Joseph – Page 2 – Penn & Beyond

The Psychology of Networking

Dr. Joseph Barber, Senior Associate Director

With my Ph.D. in animal behavior, I have been specifically trained to identify and analyze subtle changes in the behavior of animals that I observe. The fact that I spent my time watching chickens for my Ph.D. will become relevant in a moment as I start talking about networking.

As an animal behaviorist, I have developed testable hypotheses about why behavior changes, and what internal or external factors lead to such changes. As a career adviser, I still use this scientific knowledge when it comes to human behavior — we are just another type of animal, after all.

One of the most interesting career-related situations that is rich with behavior is networking. It is a social behavior, which tend to be some of the most complex behaviors we see in the animal kingdom. If I were trying to create a behavioral ethogram (a well-defined list of behaviors that observers can use when collecting data on behavior), I might define networking along the lines of a social, affiliative interaction involving direct or indirect physical or vocal communication between at least two individuals

If that is all networking is, then why can it seem so stressful to many of us? In terms of how I, and the many introverts like me, perceive networking, I might change the definition slightly to state: a social affiliative interaction involving direct or indirect physical or vocal communication between at least two individuals that results in a measurable stress response — and one individual (or possibly even both) running back to their room, hiding under their covers and vowing never to do it again.

That’s not a scientific definition, but it is an accurate description of how many people experience networking events. That is how I experience them when faced with meeting lots of new people in a short, concentrated space of time (hello, every conference I have attended). Given that I studied chickens, perhaps my interest in understanding the struggles to network effectively makes a little more sense. If chickens were actually a cowardly species (they are not — read this), then I would certainly associate myself with them when it comes to networking.

But chickens are not cowardly in the least. They are highly social, superinquisitive, and have been shown in research to identify up to 90 other chickens they have interacted with as familiar. They are probably much better networkers than I will ever be — if they didn’t peck the living daylights out of unfamiliar birds they meet and tread in their own poop, that is. So, if chickens can actually be effective networkers in their own way, then there is also plenty of hope for those of us who find some parts of the networking experience draining and overwhelming at times. Here are some best practices for introverts based in the science of animal behavior, more or less:

Keep your social groups small. Speaking with another person where the ratio is one to one rather than one to many is always going to be easier to manage. You will find that this networking approach suddenly just feels like having a conversation and is not bad at all. It is OK to avoid large networking events, or find opportunities for small groups conversations within them, and it is great to prioritize one-on-one informational interviews with people in career fields that interest you.

Focus on the needs of others to distract you from any negative emotional states. One of the key approaches to any networking outreach is to make sure the person with whom you are interacting feels positive about that interaction. I have talked about the fear response I get if someone asks if they can “just grab a coffee” here. If someone I didn’t know reached out and asked if I could forward their résumé on to a hiring manager in my office, it would first make me feel a little awkward — how can I say no politely other than just ignoring the request? — and then perhaps a little angry. Why am I now spending so much time worrying about how to say no? Why would this person put me in a position to be angry at myself? All of these negative feelings become connected with the person who reached out to me.

So how do you make people feel positive? You value them for who they are and appreciate what they are willing to share, and you thank them — authentically and often. For example, if someone were to reach out to me and ask what some of the trends are in the field of career professionalism for Ph.D.s and postdocs, I would need to give this some serious thought. Serious thought takes time, and even after a lot of this time, I still wouldn’t be able to come up with a very satisfying answer for this high-level question. The question is a neutral one — it doesn’t make me feel bad, but it doesn’t leave me feeling positive.

Now, if I was asked what I have done at Penn to focus on career professionalism for Ph.D.s, it wouldn’t require deep thinking. It would give me an opportunity to talk about something I have invested lots of time in already and that am likely to be engaged by. If the person I am talking to finds hearing about the approaches I have taken here to be interesting and valuable, then that is going to make me feel good.

