New year, new career
The networking apps that could change the way you do business
Like many of us, I have made a resolution to get out there and make the best career choices I can in 2019. And most self-help manuals will tell you that the best path to career success is being part of a powerful network. Those same books are also likely to advise you to seek out professional groups of like-minded souls and the networking events they are organising. But the very idea of walking into a room of strangers – clutching a glass of warm white wine and wearing a name tag – brings me out in hives. We now orchestrate so many facets of our lives online: why shouldn’t that extend to networking?
So far, I have done this through my usual social platforms of Twitter and Instagram. But I am curious about the professional networking apps that claim to do for careers what Tinder has done for dating. The premise is similar – matching you with profiles that you find attractive – only here, the appeal is a person’s potential use for your career. You could be searching for a new role, a freelance gig, a business partner for a start-up, an investor, or even a mentor. What all these apps have in common, is the desire to be a conduit for such connections. After all, if you can swipe right for love, why can’t you do the same for a job?
I turn to Ripple first, Tinder’s own creation, which is celebrating its first birthday this month. Unfortunately, a few days on Ripple made me remember why I hated Tinder. The profiles fly in, but there’s not much to go on besides the company they work for and a picture. So, unless you know what the firm does, you’ve got no idea what you’re swiping right for. There’s a picture of Tony who does lord-knows-what for a living and I’ve also got links to a random invitation to join a videographers group in Hungary. All of which sounds great – if you’re a videographer in Hungary.
Next, I try Let’slunch. The brainchild of software engineer Syed Shuttari, its USP is organising lunch dates with prospective employers. They have more than 2,000 companies on board, largely connecting investors to start-ups, or tech bods to companies. Shuttari tells me that they have organised more than 100,000 lunch dates in six countries – and there are some remarkable success stories, such as an entrepreneur who used the app to meet, and secure, investors when he moved to Silicon Valley, and an individual who got a tour and lunch at the Dropbox offices – oh, and a job. You can sign in via Linkedin, Facebook or email, and, just like a dating app, people and company profiles pop up, which you can either disregard or enthusiastically tap “Let’s lunch!” and pick a calendar date if they accept.
At this point, I have a knee-jerk reaction – on the basis of a three-line online bio, I have to eat with someone? I wonder who has time to have a sit-down lunch these days, and feel as nervous as I would about having dinner on a first date – and that’s before you even get to the issue of who pays. According to the app, it should be the company that invites you – but it still makes me nervous. I start to feel that Let’slunch is not for me, and would be far better suited to my friends in the City, for whom lunch does not mean a sandwich eaten at their desk.
I have better luck with Bumble Bizz. It’s the next iteration of dating app Bumble – founded by former Tinder creator Whitney Wolfe Herd – and aims to create a safe space, specifically for working women.
“The business world was a natural next step,” explains Louise Troen, Bumble’s VP of international marketing and communications. “It’s another area where women are undervalued. Not only are we under-represented, but we don’t have the access.”
Much like the dating version, you are presented with detailed profiles of each person and can tap on the ones you like. If you match, the woman must initiate conversation – although if both parties are female, that imperative is up for grabs. It’s on Bumble Bizz that I really start networking. The app is easy to use, and it has very thorough profiles and refined interest filters, so you can really get a measure of who you’re swiping on.
Before long, I’m rattling off introductory messages without cringing. I meet a couple of other writers. I am invited to join not one, but two, female work collectives, and meet Stephanie Reynders, who is currently building her own activewear brand, Lagatta.
She thinks Bumble Bizz is a great place to come to if you are a female entrepreneur. “The more I started reaching out, the more confident I felt,” she tells me. She now uses the app every day and believes it has made her a better networker in faceto-face situations – something she used to be terrified of.
Stephanie put that into practice when she attended one of Bumble Bizz’s dinners, events that take its networking into a more traditional offline setting. There she met Naomi, a brand marketing consultant, and Emily, an employee at Google, both of whom have taken Stephanie under their wing. The three now regularly meet up, and their professional advice has seen Stephanie’s brand hit new heights.
When I try my hand at Shapr – another networking app with a similar design and set-up to Tinder
– I meet someone whose entire career changed because of it: Liane Katz, whose company, mama.codes, teaches children how to code. “We’d had a hard time pitching the business to get funding,” she tells me, “partly because I had never done it before.”
On Shapr, she met Ben Dickens, the founder of UK marketing agency DVO. After a coffee, Ben offered to connect Liane with his network, and by their next coffee, he had come on-board to help mama.codes raise £150,000. He worked on the
The more I started reaching out, the more confident I felt
company for eight months, two days a week, and Katz counts him as “one of the most crucial hires”.
I initially felt Shapr might be awful, given my propensity to hate anything that drops necessary vowels for dramatic effect, but it actually emerged as a bit of an addictive joy. It’s incredibly detailed, great at filtering profiles according to your preferences, and it comes with a blog full of networking tips and ideas. My City friends also loved the app, as it boasts a huge range of industries and is particularly great if you work in start-ups. “At the early stages of growth, you just need people who understand start-ups and not people coming out of corporates because they take so long transitioning to your way of doing things, says Katz. “If you find people on Shapr, you know that they can hit the ground running and understand the way you work.”
As for me? I’m meeting one of my Shapr connections next week. If this is what networking looks like in 2019, sign me up. Just hold the glass of warm white wine.