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So, you’ve worked with someone for a while. At some point, they will leave the company to get another job. Or, you’ll leave the company to get a different job. Whether you leave or they leave, you may still want to keep in touch with the person that you used to work with. If you’re the one leaving, then there are probably quite a few people you can keep in touch with.
Why is it Important?
- Improve Your Job Searching Chances In The Future: One of the most important and mutually beneficial reasons to catch up with old co-workers is to keep your job searching options open. If you’ve worked with someone in the past, and continue to catch up with them, it can be a benefit to both of you for any future job searching opportunities that you need. A personal referral from someone you’ve worked with can go a long way to getting an interview at a company or getting a job.
- Stay Up To Date On The Industry: When you’ve worked at a place for a while, you and your co-workers get to know the industry pretty well. Why is this relevant? Well, a good reason to catch up with old co-workers is to keep up to date on your industry. You can share stories, industry news, and things that are happening in the world where you both work in.
- Help Solve More Problems: One of the aims of networking, and the benefit of knowing a lot of people, is that you can help solve more problems. Many people say this is the goal of professional networking. The more people that you know, the better you’ll be able to solve other people’s problems. Getting to know the people in your network, which includes previous co-workers, will help you understand what they know and what they can do. If anyone you know comes up with a problem that they need help with, you can connect the two people together. Some examples are:
- Someone you know is looking for a job, and you may know some recruiters looking for their skills
- Someone you know needs their house painted, and you know a painter
- Someone you know needs to sell their house, and you know some real estate agents
The list goes on. Connecting people you know who have problems with those who can fix them is very handy. Keeping in touch with your old coworkers helps achieve this.
- Maintain a Friendship: You may have worked with someone for a long time, and over that time, have developed a friendship. When you leave the company, or when they leave the company, you may want to keep that up. It can be hard, as there is one less thing that you have in common, but you can still give it a try if you’re both interested.
How to Maintain Relationships With Coworkers/Managers
- Stay Professional: If it has been a long time since contacting a former colleague or boss, you should be as professional as possible when reaching out and reconnecting. Even though you no longer work together, your impression still matters, so it never hurts to keep a professional tone in an email or private message on Linkedin, for example. These old professional contacts serve as valuable resources as references or sources of advice, so be as polite and professional as possible.
- Offer Them a LinkedIn Recommendation: If you’re aiming to reconnect with a former colleague or manager, the nature of how you can reconnect with them depends largely on how you left your previous company. If you left under less than desirable circumstances, reconnecting may be harder and take more work. But, if you left under amiable conditions and maintained strong relationships when you left, it won’t be as difficult. Regardless of the circumstances, one suggestion to make reconnecting easier is to offer your former colleague or boss a recommendation on LinkedIn. Write a short paragraph about your experience working with them on LinkedIn, endorsing their skills and being sure to include how they excelled in their role. Everyone likes having nice things said about them, even the most humble of us.
- Thank Them for Something They Taught You: When reconnecting with a previous colleague, thank them for something they taught you while you worked together. It might be related to your industry, dealing with people, or a tip/trick they showed you. But when you appreciate someone for something specific, it jumpstarts the relationship on a personal and authentic level. A simple, “I remember you taught me about such and such, thanks for helping me learn that,” will go a long way as you reconnect.
It may have been years or even decades since you spoke to one another, and the people you are trying to reconnect with may have very different lives, moving on to other jobs or even other countries. So one way to begin reconnecting on the right note is without expectations and assumptions.