Positively reinforce behaviors you want to see more frequently. If you have given your dog or cat a treat immediately after they have performed a behavior you like and want to see more of, then you are engaged in the process of positive reinforcement training. Once an animal makes a connection between a behavior and the reward, the behavior will occur more often.

You can train most animals in this way. If you want people you meet through your networking outreach to continue to provide you with great insight, then make sure that you positively reinforce them, too. Always send a thank-you note or email to people who have taken the time to speak with you within 24 hours after meeting them. This works just as effectively after speaking with employers at a career fair or an actual job interview. The longer you wait, the less effective the reinforcement is.

If a contact you have met suggests someone else you can speak with, go ahead and do so. Thank your new contact after you have met them, and then get back in contact with your initial contact to tell them how helpful your conversation was with the person they recommended. Everyone likes to be thanked. If you are authentic in your thanks, you might find that your contact is more willing to suggest someone else that they know as your next outreach contact.

Use your social connectors effectively. People often ask me how they can tap in to the many second-degree connections that they have on LinkedIn. (Second-degree connections are people whom you don’t know but someone whom you know does know). That is a fantastic way to grow your networking and make the sometimes scary step of reaching out to new people much more effective.

Let’s say I want to reach out to James, who works as a senior scientist in a biotech firm I am interested in. I don’t know James, but I see that I am connected to Magda on LinkedIn, and Magda is connected to James. I can leverage my existing relationship with Magda in one of three ways to establish a connection with James. I could ask Magda to share the email she has for James. First-degree connections on LinkedIn can see each other’s email addresses. With this email, I could reach out directly, but that could still be a hit-or-miss approach if I don’t leverage my social connections. Or I could ask Magda to introduce me to James. Magda might send an email to James directly, copying me in and asking if James would be able to speak with me. That is the most effective approach, but it requires the most effort from Magda. As a third alternative and good middle-ground approach is to ask Magda if I can use her name when reach out to James. For example, I might write:

“Hi, James, I saw on LinkedIn that we both know Magda Patel. I worked with her for a couple of years at Penn in the student consulting club. I contacted Magda, and she highly recommend that I reach out to you and said that you would be a great person to ask about some of the genetic sequencing projects at your company. This is an area I am very interested in exploring in terms of industry career paths, and so I would love to hear a little about your experience in this field. Can I send you a couple of quick questions by email or set up a time to chat on the phone, if that is easier? This would be so helpful in my exploration of possible paths to focus on when I graduate next year.”

The reason that James might be more likely to respond to this email is that he might not want to lose his social standing and reputation that he now feels he has with other people — in this case, Magda. If Magda highly recommends him, and says he is such a great person to talk with, and then he turns down my request, it will result in an immediate loss of perceived status. If I reached out to James directly without involving Magda, he could easily ignore my outreach without feeling too bad. As soon as another person is involved, James is likely to be much more aware of how he is perceived both by me and the person whom he knows. The truth is, I may have just asked Magda if she recommended James and thought he would be great to reach out to, and she might have just said yes, but that is good enough to get the social connection process started.

So there you go: some easy to use, biologically sound, behavioral-based approaches to help you (and your chickens) with networking!

Your Career Fair Checklist

Dr. Joseph Barber, Senior Associate Director

If you want to make the most of your career fair experience, then try to achieve as many of the following steps as possible:

1. Find the dates for our upcoming fairs on Handshake – they are all listed right here: https://app.joinhandshake.com/career_fairs

2. Click on each of the fairs and gently browse the various employers who have registered, or do a more targeted search using filters such as job types, school year, major, and industry.

3. Take some time to think about some of your career fair goals. Are you exploring, networking, looking for information, checking in with employers you have already interacted with, or applying? And yes, you might well have different goals in mind for different employers.

4. Create a list of employers at each fair that you want to connect with. It doesn’t have to be a long list. You may only want to speak to a few, and that is perfectly fine, as it can still be an incredibly valuable use of your time.

