By Chana Wakslak, Senior Business Editor and Business Manager
It feels like every day from freshman orientation to senior year, business students get the same piece of advice: network, network, network. Go to all the events, master an elevator pitch and collect contacts like trophies. The method is presented as the secret sauce — the quiet edge that insiders rely on and the strategy that all the successful people are in on.
This isn’t bad advice. Relationships can genuinely get you far. But most of what we call networking isn’t genuine relationship-building. It’s transaction-hunting in disguise. We show up to panels and coffee chats not because we’re genuinely interested in the person across from us, but because we need something from them. We both know it, even if we don’t say it out loud, and the relationship stays transactional.
Ultimately, transactional relationships are fragile. When the market changes, and it always does, your network of conveniently-maintained relationships doesn’t hold. People refer those they find genuine or interesting, not people who email them every three months to “stay in touch.” Consistency without sincerity rarely translates into trust.
The students who have a genuinely valuable network aren’t the ones who spent time building it. They’re the ones who went out and built something worth knowing about. They create gravity instead of chasing it.
These students stopped talking and started building, and that’s where their opportunities came from; doing is the most efficient networking strategy there is. Whether it be an app, a product, or a blog, these are the things around which a network forms naturally. They give people a reason to reach back out.
At a school like Stern, it’s easy to mistake proximity for connection. We’re all in the same rooms and the same recruiting pipelines, which creates an illusion of a network while actually producing an echo chamber. Everyone knows everyone, and nobody stands out. Conversations blur together, and differentiation quietly disappears.
And when graduation comes, a hundred students with nearly identical resumes flood the same 15 companies. At that point, networking doesn’t differentiate you; it just confirms that you followed the same script as everyone else.
The antidote isn’t attending more events; it’s becoming someone with something to offer. Even a perspective or a skill counts, something to demonstrate how you think and your value. People don’t advocate for networkers; they advocate for builders. They remember substance, not strategy.
None of this means professional relationships don’t matter; they do, deeply. But the strongest ones are built on mutual respect and genuine interest, not manufactured touchpoints. They’re the byproduct of doing real work in the world, not the prerequisite for it. They form more naturally, and last longer, when there’s something real underneath.
So by all means, go to the event. But go because you’re curious, not because you’re hunting. And when you leave, ask yourself: what am I actually building that would make someone want to know me?
That question will take you further than any contact could.
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