Networking is for Reconnaissance and Personal Branding

Introduction

Networking calls serve two purposes: reconnaissance and personal branding. And here’s what they aren’t meant for: asking for a job. You’re free to take the bait if they set it, like mentioning opportunities at the firm or asking if you’re going to apply for an internship or a full-time career in real estate private equity at their firm. But let me repeat this - networking calls are for you to learn about the firm and improve your brand, not directly ask to get hired. The topic of being hired will come up when it’s relevant. So on reconnaissance and personal branding, what exactly does that mean?

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On Reconnaissance

First on reconnaissance, networking calls should be used to learn granular details about the firm and its people that you can’t figure out through a simple Google search. This includes facts on culture, history, and the individual experiences of each professional you speak with. Effective reconnaissance will make you appear much more in-the-know than your competition, and will set you leagues apart.

 

Listen closely when the person you’re speaking with discusses their own career path. Then as you speak, make natural callbacks to points they made. For instance, once you start to speak about your academics, you might weave in a callback to their experience as such:

 

“I’ve taken a few business and accounting classes at night and online. In fact, that infrastructure deal you worked on reminded me a lot of a case study we worked through in one of my classes. Except X, Y, and Z were a bit different,” etc. then you can steer the conversation in a direction where you intelligently compare and contrast a case you worked on versus a deal they worked on, diving several levels deeper than most interviews go.

 

Callbacks can come to the rescue with cliche interview questions like “what are your greatest weaknesses.” Maybe your interviewer talked about how the firm really emphasizes a holistic approach to investing. Then you could say something like “one of my weaknesses has been pushing for a diverse experience, which I think would be helped a lot by the sort of holistic culture you mentioned is a huge emphasis at the fund.”

On Personal Branding

Second, on branding, you want your name to stick out from the crowd. Even if you have a 4.0 GPA from an Ivy League, you probably aren’t that special when compared to the other resumes next to your name. That’s not meant to sound like an insult - there’s just so many great candidates to choose from, it’s hard even on the interviewer’s side to make the right choice. So, among a sea of great candidates, what will make you extremely special is a concerted effort to increase your personal brand at each firm.

 

Really the best thing you can do to increase your name recognition is to speak with people. Give them anecdotes and interesting conversations that sit front and center in their minds. Generally, this means treating each interview as an active two-way conversation rather than a robotic one-way question-and-answer session. If you can produce a fluid, interesting conversation out of your interview, then you will stand apart from your competition.

 

Of course there will be bits where they’re asking you direct real estate private equity interview case study questions and such, but if you look for natural openings to create conversation during an interview, you’ll find them. A lot of it is path dependent, but if you emphasize conversation over call-and-response, you will perform much better during most interviews and casual chats.