5. Now that you have a preliminary list, you will want to prioritize it. You can sort the employers into different industries if you are exploring multiple career paths, and you can identify the employers that you are most interested in, those you are a little less interested in based on what you know, those you want to learn more about, and maybe have a few that you are just somewhat curious about.

6. Here is a really important step – do research on all of the employers you have listed. Look at their website to know what they do and how they do it. Look at the jobs that they have posted on Handshake. Look at the jobs they have posted beyond Handshake (LinkedIn the “careers” page on their website are good places to start). Create a list of smart questions you hope to ask (smart means not questions that can be answered through easy online research).

7. Since you cannot just walk up to a table at a career fair, ask a bunch of questions, and then run off without saying anything, you need to work on the narrative you are going to use when introducing yourself to employers. Make a list of information you want the employer to know about you. Again, this might be different for different employers. Put it all together into a well-structured narrative. Practice your introduction aloud, and do it several times until it sounds and feels natural.

8. Think about what you want to wear. You don’t have to be in a suit, but you still should look professional. Think about which companies are at the top of your prioritized list, and try to dress in a way that their representatives will be dressed at the career fair. For example, representatives from law firms that come to campus looking for PhDs to be patent law specialists typically dress in suits. If you turn up in jeans and a t-shirt, you will create an obvious, visual disconnect.

9. Have a good resume to share. This will usually be a document used as a shared reference for your discussion, rather than the document that is used for an actual application, but it should be good enough to do both. Get your materials reviewed before you go to the fair.

10. When you arrive at the fair, choose one of the employers that is lower down your list of priority organizations to ease yourself into the process – this will help you to practice your introduction one last time, and to get a sense of the timing of the interactions that you will be having with employers at the event. Since some fairs can be busy, the next employer you meet with should be one of your priority organizations.

11. Don’t start by handing someone your resume – start with a strong handshake and good eye contact. All employers have name tags on, and you can even start with a strong “Hello Julie, thanks for being here today…”. Did I mention that your handshake should be strong and confident…, and dry! Find out more here: https://ulife.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/blog/2018/04/04/handshaking-a-guide-to-making-the-right-impression/

12. Introduce yourself, ask some smart questions, share your resume, ask for a business card, and offer to follow-up with an electronic version of your materials. Thank them again, shake their hands, and move on with a smile!

13. Within 24 hours, and if you have their email address from their business cards, send a thank you email thanking them again, telling them why you found your conversation together helpful, and sharing anything that you said you would share. You might learn something about an internship or a job from your discussion at the career fair that makes you want to change something in the general resume you took with you to the event in order to better highlight your fit for a particular position.

14. Make sure you apply for specific jobs you talked about at the fair through Handshake, and some companies will need you to apply through their websites too.

15. Celebrate your successes. Think about what went well from the fair, and plan to improve on what didn’t go so well when it comes to the next career fair you go to. There are quite a few of them each semester. An appointment with a career advisor can help with this.

Good luck with your networking and information gathering, if these are your primary goals for your career fair experience, and make the most of your conversations to update your application materials if you are actively applying for positions.

Uncovering the secrets of the cover letter

Dr. Joseph Barber, Senior Associate Director

While there are certainly specific styles of resumes that reflect different career fields and industries, the cover letter offers a much less structured document, and so often leads to much more confusion. You will no doubt get different advice from everyone you ask about cover letters, and so what I am covering here will certainly to add to this pile. However, having read a frighteningly enormous number of cover letters in my role as a career advisor, my advice comes from experience. This experience can be divided into positive experiences (where the letter was interesting to read), and neutral-to-negative experiences, where the letter was readable, but not very engaging. When you are thinking of your cover letters, the description of “readable” should be the absolute minimum outcome you aim to achieve. Ideally, your letter is interesting, engaging, unique, positive, energetic, and optimistic! That is a lot to achieve in one page!

