Forget the perfectly tailored résumé and endless cover letters. According to Sanjay Beri, CEO of the $5.5 billion software giant Netskope, the real key to landing your dream job is showing up to enough dinners.
That’s because despite LinkedIn being full of jobs to apply to, Beri admits the secret to success is still very much who you know.
“Who you know, how you get to know them and building your network will pay off over time,” the Gen X founder and CEO exclusively told Fortune. “Sometimes those jobs you want, they’re never published.”
When asked for his No. 1 tip on breaking into the tech industry—as someone who went from working on the IT help desk at 16 in Toronto with zero contacts to running a Silicon Valley tech company and brushing shoulders with Microsoft’s ex-chairman John W. Thompson—he didn’t hesitate: “Just constant networking.”
And it’s not enough to just pop along to a networking event once a quarter. Beri said Gen Z workers who aren’t tied down with a marriage or kids should be doing it two to three times a week if they want to get ahead.
“It could just be as simple as going to a local event where someone’s speaking; it could be going to a university event where a person from a company is speaking,” Beri added.
Essentially, it doesn’t have to be an awkward speed networking type event. Anything from a conference in your preferred field to coffee with a connection counts. “Those are the types of things that I would look for, and if you’re a new grad, there’s a lot of local clubs and other things you can go to,” he added.
As millions of Gen Z struggle with unemployment, CEO shares his networking rule: Never eat alone
For Gen Z job seekers, adding networking events to their already long list of things to do to get a job is probably not the answer they want to hear.
They’re already drowning in AI-screened applications and ghosted interviews. And that’s not to mention the endless new hoops that recruiters are making them jump through to prove they’re the perfect match, from coffee cup tests to unpaid 90-minute exams.
Then there’s the sheer amount of young people they’re competing with. About a fifth of Gen Zers worldwide are classified as “NEETs” and are currently locked out of the job market. Last year in the U.K. alone, more than 1.2 million applications were submitted for fewer than 17,000 graduate roles. One graduate with a maths degree says he spent more than a year applying to over 1,000 roles in the U.K. without landing a single offer.
But as AI leaves employers spammed with hundreds of near-identical applications for a single role, standing out as a name to a face can only be a good thing.
And Beri’s networking advice doesn’t even require carving out any more time in the calendar. His philosophy is that you already need to eat—so, he’s suggesting you stop doing it alone.
“If you’re going for lunch or dinner, don’t eat alone—go to an event,” he said, while adding that the mantra comes from the book Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi.
As well as nabbing some free canapés to eat that night, you may make a connection who will change the course of your life or invest in your future business idea.
Before he founded Netskope, Beri says he was regularly invited to investor and VC events. He later leaned on those new connections when he became a founder. “I got to know them, I got to understand their circles, and I started putting my tentacles in,” he added. “And that paid off when I was building my company and raising capital, and beyond.”
Just six years after launching in 2012, Netskope hit unicorn status. It went public on the Nasdaq last year; over 30% of its clients are now Fortune 100 companies; and today it operates in over 220 countries with more than 3,000 employees. “Find forums to go to. Network,” Beri stressed.
