One thing I\u2019ve learned, over the course of my career, is that you never know when someone from your professional past will later come to play a role in your professional present. And while you have no control over the circumstances that lead to a potential reconnection down the line, you do have control over how you treat people during those periods when you\u2019re actively a part of each other\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve found this to be especially important to keep in mind during the periods that are at the end<\/em> of whatever time you happened to have together. Two recent examples from my own life, one from either side of the table:<\/p>\n When the news arrived, it was in a thoughtful and personalized email from the person who would have been my boss. She didn\u2019t have to take the time to do that, particularly in an age where ghosting and auto-reject emails have become the norm. And while I was disappointed about the news itself, I recognized the generosity of the gesture.<\/p>\n So, even though I had already invested so much time into this opportunity only for it to have gone nowhere, I made sure to write back with a note thanking her for her kindness \u2014 and highlighting my ongoing availability in the future, should something else come up. That was the end of our exchange.<\/p>\n Or, at least, it was for the time being. Weeks before the internship was set to begin, I received another email from the company \u2014 again directly from her, again thoughtful and personalized. One of the candidates who\u2019d been hired into that summer\u2019s internship cohort had dropped out at the last minute to pursue another opportunity, and there was now a position available. She offered it to me on the spot.<\/li>\n Following a particularly successful meeting with one of the candidates, I realized I\u2019d found the collaborator I was looking for, which meant that I then had to write to all those who I\u2019d either already met with or had meetings lined up with to let them know. It could have been a rote to-do list item \u2014 a quick, impersonal email, a \u201cthanks for your interest\u201d type of situation \u2014 but it was important to me that I take the time to write a thoughtful email to each one of them. I\u2019d genuinely valued their generosity in having been willing to be in conversation with me, and I wanted to mark that in a way that felt commensurate to the experience.<\/p>\n The responses were mixed; some didn\u2019t respond at all, while others responded, essentially, with a \u201cthanks for letting me know.\u201d But one of the responses I received was different. The person sending it very thoughtfully talked about how glad they were that I\u2019d found what I\u2019d been looking for in a collaborator and highlighted how much they\u2019d enjoyed our exchange, before closing with something along the lines of \u201cdon\u2019t hesitate to get in touch if you ever need anything in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Unbeknownst to me then, I would, in fact, need to take them up on that offer less than a year later. They were the first person I thought of when it came time to make another addition to the project; I wrote them a quick message, and they immediately said yes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Would those opportunities have materialized, in either or both cases, had we not previously ended things on such a good note? It\u2019s possible, but my sense is that it would have been unlikely.<\/p>\n From what I\u2019ve seen, particularly when it comes to deciding on the distribution of opportunities among a field of candidates who are all more or less equally qualified, decisionmakers will tend to go with some combination of the first person who comes to mind and the person with whom they have the best existing relationship. Keeping the line open once you\u2019re no longer actively a part of each other\u2019s lives increases your chances of being that person.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014<\/p>\n This post is 1 of 2 posts included in the April instalment of my \u201cAs [month] ends, I\u2019m thinking about\u2026\u201d series. You can read the main post here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Jana M. Perkins<\/strong> is a computational social scientist. An award-winning scholar, her research has been federally funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada since 2019. She is the founder of Women of Letters<\/em><\/a>, a longform interview series celebrating women\u2019s paths to professional success. Together with Miranda Dunham-Hickman, she is co-authoring a book<\/a> that will be published by Routledge.<\/p>\n To learn more about Perkins and her latest work, visit janajm.com<\/a> or follow her on Bluesky<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One thing I\u2019ve learned, over the course of my career, is that you never know when someone from your professional past will later come to play a role in your professional present. And while you have no control over the circumstances that lead to a potential reconnection down the line, you do have control over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1055,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945\/revisions\/1055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janajm.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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