The first question to ask yourself is what is the purpose of the cover letter? If you have already created a customized resume for the job you are applying to (and this is essential), then you have already highlighted the relevant skills you have (relevant to the job you are applying to). You don’t just want to provide exactly the same information again in your cover letter. Reading the same information twice doesn’t make it any more impactful, but can definitely make it less interesting. Used strategically, the cover letter gives you an opportunity to highlight some of the best parts of your resume in a slightly different way, and with the main focus on explaining why – why you’re the right person for the job; why your experiences are relevant; why you want to use your skills and knowledge in this new role at this new organization. The answers to these questions are not punchy bullet points. Instead they need to be slightly more narrative in their form, and when you start using more narrative formats you can start using story-telling approaches. The benefit of telling stories is that you don’t just have to state empirically what happened (which is what the bullet point in the resume does), you can talk about the broader impacts of the experience, including what you learnt from it, how it made you feel, why you sought it out, what was so surprising about it, why is was challenging, and so on. These will all be unique perspectives to you (which makes them interesting to your reader who won’t have read them in 100 other cover letters), and can help make your letter more energetic by bringing in action-based emotional states. People remember stories more than they remember high-level, generic statements that you have important skills.

Let’s cover the basic structure of a 1-page cover letter that I tend to recommend. We can break it down into three separate sections just to make it easier to think about.

First paragraph/opening

Make a very clear statement of intent. This means avoiding statements such as:

“I am writing to possibly explore the opportunity to be interested in applying for the position of….”

Instead, the most direct approach could be this:

“I am applying for the position of X that was advertised on your website

You can add to this, but be direct. The rest of the first paragraph is taken up with a takeaway conclusion about yourself. Yes, you can start your letter with a conclusion. This means that the reader immediately knows you have something that they want, and makes them more likely to read the rest of the letter to find out more. If you are going to start off with a conclusion, though, make sure that it is relevant to your reader by summarizing what they are likely to care about the most. Take a look at this introduction sentence and see if you can identify what some of the key takeaways are, and thus what some of the job requirements might have been:

“With 8 years of experience managing multi-step data collection projects in academic and industry settings, and an ability to establish and maintain relationships with clients, stakeholders, and international collaborators, I am excited to bring my creativity and structured approach to this Data Analyst role.”

Middle paragraphs

Once you have made a conclusion statement in the introduction (I know, it sounds a little weird!), the main part of the letter is going to be expanding on these themes. You don’t have to go through all of your experiences from the resume, but rather you want to highlight the best parts. This means that everything in your cover letter should be echoed by something in your resume, but not everything in your resume needs to be mentioned in your cover letter. And if you are wondering why you can’t just customize your cover letter and send a standard resume as part of your application, just remember that not everyone will read a cover letter. You want them to, but you cannot make them!

The main body of your letter will contain good illustrations of your relevant skills in action, all wrapped up in a narrative form that includes just a sprinkling of drama. Here is an example of a story without drama:

“As a project leader in the PBG Healthcare Consulting Group, I oversaw a team of 3 students and completed an extensive market analysis of the medical device field to determine the a suitable pricing model for a wearable device developed by the client.”

None of this is bad information; it is just not that engaging. It would be much better as a bullet point in a resume. And if it were already a bullet in the resume, it should not just be repeated in the cover letter. Here is an alternative version with a little more drama.

“When I was serving as a project leader in the student consulting group at Penn, my team had engaged with a client seeking market access information for a new wearable device. We faced two immediate challenges with this work: the device was unique, and there were few products to compare, and this was the first consulting experience for half of our 4-member team. In thinking about the project, I saw their lack of experience as a possible advantage, and took the opportunity to encourage the two new team members to think creatively about comparable products in the medical space and beyond. In two brainstorming sessions, we successfully generated sufficient data for our market analysis. I found it really satisfying to see how well the new members complemented and then learnt from our more practiced approach”

