The most common networking mistake happens at the worst possible moment: when you suddenly need a job. People who have not reached out to anyone in years dust off their contacts and send a flurry of "hey, long time no see, are you hiring?" messages. It rarely works, and it often feels embarrassing for everyone involved.
The fix is to warm up your network long before you need it.
Cold asks rarely land
When your first contact in three years is a request for help finding work, the ask carries all the weight of the silence that came before it. The other person can feel that they are being contacted only because you need something, and even those who want to help have nothing recent to go on. A cold network is a slow, awkward thing to mobilise.
Tend the garden in good times
The people most likely to help you in a job search are the ones you stayed genuinely connected to when you needed nothing. So the real work happens while you are happily employed: the occasional check-in, the congratulations, the useful introduction, the coffee with no agenda. You are quietly keeping relationships warm so the bridge is already there when you need to cross it.
Reconnect before you need to ask
If you have let things lapse, do not wait until the job search to fix it. Start reconnecting now, with no agenda. Rebuild a little warmth first, so that if you do need to ask for help later, it comes from a living relationship rather than a cold one.
Make the slow work sustainable
Warming a network over months and years is exactly the kind of slow, easy-to-forget effort that falls apart without a little structure. It never feels urgent, until it suddenly does.
Good Contact helps you keep your professional relationships warm in the background, with gentle nudges to stay in touch and a private place for the context that makes each message personal. Then, if the day comes when you do need your network, it is already there, warm and ready, instead of a list of people you have to apologise to first.