Good morning!
There’s lots of networking advice in the world.
Most of it isn’t very useful, especially for introverts.
This past week, I asked an artificial intelligence (AI) tool called ChatGPT for advice on networking.
The answer I got is in the story below.
This issue takes about 3 minutes to read.
What is ChatGPT?
It’s a conversational chatbot created by OpenAI, a research group whose mission is:
“to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity. We will attempt to directly build safe and beneficial AGI, but will also consider our mission fulfilled if our work aids others to achieve this outcome.”
The groups says, “We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.”
You ask a question, ChatGPT provides an answer in a conversational way.
However, it’s different from searching the internet. If you searched “How do I grow my professional network,” on the internet, you’d get a list of articles or websites containing keywords like “networking” “network” or “professional network.”
You’d have to read through them to summarize an answer to the question.
ChatGPT summarizes the information and writes it in an answer that feels “human.”
But, it can only use information it has been trained to provide. It can’t browse the internet to find the most recent or relevant information.
It’s like asking a person to give you an answer to a question based on that person’s life experience.
What is AI’s advice on networking?
It’s not terrible advice, but it’s the standard advice you would read online.
Attend networking events to meet new people
Join professional organizations or groups
Use social media to connect with others
Reach out to people you admire
Be proactive
Be genuine
Follow-up
Like I said, not terrible, but not actionable.
I don’t blame it for giving an unhelpful answer.
Its human trainers probably don’t read “The Introverted Networker."
Training the machine
The good news is ChatGPT gives users a chance to provide feedback on its answers to help improve its training.
If I was training ChatGPT to answer the question, “How do I grow my professional network” I’d give more actionable suggestions.
Here's the info I gave to it so it could update its thinking on networking:
Find your dormant ties. Dormant ties are people you've worked with in the past. Look them up. Reconnecting with them is easier than meeting new people.
Send your dormant ties an email or a LI message saying, "I thought of you today and realized we haven't spoken in a while. How have you been?
Turn these online interactions into real world conversations.
Ask them about themselves and listen for opportunities to help.
Be a giver. You can give advice, recommendations, or introductions.
Create a target list of companies or people to whom you want to be introduced.
Give this target list to your dormant ties to make it easy for them to help you meet someone new.
When they connect you to someone new, repeat steps 3 thru 7.
If you’re new to The Introverted Networker, these tips are the ones I share each week. They make up the process I teach to help introverts become great at networking.
I’m curious.
What other tips would you add to help AI “learn” how to network?
What ideas could you add that would make the answers better?
I’d love to hear them in the comments below!