Every piece of work you have done, every project you have been involved with, has presented its own unique challenges. If you can state what these were, and talk about how you have used your skills and abilities to overcome these challenges (relevant skills and abilities for the job you are applying to), then you have the basis for good examples. Concepts that you can touch on in a cover letter that are hard to highlight in a resume include:

Enjoying or being excited about something
Learning from an experience that went well or badly
Combining experiences from two separate roles you have had (that might be separated by years on a resume) to show how you solved a problem
Explaining why you did something, not just that you did it
Passion

Final paragraph

Once you have given some examples to illustrate the themes highlighted in the first paragraph, you can move to the final paragraph. Here you might want to answer the questions: why do you want this job? Why do you want to work here? The answer to these questions should flow nicely from the examples you have been giving.

“In all of these projects, I have found myself most engaged when I have been able to bridge disciplines, and draw upon my relationship building skills to establish productive collaborations. I would enjoy the opportunity to liaise between the marketing and science teams in this Project Coordinator role, and this would make exceptional use of my lab research skills and creative mindset. I have spoken with three Penn alumni who work at X, and each has highlighted the mentoring program for junior staff as wonderfully helpful for their own professional development. I have been fortunate to have strong mentors in my current lab, which has certainly helped me progress in my research, and I am very excited about learning from the experience of senior staff in this new role through this mentoring program.”

The more you know about an organization, and the role itself, the easier it will be to come up with an authentic answer to the “why this job?” and “why this company?” questions.

There is no perfect cover letter, and different approaches can be just as effective (after all, different people will read each letter, and they have their own ideas about good and bad letters!). Hopefully, you can take some of these considerations to heart for your next letter, and uncover just a hint of drama as you describe your exceptional skills, knowledge, and experiences!

Career mythbusting, and interesting facts about vegetables and Vulcans

Dr. Joseph Barber

As we conclude this academic year, let me take this opportunity to clarify some common areas of career confusion relating to the job search. But first, some interesting facts to start us off. Did you know that May is the only month that spells a vegetable backwards? I was going to say that May is also the only month that spells another actual word backwards, but then we would be forgetting about April. “What is a Lirpa?” you might ask yourself. Go ahead, look it up, and you will be ready to impress the next Trekkie you meet at a party. OK, and now onto some areas of career confusion and other assorted myths.

Professional recruiters only spend an average of 8 seconds reading your resume

I am sure some data have been collected on this, but I am also positive that these data are unlikely to be representative of all industries, and all jobs, and all people. It is the kind of statement that attracts people’s attention, though, and there is some element of truth to this. The reality is that different people will read your application materials at different points along the process, and each person will be looking for something specific from your document. But it is true, that all of these people have busy jobs, lots to do, and so just can’t spend an awful lot of time trying to figure out if your experiences as described might be a good fit for a position. Moreover, the first person who reads your application might not be a person at all. More and more companies are using application tracking systems and software to compare keywords from resumes against keywords from the job descriptions. In a mere fraction of a second, these systems can give a score that addresses how many keywords, skills, and concepts from the job ad are covered in your materials. If there is too low a match rate, then a real person is probably never going to read your materials at all. Your job in your resume is to demonstrate to a very specific population of people at one organization interested in filling one particular role that you have something of value to bring to that specific role. So yes, you need a tailored and customized resume for each job application so that in the short time that someone does spend reading the document, that it really addresses their needs. This leads us to myth #2.

But I thought only cover letters need to be customized for each separate job

Cover letters also need to be customized. If you only customize your cover letter, and no-one reads it, then have you actually customized anything at all? That’s a philosophical question for you. Not everyone will read a cover letter. Some application tracking systems won’t scan cover letters in their analysis. Now, don’t get me wrong, you want people to read your cover letter. You want them to read both the letter and the resume. Each document provides something rather different. The resume focuses on relevant skills for the job, and presents them as short, punchy, bullets that illustrate the relevant, takeaway skills in action, provide enough context to make the skills make sense, and ideally point to outcomes that show how effective the skills are. The cover letter takes the most relevant of these and tells more narrative stories that have some aspect of humanity integrated within. So, in a resume you might state:

Created a new experimental protocol in partnership with a bioengineer from a separate lab that resulted in a run time that halved the experimental timeline, and produced sufficient data for a publication now in press.

