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Ask HN: Stay in touch with professional friends or former colleagues

15 points by recmend ↗ HN
How do you keep your important professional relationships alive? What tools do you use, if any?

If you're failing to keep in touch, what can we do to fix that?

29 comments

[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 76.7 ms ] thread
tmaly
I usually send a text or an email once in a while just to ask how they are doing.
recmend
Do you use some tools to help you remember or you've a memory of an elephant :) Also, how do you choose between text or email?
codegeek
Are you building something related to this ? I ask because I have always wanted to build my own version to manage my network of professional contacts. Linkedin is too kitchen sink and I don't have a better solution.
recmend
Totally agree. I care about this space a lot. I believe, we need to be more social and less transactional, so that we don't forget about each other :)

If you're interested in talking shop, DM me at arun at recmend.com.

cableshaft
Hey, some verification that there's at least a little demand for an app I'm working on in my spare time. Without going too much into it, it lets you keep track of how often and how long ago you've done things. Maybe I should kick it up a notch and get an MVP out there.
recmend
nice! can I check it out? DM me at arun at recmend.com
cableshaft
It's not really in a state I can show yet. The working logic is currently a python script that dumps the processed data to a text table from the command line. on the app side I was trying to use this project to learn React Native, but I hit a major snag and I think I'm going to switch over to just plain native development, so I'll be starting over from scratch.
tmaly
I would recommend keeping it super simple. Some of these concepts are built into much more complex systems like Salesforce. This is a key idea of people working sales or recruiters.
recmend
Did you mean Salesforce has personal relationship management tool? I don't think it's a PRM problem.
cableshaft
The plan is to keep it simple, otherwise I'll never get it out there :P But I personally find the data and its presentation interesting and a useful memory aid, so I was hoping other people would also.

I doubt Salesforce has something as general-purpose as I have in mind. My concept isn't exclusively for tracking interactions with people and can be used for pretty much anything you can describe with text.

My life has been a bit too eventful recently, though. It's tough to find the time to work on it.

tmaly
It depends on how tech savvy the person is. If they text, I use text. But if it has been too long, I usually send an email
freestockoption
I try to add them to my LinkedIn or Facebook. When I move to a new job or accomplish something (e.g. new product, etc) I send an email (bcc). This usually gets the people who want to keep in touch to respond. Then we go back and forth updating each other.
recmend
I had a similar workflow but then I realized the communication was mostly done on a need basis. If you've to define your ideal workflow for keeping in touch, what would that look like?
freestockoption
I feel the most important thing is keeping a conversation going. So I try to have back-and-forth questions.

I'm torn if face-to-face interactions help significantly. Although, if I see someone enough in an unstructured way, I'll either become good friends or want to not see each other again. :)

Facebook is great for keeping in touch in a casual way. Ask questions here and there, comment on their life achievements, etc.

I've noticed that once I got more of my professional network on Facebook, I've been more conscious about posting drama, this-is-how-it-should-be opinions, etc. That's a good thing but man was it hard at the beginning to keep myself from posting rants!!! :D

recmend
haha. Totally agree with keeping an active communication. Without communication, those relationships tend to grow cold and slowly die.
freestockoption
Funny thing I realized not too long ago is that everyone has a different idea of what it means when they say "I know this person." I used to think sales people were well connected (and I'm sure they are), but when a sales person says they know someone, it probably means they met at a bar somewhere at least once. :)

For myself, it would be hard for me to say I know them, let alone call them up. Maybe the lesson for myself is that most people are pretty receptive of just being called up if you have a legitimate reason and there's no harm in being more open about connecting (you won't get in trouble for calling someone a friend even though they are definition an acquaintance).

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jeffwass
LinkedIn.

I'm not on Facebook or any other social networks.

LinkedIn is basically like a Rolodex of friends and colleagues that automatically keeps updated. So it's useful to query, for example, who in your network works at a particular company now. And then you find out that guy from college who you hung out with a few times but otherwise never would have kept directly in touch with, is now a senior manager there.

The regular network updates can be interesting, to see who's gotten promoted or moved on to new positions.

I don't do any of the socially networky things on it, though occasionally read what some people postings.

Regarding keeping in touch, you can contact people via the internal messaging feature, though most of my contacts also have their email address visible for their connections, so I mostly email people as needed.

I'm in the financial industry now, after finishing a PhD in physics. And via LinkedIn, for example, I've been contacted by the dean of the business school at my university (even though I was never involved with the biz school in any way at uni) who was visiting London to invite me to an event he was speaking at. I've had students I don't know from my uni, or friends of friends, reach out to me to ask questions about what it's like moving to finance, advice for getting jobs, etc.

recmend
Got it. You use Linkedin when you need to find someone in your network that works at a given company, so your interactions are more of a need base than casual social conversations?
jeffwass
Your posting specifically mentioned professional relationships and not 'casual social conversations', and professional connectivity is the key focus of LinkedIn. Though I keep my friends as contacts here too.

I do contact people casually and socially via either the messaging app or email periodically. It's not just for finding out who works at companies, although that's a handy feature. For me it's really more of a Rolodex of resumes and contact info that is kept up to date.

For example, I wouldn't care about reading all my colleagues daily Facebook or Twitter feeds of yet another picture of them on a beach or about to eat some fancy entree. (As mentioned, I'm not on Facebook).

But it's useful to see the regular LinkedIn updates of who's moved to new positions. And some people have written some interesting posts as well.

recmend
Thanks for the clarification :)
exolymph
If I had a system to organize this, here's what it would be:

1) Add all new professional contacts to a Google Doc along with the date of the last time I spoke to them, with the most recent contact dates at the bottom.

2) Contact one person every week or [insert appropriate time interval].

3) Move the person I just contacted to the bottom of the list.

4) Rinse and repeat.

But instead of doing that I just have Twitter and a dash of Facebook. People pop up in my feed and I interact with them on the fly.

recmend
So all of your professional relationships lives in twitter + facebook?
exolymph
Also email and face-to-face, but all of my "keeping up with people I'm not actively working with" happens through Twitter and Facebook.
curuinor
I've done this with custom tools for a few years. Works pretty well.
recmend
do you mind sharing your workflow / tools?
mattm
As part of my tool - https://touchingbase.io - I offer something similar to this where our algorithm determines who you should get back in touch with. If anyone's interested, I'd be happy to show a demo.
chatmasta
I would rather someone only talk to me when he needs something, rather than sporadically wasting my time by engaging in useless platitudes, when neither of us actually want to.

If every acquaintance "touched base" with me "once-per-X", I would have a limited number of acquantainces.

Don't pretend to be friends with people by bothering them, unless you actually need something, and even then, preferably try to make it mutually beneficial.

recmend
Thinking of taking a stab at this problem. Now taking feedback on www.meetnucleus.com.