Networking For Ph.D. Students

Networking For PhD Students

Table of contents:

1. Introduction
2. Networking: What and Why
3. The Basic Steps
4. Electronic Media: Some Cautions
5. The Role of E-Mail
6. Building a Professional Identity
7. Networking and Your Dissertation
8. Academic Language
9. How to Get a Job
10. Advising Others
11. Understanding the Research World
12. Positive Leadership
13. References on Networking

SECTION 1. Introduction

Several million people employ electronic mail for some significant portion of their professional communications. Yet in my experience few people have figured out how to use the net productively. A great deal of effort is going into technical means for finding information on the net, but hardly anybody has been helping newcomers figure out where the net fits in the larger picture of their own careers. These notes are a first attempt to fill that gap, building on the most successful practices I’ve observed in my twenty years on the net. I will focus on the use of electronic communication in research communities, but the underlying principles will be applicable to many other communities as well.

Some cautions. Everyone’s life is different, cultures and disciplines have their own conventions, and it’s all just my opinion anyway. Don’t interpret my advice as absolute rules of etiquette or morality, but rather as a resource in figuring out your own personal way of getting around in your particular professional world.

Section 2 introduces the rationale behind professional networking and explains why it is not just “politics”. Section 3 provides a simple six-step model of the networking process without reference to electronic media. Section 4 introduces the use of electronic media for building a professional identity, with particular attention to some common mistakes. Section 5 then revisits the six steps of networking and explains how electronic media can (and cannot) assist with them. It also explains how to network when you cannot raise the funds to travel adequately. Section 6 considers several advanced topics: noticing emerging themes in your area, using consultation to organize things, ensuring that you get proper credit for your contributions, learning to engage professionally with people from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, and deciding where to publish your work. Section 7 describes the relationship between your professional network and your dissertation. Both of them pertain to the process of knitting yourself and your work into a set of professional relationships. Section 8 reveals the mysteries of academic language. Section 9 explains how to get an academic job, building on the networking you’ve done and on the concepts that underlie networking. Section 10 assumes that you have established yourself in the research community and introduces the topic of advising others. Section 11 presents a more advanced theory of networking, including the process by which research fields become institutionalized. Section 12 then examines the moral issues that the process can raise. An appendix provides an annotated bibliography of books and articles on the topic of professional networking.