In a cover letter, you might tell the story behind this bullet point experience, structuring your story using the STAR format (situation, task/challenge, action, result):

In my last experiment, I was trying to get data from my cell-lines using the standard lab protocols, but realized that there wouldn’t be enough time to complete it before my funding ran out. I tried all sorts of approached before I reached out to a bioengineer from another lab at Penn who I had heard give a talk about a new filtration technique she was developing for her research. I was able to collaborate with her to modify her approach to my cell-lines, and actually double the experimental yield. It was really exciting to try an untried, innovative approach, and I really enjoyed the collaboration I established. My advisor has now started using our modified protocol on his own research, and we now have a paper in press. I am looking forward to bringing my creative problem solving to this new role, as I know this quick thinking is essential in a lean start-up environment.

Words such as “enjoy” or “excited by” are hard to use in a resume, but are more easily integrated into the cover letter. A one-page cover letter that has a couple of interesting and unique stories that contain just the right amount of drama and emotion will always be engaging to the reader.

You will never get a job by applying online – you have to network to get a job

Well…, networking will absolutely maximize your potential to get a job – and the job you want – but plenty of people I have worked with have received interviews and offers after applying directly to a job posted online. Companies wouldn’t waste their time posting jobs on LinkedIn, Indeed.com, their own websites, or a host of other websites if these were just for show. In fact, in most companies, you do have to apply online to be officially tracked within their applicant tracking system. For most companies, there is a candidate hiring process that they need to follow, and specific steps you and they need to take. Networking helps you along this process, but it doesn’t replace it in most cases. Applying online with a generic resume might not get you through the applicant tracking robots, and a cover letter that doesn’t engage the reader might not get you the interview, but that doesn’t mean that this is the fault of the online application system.

If the employer has answered all of the questions you had prepared ahead of time during the interview, it is OK to say that you don’t have any more questions when asked at the end

If time allows, you should always ask questions – always. In every interview that I have been part of (as an interviewer), the people who don’t ask any questions at the end, or who only ask one, or who ask a weak question, are always seen as least favourable candidates at the end of the process. Saying that you don’t have any questions basically tells the interviewer that you are disinterested. If you are applying for a new job, you can’t possible know everything there is to know about it, and so take every opportunity to ask smart, engaging questions about the specific role that you are interviewing for. Here are a few examples:

Over the first 3-6 months, what will be the main priorities for the person in this role?
How does this role fit into the team structure in this office – if I were in this role, would I be working with the same team over time, or on different teams for each project?
What types of professional training opportunities are available for the person in this role?
What are some of the most exciting challenges that the person in this role might face in this work?

You should only go to Career Services if you have a specific question, and only if you are an undergraduate

No, you can come at any time, and we will help you identify some of the questions you should be asking if you are having a hard time figuring out what they are. Career Services is also divided into teams, and you will find career advisors who work specifically with undergraduates, and some who only work with graduate students and postdocs. So, if you didn’t take the opportunity to stop by during Lirpa, we look forward to seeing you later in Yam! We are open all summer long!

Handshaking – a guide to making the right impression

Dr. Joseph Barber

Take a moment to think about your handshake. When was the last time you shook someone’s hand? Why did you do it? Were you standing or sitting? Did the other person have a strong handshake? What impression did they make on you? Now, being very honest, rate your average handshake on a scale of 1-5 on the following criteria:

Firmness (with 5 being very firm)
Moistness (with 5 being very dry)
Confidence (with 5 being very confident)

