Latest / Career Coaching with Fexingo: Professional Coaches, Career Counselors, and Guidance for Workers / How to Map Your Career Network Strength
Transcript
- Lucas: You probably have a hundred or more people in your LinkedIn network. But how many of those relationships are actually helping you move your career forward? Luna: I'm guessing most of us have no idea. We just collect connections like baseball cards. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what today's episode is about — a simple exercise I call the Network Strength Map. It's a grid that scores each relationship on two dimensions: depth and strategic relevance. Luna: Okay, I like that. Let's break it down. What's the first dimension? Lucas: Depth — how well you actually know the person. Think of it on a scale from one to five. A one is someone you've exchanged tweets with once. A five is a former manager who knows your work habits, your strengths, your blind spots — someone you could call for real advice. Luna: So depth is about intimacy of the relationship. And the second dimension is strategic relevance? Lucas: Right. That's about how aligned that person is with where you want to go. A one might be someone in a completely different industry who you have nothing to learn from career-wise. A five is someone who works in a role or company you're targeting, or who has influence in your field. Luna: So you plot every contact on a two-by-two grid. High depth, high relevance — that's your inner circle. Low depth, low relevance — that's noise. Lucas: Exactly. But the real insight comes from the middle quadrants. Let's walk through a concrete example. Say we have a marketing manager named Priya who wants to move into product marketing at a tech company. Luna: Great. Let's map her network. Lucas: First, she lists about thirty people — current colleagues, former coworkers, industry acquaintances, a few recruiters, some college friends. Then she scores them. Her former boss from her last agency job — that's a depth four, strategic relevance maybe a two, because her boss is in advertising, not product marketing. Luna: So that's high depth, low relevance. That quadrant is people who care about you but might not open doors to your target field. Lucas: Right. The danger there is you spend all your coffee chats with people who make you feel good but don't move you forward. Meanwhile, the opposite quadrant — low depth, high relevance — is where the opportunities hide. Luna: That's the weak tie sweet spot. People you don't know well but who operate in your target space. Lucas: Exactly. And there's a famous 2017 study from LinkedIn — actually, a 2023 follow-up confirmed it — that people with diverse weak-tie networks are three and a half times more likely to hear about new opportunities. Not from their close friends; from the acquaintances. Luna: So the map tells you exactly who to invest in. If you're Priya, you'd look at that quadrant and say, 'I have six people in tech product marketing I barely know — I should reach out to them.' Lucas: Right. And the map also shows you who to deprioritize. If you're spending a lot of time with people in the low depth, low relevance quadrant — say, old classmates in unrelated fields — you might want to redirect that energy. Luna: But I think there's a nuance. Not every low relevance contact is worthless. Sometimes people surprise you. Lucas: Totally. The map isn't a permanent label; it's a snapshot. You update it quarterly. And the act of scoring itself makes you think intentionally about each relationship. Luna: How long does it take to build one? Lucas: About twenty minutes for the first pass. You can do it in a spreadsheet or even a notebook. The key is to be honest about the scores — don't inflate depth because you feel guilty. Luna: That's hard for a lot of people. We tend to overestimate how close we are to someone. Lucas: Yeah. So a rule of thumb: depth is about how often you've had a substantive conversation in the last six months. If you haven't, it's a two at most. Luna: And strategic relevance — I'd say if you can't name a specific thing you could learn from them, it's a two or below. Lucas: Great criteria. Now, once you have the map, the next step is to pick three people from that high relevance, low depth quadrant and schedule a conversation with each. Not asking for a job — just a curiosity chat. Luna: And you have a framework for those chats too, I bet. Lucas: I do, but let's save that for another episode. Today I want to emphasize that the map also reveals structural gaps. Maybe Priya realizes she has zero contacts in the company she's targeting. That's actionable — now she knows to find an event or mutual connection. Luna: I've done a version of this exercise with my own network. One thing that surprised me was how many high depth, low relevance contacts I had — people I was close to but who weren't helping me grow. It was a wake-up call to diversify. Lucas: And that's the power of writing it down. Without the map, you just feel vaguely like you should network more. With the map, you have a specific action plan. Luna: Speaking of actionable — if listeners want to try this, is there a template you recommend? Lucas: I'll put a simple template in the show notes. Four columns: name, depth score, relevance score, notes. That's it. Luna: And if we've helped you think through a career move or a networking strategy, you might consider supporting the show. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it really does make a difference. We keep the show ad-free because of listeners who chip in. So thank you to anyone who has. Luna: Okay, back to the map. One more thing — what about the top left quadrant, high depth, high relevance? How do you maintain those? Lucas: That's your core group. You want to protect those relationships. But the trap is relying on them too much. A network of five amazing people is not enough — you need breadth. Luna: So the goal is to move people from low relevance to medium relevance over time. Lucas: Exactly. And the map helps you measure that progress. If you revisit it in three months and see that two of your weak ties have become depth threes, you're on the right track. Luna: I think this is one of those rare tools that's both simple and genuinely useful. No fluff. Lucas: That's the goal. Next episode, we'll talk about how to run those curiosity chats so they actually lead to opportunities. Luna: Looking forward to it. For now, grab a notebook and map your network.