NETWORKING
You arrive at your master’s program.
You expect career services, alumni events, consulting clubs, and company presentations to create a network around you.
Then recruiting starts.
And your calendar is strangely empty.
That does not mean you have no network.
It means nobody has assembled it for you.
Those are very different problems.
Week one feels too early... which is exactly why it matters
Most students wait until they need something.
An application deadline appears.
Then LinkedIn activity explodes.
That is backwards.
The easiest networking conversations happen before there is an urgent ask attached to them.
Start by building three lists:
- alumni from your master’s program
- alumni from your undergraduate institution now in consulting
- consultants with a relevant industry, geography, or professional background
You do not need 200 names.
You need enough people to begin seeing patterns.
Build the map before you need the route.
For the broader networking process, read How to Network for Consulting as a Master’s Student.
By week three, the goal quietly changes
At first, your job is to get conversations.
Then something more useful starts happening.
One consultant tells you their office values a particular background.
Another explains how recruiting worked for someone from your program.
A third mentions a colleague you should meet.
Now the network is beginning to create information.
That is the first turn.
A coffee chat is not just a coffee chat.
It can produce a new name, a better question, a clearer office choice, or a different application strategy.
| Stage | What you may think the goal is | What is actually useful |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1-2 | Collect contacts | Identify relevant people |
| Weeks 3-4 | Get coffee chats | Learn how recruiting really works |
| Weeks 5-6 | Ask for help | Deepen a few relationships |
| Weeks 7-8 | Get referrals | Let advocacy emerge where it is earned |
The progression matters.
Jumping directly from “nice to meet you” to “can you refer me?” skips the part where the person forms an opinion about you.
Your program brand helps... but not in the way you may expect
An alum sees the university or degree name.
That creates familiarity.
It does not create a relationship.
Use the shared background to open the door:
“I am currently in the MSc Management program at X and noticed you made the move into consulting after graduating.”
Then move beyond it.
Ask about choices, surprises, projects, recruiting, office culture, or what they misunderstood as a student.
The shared program gets the reply. Curiosity earns the conversation.
Week eight should not look like week one
By then, some contacts will remain one-off conversations.
That is fine.
A smaller group may be worth following up with because you genuinely had a useful exchange.
Perhaps you acted on their advice.
Perhaps you attended something they suggested.
Perhaps they introduced you to someone.
That gives you a natural reason to reconnect.
For a stage-by-stage view of how networking should evolve as recruiting approaches, read The Consulting Networking Timeline: When to Start and What to Do Each Stage.
And no, the eight-week plan does not end with a referral quota
That is the tempting metric.
Five calls. Ten calls. Three referrals.
Clean spreadsheet.
Wrong finish line.
Recognition matters more than contact count.
If a consultant receives your resume and thinks, “I remember this person,” you have crossed a more meaningful threshold.
Eight weeks is enough time to move from unknown to familiar with a small set of people.
But only if you start before you need them.
Your program may never hand you that network.
Which is useful to know.
Because now you can stop waiting for it.