How did you score? Some of you probably know you have a firm handshake because you have given this a lot of thought, but for those of you who haven’t thought about it, or who generally get creeped out by the prospect of touching another person dirty, sweaty hands, you might find it much harder to rank yourself across these categories. Now, in terms of moistness, this will generally be dependent on the situation and the environment. A handshake in the middle of summer just before a really important job interview is likely to be the perfect storm of moistness. Nervousness and moistness go hand-in-hand (you see what I did there!). In terms of confidence, this is really a combination of several variables: the confident thrusting forth of your hand to greet someone, the length and firmness of the shake, your body language while giving it, and the way you look into the eyes of your handshaking partner and introduce yourself with a strong tone of voice. Yes, the good, old-fashioned handshake can say a lot about you, and it is critical to get it right in order to make your first impressions count – whether at an interview or just meeting new people at your next conference or as part of your broader networking outreach.

Is a bad handshake such a bad thing? Yes…, and especially when the person whose hand you are shaking has a professionally firm one. A weak handshake automatically sets you apart in their mind, and gives them something negative to associate with you. People make up their minds about a new person they are meeting quickly, and once an initial impression has been made, it can become harder to change this perspective. A weak handshake followed by a great interview is not going to be a disaster, but a weak handshake followed by just a half-decent interview might leave your interviewers seeing your performance in a more negative light. A weak handshake can give people a bias towards seeing other negatives in you. You don’t want that to happen. A strong first impression can help you prevent that.

In the global world of work, it is important to know that different cultures have different ideas about handshakes. If you are an international student in the US, then the firm handshake is something you will need to learn and use, and a firm handshake is appropriate for greeting men and women. A firm handshake communicates a strong, confident personality. Please note, firm does not mean crushing. How firm is firm enough? Well, if you are trying to open a door, you need to grip the door handle firmly enough so that it doesn’t keep slipping out of your hand, right? In fact, you would look fairly foolish trying to open a door with a limp handshake grip. Since door handles are hard metal, there is no benefit to trying to squeeze the life out of them – you’ll just end up hurting yourself. So, the firmness of the grip you use when opening a door might be a good starting point for the firmness of a good handshake. If you still feel confused about the difference between firm and painfully crushing, find a friend or two and practice! Get feedback from them on what is weak, firm, or just too much.

Here is some general advice about implementing a successful handshake:

Where possible, stand up to shake hands.
If you are already standing and moving towards people, then you can start the handshaking gesture about five feet from your target.
Make sure you are facing the person, with good eye contact, and a confident greeting when you reach out – as this will prevent you from standing there with your hand out looking like you are directing traffic while they are still busy talking to someone else.
Dry hands are ideal. This means that if you are at a networking event or conference, don’t leave the bathroom until every part of your right hand is totally dry after washing them. Everyone has to pee, and so the likelihood that you will meet someone you wanted to chat with somewhere near the bathroom is actually very high. No matter how many times you swear to your handshaking partner that your hands are wet because you just washed them (not a great first impression to have to make this argument), somewhere deep inside their subconscious they will fear the worst!
As you are engaging hands, Keep your thumb pointing up – don’t try to engage with a palm up or palm down approach.
Move your hands forward and don’t grip or squeeze until the web of your hand (between the thumb and your first finger) has firmly engaged with the web of your partner’s hand. A strong forward motion helps you to lock your hands together.
Don’t bring you hand in from the side as if you are slapping someone on the back – this messes everything up!
The shake should last 2-5 seconds, with 1-3 up and downs, giving you enough time to say your name, listen to their name, and then respond back with their name (e.g., “It is great to meet you, Trevor”). Shake from your elbow; you don’t need to engage your shoulder to do any heavy lifting.
Maintain eye contact during the shake.
Finish one introduction and shake before you move onto the next one in a group setting where you are meeting more than one new person.
Shake at the beginning of a social interaction, and shake at the end. Just make sure that the parting shake is much better than the starting shake if you had any issues with the first one.

Your handshake is easy to improve, and with enough focus on the moment in time when you are meeting new people or reconnecting with people you already know, you will be able to make a good impression on people in your professional network.