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Networking for introverts: A how-to guide
Making the business of meeting strangers marginally less awful.
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There isn’t a genuinely painless way for introverts to network.
PHOTO: UNSPLASH
The Economist
Corporate life throws up some stressful moments. Bringing bad news to your boss, facing an interview panel, making a big presentation. But few things are worse than networking if you are an introvert.
You arrive at an event to find that everyone there apparently knows one another already. And then you look more closely and spot the fellow sufferers. They are the people who are actually reading the conference blurb. They look at e-mails on their phones with greater intensity than ever happens at the office. They endlessly circulate the room, like bits of plastic in the ocean waiting to be snagged on something. They take a seat in the main hall while the sound engineers are still testing the microphones.
