: networking, brushing up on off-the-bench skills, etc. She also advised that it takes a year to find a job and the first six months should be spent networking. Because we all know that job and other opportunities are very often about who you know.

Coincidentally, in the January issue of Nature Immunology today, there’s a great commentary about the value of networking, which makes a brief mention of Nature Network at the end as a new and innovative way of networking. I’ll end with a quote from it:

It is essential that all scientists learn how to network, because it enhances the visibility of a researcher’s work to others in the field and ultimately boosts a person’s success in the scientific arena. It should be remembered that those people met during networking are the very same ones who review grants and manuscripts, invite speakers to give seminars, and provide job references. The ‘bottom line’ is that researchers are more likely to trust people they know and admire. It therefore behooves all researchers to spend some time networking.