Expert Q&A · Ask the Consultant · 5 min read
Everyone tells me networking matters, but I am sixteen and I do not have a job or anything to offer anyone. Is there any point trying to build a network now, or is this something that starts at university?
Short Answer
Yes, and starting now is a genuine advantage. The premise to drop is that a network requires something to offer. At sixteen what you have is time, curiosity and a position that makes adults unusually willing to help. Very few people ask them anything. The students who use that arrive at university already knowing what several careers actually involve, and knowing people who will vouch for them.
The worry behind this question is a fair one. Most networking advice is written for people with a professional record, and it reads as transactional: give value, build reciprocity, maintain the relationship. Applied to a sixteen-year-old that advice is useless, because the exchange it assumes does not exist.
The exchange is different at your age, and it is real. An adult who is good at their work is usually glad to describe it to someone who is genuinely interested, because almost nobody asks. Answering a thoughtful question from a young person is a pleasant twenty minutes, not a favour. That asymmetry closes as you get older, which is precisely why it is worth using now.
Start with the adults already around you
Your teachers, coaches and the parents of your friends do work you know almost nothing about. Ask one of them what their job actually involves on an ordinary Tuesday. Not what the profession is, what the day is. The answers are frequently surprising and occasionally change what a student wants to do.
Be specific enough to be memorable
Broad interest evaporates from memory. A particular question survives it. Being the student who wanted to know why hospitals schedule surgeries the way they do is worth more, months later, than being the student who said they were interested in medicine.
Do what you said you would do
Reliability is the most powerful signal available to someone your age, because so few people your age demonstrate it. Turning up when you said, finishing what you started, replying when someone writes to you. Adults remember this and mention it to each other.
Treat your classmates as the long game
The people sitting near you now will be spread across every field you might enter. In fifteen years some of them will be in a position to open a door. Nothing about that requires strategy, only that you are someone they would be glad to help.
Ask for a conversation, never a favour
Twenty minutes of someone’s experience is an easy thing to give and a comfortable thing to ask for. A placement, an introduction or a recommendation is not, and asking too early spends goodwill you have not yet built. The conversation, done well, often produces the rest anyway.
There is one caution worth stating plainly. A network built to be useful tends not to be. Adults recognise instrumental interest quickly and it closes doors rather than opening them. The students this works for are the ones who are actually curious, and the advantage is a side effect of that curiosity rather than the reason for it.
The practical version, then, is small. One conversation a term with an adult whose work you know nothing about. Questions specific enough to be remembered. Following through on whatever you said you would do. Over five years that is a real network, built without a single event and without ever using the word.
Bottom LineYes. At sixteen you have the one thing that makes people generous with their time, which is that you are asking out of interest rather than need. Ask specific questions of the adults already around you, follow through reliably, and let it compound.