Why Networking Is Vital During Your PhD: Most people don’t like to network, and it’s often because it feels very “transactional”. Unfortunately, networking is vital to your career, and you definitely need to put in time and effort during your PhD to grow your network. So, why is networking so important? A good way of illustrating the power of networking is to use an analogy, like if you were to buy something. For example, you might be buying a new phone or car. By default, the only phone, or car, you can buy is one that you know about. You can’t buy something you don’t know about. And the amazing thing is that there may be better phones and cars out there, but you don’t know about them, so you can never buy them. As such, you are left with only the ones you do know about. Applying that to your career – if you want to get a job, the only people who can hire you are those who know about you. What’s more, the more they know about you, the fewer questions they have in their minds about you. For example, one major question potential employers have is, “How well does this person work with others?” If the employer knows you already, then they already have a good idea about you. So, they are more certain about you. That advantage you now have comes directly from networking. By having a strong network, more jobs automatically become yours simply because you’re known, and other applicants aren’t. The stronger your network, the better your career will be. So, make sure to network early, and especially during your PhD. If you want to read more about how networking benefits your career and how to do it effectively, read our book, “100 Tips For Doing Your PhD” where we cover this, as well as 99 other tips to make other aspects of your PhD, like staying motivated, getting a job, and having a good work-life balance much easier and better. Read it here: Ebook: phdvoice.org/product/100-tip… Paperback: amazon.com/dp/B0BXMYVYCF (We also translated it into Arabic here: phdvoice.org/product/100-tip… And Spanish here: Ebook: phdvoice.org/product/100cons… Paperback: amazon.com/dp/B0C1DN9ZG4)