How a Birthday Message got me into Google

If you follow me on LinkedIn or watched my video on 5 Habits I Regret Ignoring in My 20’s, you know a super underrated networking tip I follow religiously is wishing people a happy birthday.

For example, this is how my calendar looked this past week:

And these are some screenshots of my “conversations” from this past week:

As of the time of me writing this post, none of those people have responded to me 😔.

So isn’t all this a huge waste of time? Not to mention how much of a loser it makes me out to be…

Then this notification pops up on LinkedIn:

He’s a schoolmate I haven’t seen in over 9 years, we moved the conversation over to Instagram, and now we’re making plans to catch up!

Increasing your “luck surface area”

Believe it or not, a similar encounter got me my first-round interview with Google 8 years ago, and that (obviously) changed my life!

It reminds me of this image I saw a few months ago:

Am I saying re-activating your Facebook account and wishing people happy birthday = instant success?

Definitely not.

But are there certain actions you can consistently take (e.g. have 1:1 coffee chats with a colleague from a different team once a month) that can lead to positive outcomes?

Heck yes.

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