One Minute Rule

TDLR: When speaking with someone who could potentially help you in your career or who you’d like to make a positive & lasting impression on (e.g., interview, cold outreach conversation, clients, etc.), keep your responses to less than one minute.

When I was 24, I was in the middle of my master’s degree at Duke and decided that business school was more of my fit, so I took the GMAT and applied to a handful of universities. Through this process, I learned something that I found immensely helpful: the one-minute rule. I was running through a mock interview with my friend who was a second-year at Harvard Business School, when he cut me off mid-response and said, ‘you’re taking way too long to respond to this question. Keep your response to under one minute.’ We spent the rest of the session honing my ability on answering mock questions in less than 60 seconds. This is the one minute rule.

It wasn’t until I was eventually on the other side of the meeting table that I realize how important this rule is. Take the example of the interviewer - after 5, 10, or even 15+ interviews, he/she has probably heard some type of similar variant of a response to ‘walk me through your resume’ or ‘how would you approach an XYZ issue’. They are interested in learning more about you, but probably not 5 minutes of why you chose your undergraduate major. They’ve heard a lot of the same responses, so it comes down to redundancy and boredom. Sometimes, even when speaking genuinely, certain examples or accomplishments when dragged out can even come off as vain or even narcissistic. Boring and Narcissism are definitely traits that you want to avoid being attached to your name.

Most importantly, responding straight to the point and under one minute allows the other person to talk. People love talking about themselves and their interests! Following this rule allows you to show that have a strong ability to listen, which in many high-paying tech and consulting jobs is 50% or more of what you’re doing every single day.

While I didn’t get into Harvard Business School, I did end getting interviews at some pretty prestigious consulting firm right after grad school. During my final round of interviews, I was going through my second case interview when the interviewer pulled out his phone and pulled up the stopwatch/time app. He timed me in each and every one of my responses, reading back to me my time of completion for every answer. I ended up getting the job; not as cool or awe-inspiring of a story as some, but I do credit that piece of advice for helping me launch my post-grad school career in management consulting.

Linkedin Networking Template

Found someone you want to reach out to on LinkedIn? It could be someone working at a company that you’d like to join or someone successful in an industry, I’ve provided a template below that you can use to reach out to your contact through the intro message. NOTE: You’re granted only a certain number of letters in the intro message when you send the invitation, so I like to (and have to) keep it short and to the point - below is a successful outreach (meaning that individual responded to me, we had a call, and I got an interview [this was for a non-technical role at Apple]) that I sent last year.

Hi [FIRST NAME],

I hope this note finds you well. A little bit of background on why I am reaching out to you - I'm a [CURRENT ROLE or YEAR IN SCHOOL] at [CURRENT COMPANY or SCHOOL] and interested in learning more about [CONTACT’S COMPANY and/or ROLE]. I came across your profile on LinkedIn, and was wondering if you would be open to a 30 min. conversation sometime next week. Thank you in advance for your time insight, and I look forward to learning more about your background and experience at [CURRENT COMPANY], [CONTACT’S FIRST NAME].

Thanks,

[FIRST AND LAST NAME]

Now this is fully up to you to customize - you can probably squeeze in a line or two about why you’re reaching out, what additional roles you’re interested in, or any additional background about yourself.

What’s important here is the commonality - Are they an alumni from your school? do you have connections in common (preferably ones who you are close to and have given you the green light to name drop them in the intro), or common interest/background/location? This will set you apart and turn that cold outreach a bit warmer.

In my case of that specific outreach, I didn’t get an offer from Apple.com, but I did go through the interview process and it was a great learning experience if I ever do decide to make another attempt for a position there!

What Even is Networking?

To me, networking is something I do to advance my career and business. It is 90% professionally-based to me, and 10% based on random things like my hobbies for example (MMA/Boxing, cooking, etc.). Professionally-based or not, when I network, I’m doing it to get better at something., and it’s usually to advance my career and to get ahead in my job or my business. Again this is purely my own perspective of what networking is. Here’s a few points that I believe in:

There is no single, correct perspective of what networking is.

And also - if someone is telling you that you’re not achieving your goals because you’re not ‘networking’ enough - that’s bullshit. Networking helps. It is purely a tool and it CAN be a key to reaching your goals, but it is not a single solution.

Networking to me is fun and I consider it a hobby - there’s nothing more exciting to me than to work a room at a happy hour or event, and I can’t wait for Covid to be done so I can return to going to in-person events where I can talk, eat, and trade business cards (I keep them on me just in case, and no, I’m not that much of a douchebag to carry them in a monogrammed case). I recognize that this might be an unusual hobby or activity, but that’s who I am and that’s why I decided to start this service - to help other people get better at this thing called networking.

Whatever your definition of networking is, it’s probably right. You’ll be alright as long as you stay open to meeting new people, listening, and learning.

Where Should I Start Networking?

When you have decided that you would like to begin building relationships and start networking, the question of ‘how’ and ‘where’ will immediately come up. There’s hundreds if not thousands of routes/strategies that you can take when you first begin reaching out to develop new relationships -- a good way to simplify your options is to list out the communities that you currently are or have been a part. Some examples I’ve personally started at are:

• School Alumni - could be from high school all the way to grad school. Alumni have been where you are in terms of climbing higher professionally, and because of that common bond of being a Blue Devil or Bruin or whatever funny mascot represents their school, they are much more willing to help you raise you up.

• Former Companies - if you’re a working professional, it could benefit you to reach out to folks who have walked in your shoes; regardless of how similar your experiences or sentiment towards your former employer is, there will be a commonality.

• Some more examples: LinkedIn Groups, your church/religious communities, Discord, Twitch groups or even Reddit (I’d vet these folks before meeting them in person or trading personal information…), Family (if you have a distant cousin who started a successful startup and sold it for $$$ - I’d probably consider that a pretty good prospect for potentially advancing your career!)

These are simply examples of my own communities (except for the rich cousin…I don’t have any of those). Make a list and then start reaching out to folks in those communities!

When should I start Networking?

It can be daunting or even annoying when you hear someone say “you need to network” or “you have to network harder” in order to do XYZ. If building relationships and meeting new people isn’t something that you like to do or something that doesn’t come naturally (let’s face it, most days I’d rather curl up on my couch and watch Netflix with my dog than suit up and go into a room full of random people…), it’s okay to feel that way!

While social interaction is healthy, it’s completely normal to feel uncomfortable when you feel like you’re being forced to do it! However, there might come a time when you ask yourself if you should be ramping up your networking in order to get to your professional or even personal goals faster. Here’s a few questions/thoughts I ask myself whenever the question of topic comes up:

Am I feeling stuck at work?

Could be dealing with a micromanaging boss at work or feeling sluggish or/bored in your day-to-day routines. You want to move - this could range from be a ‘I’m unhappy and bored here’ all the way to ‘Get me the F&#* out of there!” Wherever you are on this spectrum, this could indicate that it might be a time to start thinking about building new relationships or even reviving old ones.

Am I going to be able to achieve my goals?

Or better yet, how close am I to reaching where I want to be professionally? I ask myself this all the time, and the fact of the matter is that networking can help in my field of work (tech); however, this may depend on your industry and occupation, and I’ll elaborate on this one later :)

What else is out there?

Having a point of curiosity is awesome. You could be perfectly happy where you are in your professional journey but still want to explore future roles or even ones completely outside of your field. Let this one marinate as you begin exploring outside interests and careers.

The key point here is that there is no right time to begin networking - but it is important to think about what positives could come out of building relationships and leveraging your existing connections. Networking is a tool rather than a necessity, and sharpening and honing that tool will only help you get to where you want to go professionally.