don't have a referral network?

The DM I got this morning is the eighth one this year that starts exactly the same way.

“Hey Puneet. I noticed you are in the careers / AI space, and I wanted to connect with like-minded professionals. Got 30 mins for a coffee chat?”

The sender has a clean LinkedIn profile, real skills, and the same problem nine out of ten people on LinkedIn have.

He has been told to “build his network,” sent dozens of messages just like this one, and is wondering why nobody replies.

He sent the same opener career coaches were teaching in 2010, in an inbox shaped by 2026.

Robert Half surveyed 835 professionals last year, and one number is worth sitting with: 53% of Gen Z said finding new connections is their single biggest barrier in networking.

For boomers, that figure was 29%.

Gen Z also turned out to be the generation least likely to say a personal referral ever helped their career move forward.

So the generation that would benefit most from a warm introduction is the one getting the fewest of them.

The advice everyone keeps repeating, reach out, grab coffee, pick someone’s brain, was written for a version of LinkedIn with a few tens of millions of users and a fraction of today’s noise.

The platform is a different place now, and the format people expect has changed with it.

Around 70% of 18-to-34-year-olds would rather get a text than a phone call.

Only 2 in 5 Gen Zers say they feel confident networking in their industry at all. So “hop on a 30-minute call with a stranger” is a mammoth ask in exactly the format this group avoids.

A referral changes the math at every stage.

Referred candidates are far more likely to get the interview in the first place, and once they’re in the room, 16% go on to an offer, against about 6% of cold applicants who make it that far.

That whole reason to build a network.

Here’s how to do it without sending another “pick your brain” message.

The single highest-ROI move on LinkedIn right now is also the lowest-effort one.

Comment thoughtfully on the posts of the 10 people you actually want to know, for two weeks, before you send any kind of DM.

Buffer analyzed 72,000 LinkedIn posts across 25,000 accounts in October 2025 and found creators who engage with comments see a 30% engagement lift on their posts.

Translation: they notice the people who keep showing up in their comments.

“Back in 2018, when I had 2,500 followers on LinkedIn, I made a list of 50 people who had audiences bigger than mine, ranging from 5,000 followers up to 100,000 followers. I engaged relentlessly with those accounts until they noticed me and began engaging back.”

- Justin Welsh (Writer & Entrepreneur, LinkedIn Influencer)

When someone has already seen your name in their comments for a few weeks, the request lands warm.

The action. Pick 10 people you actually want to know. Add them to a list. Spend 15 minutes a day for two weeks leaving thoughtful comments on their posts. Not “great post 👏”. Actual reactions, questions, or counterpoints.

After two weeks, send the connection request with a one-line note. “Been following your stuff on [specific thing] for a while. Would love to stay in your loop.”

Before any of this, run your profile through Careerflow’s LinkedIn Optimizer.

Every comment you leave on a creator’s post sends them back to your profile to decide whether you are worth replying to.

Same with every DM, every alumni request, every recruiter who saw your name come up in a search.

They click through, read the top of your profile, and decide in a few seconds whether you are someone worth their time.

The headline gets read first. Then the About section. Then the most recent role. That is the shape of the decision most people make about whether to engage with you.

A profile that reads “Aspiring marketer | Open to opportunities | Growth Mindset” is not telling that person anything.

A profile that reads “Brand Marketing @ Frido | Built campaigns that scaled the community to 70K | Ex-Razorpay” tells them exactly who you are in 12 words.

Once you are connected, the DM is the moment most people give up the lead they just earned.

Liz Wessel, the WayUp co-founder who cold-emailed her way to dinner with Sheryl Sandberg and meetings with execs at Twitter and Match, shared the formula in Fast Company.

Put the shared connection in the subject line. Keep the body short. Lead with who you are. Prove you did your research. Ask one specific question.

What this looks like:

The second message takes 60 seconds longer to write. It earns a reply about 10x as often.

Phoebe Gavin, a career coach who told CNBC she “really recommends against using the phrase ‘pick your brain’”, says the move is to open with a tiny ask.

The fastest network you can build is one you already have.

Pull up LinkedIn search. Filter by your school. Filter by the company you want to work at. The list that comes back is your alumni at that company, and their acceptance rate on a request from a fellow alum is dramatically higher than from a stranger.

Laurel Holman, Director of Alumni Career Services at Stanford Graduate School of Business, shared three tips for expanding your network in a Stanford GSB article last year. Her first one is the one most people get wrong:

“Most people are flattered to be asked for their advice or expertise. The key is to go into those meetings well prepared. If you’re well prepared, then it really becomes a mutual conversation between two professionals who have a point of view and an interesting perspective and set of experiences.”

The three fixes above are how you prepare. The comment, the personalized request, the alumni intro are not networking tricks. They are the work that turns a one-way ask into a mutual conversation.

Deloitte's 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, the biggest one of its kind with 23,000 respondents across 44 countries, found 50% of Gen Zs want their managers to teach and mentor them.

Only 36% say it actually happens.

A 14-point gap between the manager they want and the manager they have.

The three fixes above will build a network. The five people who pick up.

But the real value of a network shows up a few years later, when a couple of those people become the ones who teach you the things your manager did not.

Pick those carefully.

See you next week.
Puneet