Prayush Adhikari

Posted on Nov 3

Building a Career Network When You Don't Know a Single Person in Tech

#career #beginners #networking #students

You've heard it a hundred times: "it's all about who you know." Cool. You know your classmates, your professors, and nobody who works at a tech company.

That advice is only useful if you already have the network. What nobody explains is how to build one starting from exactly zero, without feeling like a fraud sliding into strangers' inboxes.

Here's the plan I'd give a younger version of myself, back before our IT club existed and I didn't know a single working developer either.

1. Networking Is a Savings Account, Not an ATM

Most people only think about networking the week before they need a job, which is exactly why it feels awkward. That's like walking into a bank you've never opened an account with and asking for a loan.

Real networking works like a savings account. Every genuine interaction, every helpful comment, every time you show up and contribute, is a small deposit. You're not trying to withdraw anything in that moment. Months or years later, when you actually need advice, an introduction, or a referral, there's something in the account to draw from.

The people who seem to have "good luck" landing opportunities usually spent a long time quietly making deposits nobody noticed.

2. Networking Isn't What You Think It Is

Forget the image of a stiff conference room, a stack of business cards, and forced small talk. That's not what actually works for a student, and it's not what most working developers enjoy either.

Real networking looks more like:

Commenting thoughtfully on someone's post
Asking a genuine question in a community chat
Helping someone with a problem you happen to know the answer to
Sharing something you built and having a short exchange about it
Attending a meetup and talking to two people, not fifty

It's just being a real, useful, curious person in front of other people, repeatedly, over time.

3. Start With the People You Already Have

Before reaching out to strangers, look at your immediate circle. It's bigger than you think.

Classmates and club members. Some of them will land jobs before you, get internships, or start companies. Today's classmate is tomorrow's referral.
Professors and teaching assistants. They know people in industry, write recommendation letters, and remember students who actually engaged in class.
Alumni from your college. Alumni networks exist specifically because people like helping someone who studied where they did.
Anyone already in your family or neighborhood who works in tech, even loosely. A distant connection is still a connection.

Running our IT club taught me that most opportunities I've seen come from people who already knew I built things, not from a cold application into a void.

4. Find Rooms Where the Right People Already Are

You don't need to force conversations with strangers on the street. Go to spaces where the people you want to know are already hanging out.

Local meetups and tech events, in person if you can. Search for developer or startup meetups in your city.
Discord and Slack communities built around a language, framework, or local tech scene.
Open-source projects, where contributing naturally puts you in conversation with maintainers and other contributors. I wrote a whole post on making your first contribution if that's new to you.
Twitter and LinkedIn threads in your field, where replying with a genuine thought gets you noticed by people you'd never otherwise meet.
Hackathons, which pack a room full of exactly the kind of people worth knowing, compressed into a weekend.

Pick two or three of these and show up regularly. Consistency in one place beats scattering yourself thin across ten.

5. How to Actually Talk to People (Without the Cringe)

The fear here is usually "what do I even say?" Here's a shape that works almost anywhere:

Notice something specific. A project they posted, a talk they gave, a comment they made.
Say what you noticed and why it stood out.
Ask a real question, not a generic one.

Compare:

Generic: "Hey, I'd love to connect and learn from you!"

Specific: "I saw your post about migrating your app to a new framework. I'm about to do something similar for a small project. What surprised you most during that migration?"

The second one shows you actually paid attention, and it gives them something easy and specific to answer. People respond to specific far more than to generic.

6. Give Before You Ask

The fastest way to build goodwill is to be useful first, with no immediate ask attached.

Answer a question in a community you're part of
Share someone else's project or post, genuinely, not for show
Offer a small piece of help, like testing someone's app or pointing out a bug
Introduce two people you know who should know each other

None of this needs to be a grand gesture. Small, repeated helpfulness is what makes people remember you kindly, long before you ever need to ask them for anything.

7. Online Presence Is Part of Your Network Too

You don't need to meet someone in person for them to become part of your network. A consistent online presence lets people find and recognize you before you ever say a word to them.

Keep your GitHub and LinkedIn active and current
Post about what you're building, even small things
Reply thoughtfully in comment sections instead of just scrolling past

By the time you do message someone, they might already recognize your name. That completely changes how a cold message lands.

8. Asking for Help the Right Way

Eventually you will need to ask someone for something: advice, a referral, feedback on your resume. Do it well:

Be specific. "Could you review my resume?" is easier to say yes to than "Can you help me with my career?"
Make it easy to decline. "No pressure at all if you're busy" genuinely reduces the guilt of saying yes or no.
Respect their time. A 15-minute call, not an hour. A short message, not an essay.
Follow up with results. If their advice helped, tell them. It's the best thank-you there is, and it makes the next ask easier.

9. Keep Track of Your People

You'll meet more people than you can remember details about. A simple note works wonders:

Name, where you met them, what they do
What you talked about
Anything you promised to send or follow up on

Checking in occasionally, not just when you need something, is what turns a one-time interaction into an actual relationship.

10. Introverts Can Do This Too

If the idea of talking to strangers drains you, you don't need to become a different person. Networking has quieter forms that work just as well:

Writing thoughtful posts and comments instead of speaking up in every room
One-on-one coffee chats instead of big group events
Contributing to open source, where the interaction happens through code and comments
Being deeply useful to a smaller number of people instead of broadly known to many

Depth works as well as breadth. You don't need five hundred connections. You need a few dozen who actually know what you're capable of.

11. Mistakes That Undo Your Efforts

Only reaching out when you need something. People notice the pattern.
Being vague. Nobody can act on "let's connect sometime."
Ghosting after getting help. Follow up, say thanks, and close the loop.
Comparing your network to someone else's. Some people start with family connections. You're not behind, you're building from a different starting point.
Treating every interaction as transactional. Genuine curiosity about other people reads very differently from networking as a chore.

Your First Deposit

Pick one person today: a classmate doing something interesting, a maintainer of a tool you use, someone whose post caught your eye. Say something specific and genuine. No ask attached.

That's one deposit. Do it once a week, and in a year you won't be starting from zero anymore.

Let's Connect

I'm Prayush Adhikari, currently grinding through computer engineering, leading an IT club, and building my own company on the side. I write about Linux, productivity, and the honest side of being a developer.

Tell me in the comments about the first person who helped your career move forward. I'd love to hear the story.