Hannah Lowry
The Networking Experience In Washington
By Hannah Lowry
Summer 2014
When I first arrived on the scene in Washington DC, the only thing people talked about was networking. “Everyone has networking events, conference, happy hours, dinners…. Anything you could ever think of” or “Your boss will take you out to lunch or sit down with you. This is the best opportunity to network in your office. Take every chance you get!” That was all I seemed to hear in the nation’s capital. As the summer progressed, other interns from the program came home at night, ranting about an event they’d been to and about the people they’d been able to meet. Some students ordered business cards, once they realized that they had a place to distribute them.
What I never stopped to think about, however, is that not all offices are like that. Not every organization in DC will host networking events. Some offices won’t be interested in many face-to-face sit downs. Some people just don’t do that. One of the two organizations I work for operates in this way. Their daily routine consists of emails and phone calls, but meeting with someone one-on-one isn’t common. Talking with others to get a sense of what they do isn’t facilitated. Conferences or events aren’t normal. It’s just not what they do.
That being said, I had to learn quickly how to make up for this absence. I quickly found people within the organization to start with, and then took tips from them on how to expand my circle. I sought out the Boston University alum here — the president of the organization, no less — and pushed to have my name scheduled into her calendar for coffee. I began randomly stopping into peoples’ offices, extending a hand and asking about their past.
It was hard at first. Stepping into a busy person’s office, essentially asking for a few minutes of time that they don’t have, can be intimidating and nerve-wracking, especially in the kind of office I work in. The office is quiet, with the exception of lunch; employees rarely leave their work space. They dedicate all eight-hours (or more) of their work-days to the tasks at hand, and pulling them away from their computers for a coffee, or asking them to minimize that excel sheet for just a few moments while I ask them about the time they’ve spent in Uganda can be like pulling teeth. These people are passionate about their work and the majority of the time they are operating under a deadline, thus increasing the importance and speed at which they do their work.
What isn’t necessarily clear from all of the preparation we received about networking was what to do if you find yourself in an environment where it is not facilitated — where you have to work to meet anyone in your office. Although no one prepared me for it, I believe that this is perhaps one of the skills that my time in DC has forced me to develop. I have been pushed outside of my comfort zone (which is hard to do — I’m a very extroverted person) to the point that I now find it fun to walk into a different person’s office each day and introduce myself. For the first few weeks of the program, I was shy — I didn’t want to distract anyone from work or interrupt someone in the middle of an important assignment. Yet, now I know that people enjoy being distracted (for a good reason) and are flattered when someone wants to get to know them and where they are from. As a result, I’ve met some of the most successful and respected women in their fields. If I had to learn to feel comfortable networking in an environment that isn’t particularly “network-friendly,” I can only imagine what it will be like when I am able to attend an event that is intended for networking.
Hannah Lowry is an International Relations major interning at two places this summer: The International Center for Research on Women and the Council on Competitiveness.
