FWIW, this has worked for me too. I got hired this summer (college freshman) because I was impressed with + interested by some GPT-3 stuff that Peter Wildeford was doing on Twitter and wanted to try it myself. Those tweets got me hired!
TLDR: Tweet about interesting stuff and reply to people you think are smart!
Twitter is definitely underrated for career dev (including by me up until a few weeks ago). Perhaps someone could write a post about dynamics on the platform? I find it quite intimidating and infinite game-ish relative to emailing/DMs, and I wouldn't be surprised if others felt similarly.
I have 13 followers, and most of those are friends or coworkers, so I don’t feel qualified to be that someone. But I would also love to see this!
I like this, and think that networking as a teen is super useful and high ROI. (Maybe I'm biased because networking opened up opportunities for me.)
I really like this post as a starting guide! Thanks for writing
If you're a (young) student or lack social capital, reaching out to people on the internet is one of the highest ROI things you can do.
Being a student, your social circle is pre-determined by a few major institutions (i.e. your family, school, place of work, etc.) Pre-prescribed relationships with the absence of choice are often a matter of convenience; outreach allows you to regain will in who you interact with.
Actively choosing to broaden my social horizons has led to having some of the most valuable experiences and meeting some amazing, interesting people I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. I strongly believe more young people (13-18-year-olds in particular) should put more effort into digital networking, as daunting as it may seem.
Networking itself is highly valuable for building personally-rewarding relationships and expediting professional advancement. Networking virtually gives you access to pretty much anyone you want to get in contact with and is more time-efficient.
One may argue that trying to develop yourself professionally as a young person isn't worthwhile. I somewhat grapple with this myself, but I've come to the consensus that it's still net positive, even if you supposedly fail.
Regardless, it's quite hypocritical of me not to acknowledge the psych barriers I've faced by taking this on myself. Here's a thought that I had frequently when starting cold outreach.
Suppose I meet someone very impressive now. Instead of them knowing me when I’ve become my most academically and socially “competent” self, they meet my young, awkward, maybe not-so-smart current self.
So now they have an everlasting (bad) impression of me, and I've now severed a relationship forever...
Although I'm still in the not-so-socially competent stage of life, I object to the thoughts above as I'm quite confident most people (even the "impressive" ones)
So, I suppose if you're still reading this, you're interested in digital networking. So here's some advice . . .
Although, I generally lean toward not optimizing my social (virtual) interactions for personal gain. Sending cold-outreach messages requires succinctness that can only be found if you're pretty clear with what you hope to get out of said interaction.
Basic Rules of Thumb (Please don't be offended if this is common sense to you)
Here's an example follow-up message:
Hello [X],
I'm [Y] a student at New University. I reached out to you earlier about [Z, hyperlinked] project I was working on and was wondering if you would be
interested in chatting about [M] problem I was having. I value your time and completely understand if you're too busy, however, if you knew someone else who would be helpful, please feel free to share the doc that I've attached.
Have a great rest of your week,
[Y]
The worst thing that can happen is someone doesn't respond, nay, they respond with something hurtful. In that case, give yourself the benefit of the doubt that you didn't do anything wrong. The chances of this happening if you're polite are relatively low, as being mean requires more energy than people are willing to expend through email.
I would generally argue that you should lower your threshold for reaching out to people as long as your perceived expected value from each outreach attempt doesn't decrease. If you're especially young (i.e. 13-17), you should be keen to reach out to people. People tend to be generally more impressed with seemingly basic attempts at initiative within this age group - warranting kinder, more frequent responses.
Imposter syndrome can still be a barrier to cold outreach, but here's an excerpt from a blog post by Chris Olah that explains how I feel at the moment on the topic.
My personal experience is that I both get lots of blatant spam emails (eg. "do my homework for me") and find out that many people who I'd really want to email me (eg. seriously thought about one of my papers and want to talk) are hesitant to do so. I've particularly noticed that the average quality of emails from junior women is much higher than the average, and suspect that they are typically applying a much higher threshold for reaching out. I don't know how to help you adjust for this, but if you're worrying about reaching out you should probably update positively that it's more likely you should.
Random anecdote:
At the end of my undergraduate studies, I realized that I didn't want to go through with my original career plans of doing econ grad school and then becoming a developmental economist. So I felt pretty lost. I didn't really have any connections with the "nerds who want to maximally do good with their careers" movement (and have barely heard about them, mostly through Givewell). But I wanted to figure out more, so naturally I emailed Peter Singer.
He replied back with some useful tips. I think it was very helpful, and certainly very helpful in expectation even though the specific suggestions didn't pan out. I think my own journey to EA was very overdetermined, but I wouldn't be surprised if emailing Singer accelerated my trajectory by 3 months to a year. SO I'm guessing that this was a good use of time from both my end and his.
"Naturally I emailed Peter Singer", boss move lol. Jokes aside, definitely agree that sometimes the initial reason for the interaction isn't what makes reaching out worthwhile long-term. Oftentimes it's just a starting point for thinking about things differently or exploring their field of work with newfound motivation.