Gen Z is dealing with a dire labor market—and it’s compelled younger professionals on the job hunt to stealthily promote their resumes with bins of donuts, or to take up waitressing gigs at conferences simply to get a foot within the door. However Suzy Welch, professor of administration apply at New York College, believes the important thing to success is quite a bit easier than that.
“Students in college are told by their parents and their professors: network, network, network. And I just think it’s nonsense,” Welch stated in a current video on TikTok. “I think it’s nonsense because I’ve watched business for the past 40 years of my life, and I see how it works. And it works because of friendships, not networking.”
When Gen Xers and child boomers have been on the prowl for jobs of their 20s, strolling into an workplace constructing and handing over their resumes wasn’t out of the strange. Hitting the streets and hopping from workplaces to trade occasions may even probably land them a job.
“This idea that you’re going to stand in a vast hotel conference room and hand somebody your card, and it’s going to result in a great career is completely crazy,” Welch continued. “You should take the time that you waste networking and commit to learning how to be a friend to people.”
Genuinely, she defined that constructing deep connections over a few years may assist professionals climb the company totem pole in the long term. Success won’t be prompt, nevertheless it’s a foolproof option to hold alternatives flowing.
“It works because over the course of your life, you have become friends with somebody. You have done favors for them without any expectation of return, and then over time, one day, there’s a piece of business, and they’re the ones who help you get it,” Welch stated. “And this is how businesses actually run: friendship on top of friendship, on top of friendship.”
How leaders leverage friendship of their skilled lives
Welch isn’t the one enterprise chief who leans on their friends to complement their careers.
Billionaire philanthropist and early Microsoft worker Melinda French Gates is booked out each Monday morning for a stroll along with her three closest feminine buddies, with whom she’s been related for greater than 30 years. These routine strolls are a time for her to hunt knowledge from her closest confidants, which has proved to be important in getting by means of the highs and lows of her private {and professional} lives. A enterprise associate or distant acquaintance won’t be so sincere in giving recommendation—however lifelong buddies aren’t afraid to offer actual suggestions.
“They are my truth council. Whenever I’m going to make a really hard decision or make a big transition, I know I have to have the courage to tell them…and they’re honest with me,” French Gates informed Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King in an interview final 12 months. “You actually need a friend who will tell you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it. I’ll say about my friends, they have a perspective on me, and I have a perspective on them.”
For instance, when Winfrey needed to go to Chicago, the place competing daytime talk-show host Phil Donahue was additionally primarily based, folks discouraged her from making the bounce and probably shedding viewers. However King inspired her to take the leap—one thing a surface-level networking connection won’t advise. Moments like these have been vital in constructing her media empire.
“Had I not had somebody who believed that me moving to Chicago could be successful, I might have not made the move,” stated Winfrey within the 2024 video interview.
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