The networking season begins

Well, it’s always the networking season, really, although this time of year always has that back-to-school feeling – back to roaring crowds in wine bars and Let Me Give You My Card. I figure it’s a numbers game for now, getting as much face time as possible with as many people as you can bear, before they get too drunk. It’s a kind of career speed dating, and in fact I have a strong suspicion that a good number of the folks I’ve seen out in Soho are also on Guardian Soulmates.

But what’s everyone really doing? In my travels I’ve come across an awful lot of people involved in startups that seem to serve no more purpose than to flesh out their CV. ‘It’s a social networking website, like Facebook, but exclusive. You have to be invited.’ So you and your friends all invite each other and you, uh, email each other through the site, right? Cool! Why didn’t I think of that!

‘I’m a Twitter developer.’ Okaay. Presumably you do a lot of other developer-type things as well, food and shelter being at a premium these days. Actually, I’ve already dumped Twitter. When someone develops an instant chatroom function where a few people can add a tag and chat in private, I’ll return with a vengeance. Possibly.

And how could I not mention one of my old favourites? ‘Why do you want to write PR and commercial stuff when you’ve done books? You’ve got to do what you love.’ Thanks, lovey. Economics clearly wasn’t one of her strong points, which became even clearer when she advised me: ‘Never lower your rates. It’s better to work for nothing.’ Not many minutes of not very probing chat revealed that she had been doing just that for quite a while.

I don’t mean to be nasty. We’re all flapping about in the duckpond right now, but my readers will remember that this line of questioning pushes my buttons, because I find it so dumb. I’m trying to imagine a similar conversation with, say, an artist, who told me they were getting into graphic or web design. In fact I’m going to ask around visual artists who are turning to commercial work and find out if they encounter this as well.

However, the reality is that art scares people who aren’t involved in it. There is both a fascination and a resentment, rolled up together. People are sometimes even in awe of you, and express wonder that you even need to work at all(!). This of course clouds any other impressions of your potential as an employee. I actually asked a copywriting guru about this recently, and he advised me to hide the fact that I have done a certain creative thing which I will henceforth not mention, even though it’s on my website for all to see.

The issue may be this: If you create stuff, like books and paintings and films, there is a tangible result to what you do. A lot of people’s jobs however, seem to involve a whole load of phone calls, emails, meetings, and presentations, but with no tangible product at the end. Are there some archetypes here?

How did I get to the Art Rant when I was writing about networking? Because, I guess, you can run but you can’t hide. Or something like that.