Value-Based Networking™

A practical curriculum for students who hate networking. And start anyway.

Designed for career centers, student affairs teams, and alumni offices, Value-Based Networking™ turns “networking” from vague advice into a teachable skill: the language, habits, and structure to reach out, follow up, and use AI without sounding like it, before students need any of this.

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What participants are saying.

If you have ever thought, “I should probably be taking networking more seriously, but I don’t know how to do that without feeling like a slimeball”, this will be a great event for you. It reframed how I thought about networking and is full of actionable advice.

Will · Booth Evening/Weekend Student

This is gold.

Nish · Booth Evening/Weekend Student

Delivered at top-tier universities.

FALL 2024 & SPRING 2026
University of Notre Dame
Spring 2026
Chicago Booth School of Business

In a brutal job market, the students who need relationships most feel least ready to build them.

51%
of Gen Z feel underprepared for the social interactions networking requires.
Express Employment / Harris Poll · 2026
12%
of Gen Z use networking to find jobs, compared to 33% of Boomers.
iHire Multi-Generational Workforce Report · 2025
42%
underemployment among recent college graduates, Q1 2026.
NY Fed Labor Market Tracker · 2026

What students walk away with.

A mindset shift.
Students leave seeing networking differently: less about what they can get, and more about the genuine ways they can show up for other people along the way.
A repeatable framework.
Students leave with a system they can use immediately and return to.
Practical tools.
Worksheets, outreach templates, meeting checklists, and follow-up guides. Students keep them. They use them.
AI lessons, done right.
Dictation, drafting, meeting prep, and follow-up systems, taught against one standard: if it reads as AI, it isn’t done.
Measurable confidence gains.
Organizations report gains in outreach volume and professional confidence.

A new way to think about networking.

Value-Based Networking is a system for building and maintaining relationships by providing value to others.

Transactional
Will this coffee chat turn into an interview?
Value-based
Did I leave this person glad they took the meeting?
Transactional
How do I get them to pass my resume along?
Value-based
What can I offer before I ever ask for anything?
Transactional
How do I get this person to hire me?
Value-based
How do I become someone this person would actually want to work with?

A Glimpse of Value-Based Networking™.

Introduction to Value-Based Networking

An introduction to Value-Based Networking™.

How to strengthen a relationship by making others feel like they matter

How to strengthen a relationship by making others feel like they matter.

Leveraging AI to make networking easier, and more human.

Networking is exhausting for two reasons: the awkwardness of reaching out, and the hours of research, drafting, tracking, and follow-up behind it. AI doesn’t touch the awkwardness. It removes the hours.

But careless AI use is how students end up sending generic notes to the alumni and employers they most need to impress, and those people can tell. Every lesson is built around one test: if it reads as AI, it isn’t done.

As more communication gets automated, the messages that feel specific and human matter more, not less. Use AI to finally do the networking you’ve been avoiding, without torching the relationship the moment you hit send.

Anti-AI writing guide

Building an anti-AI checklist.

The gratitude system

Automating showing gratitude.

Built for the students traditional career programming often misses.

  • Undergraduate students
  • Liberal arts students
  • MBA & business students
  • First-generation students
  • International students
  • Social impact students
  • Introverts
  • Students in non-business programs

Not a natural networker. That’s the point.

Adam Newman

Adam Newman is the founder of Value-Based Networking™, a framework for building professional relationships. He has spent his career across political campaigns, government, and nonprofit work in Chicago and Illinois before launching it.

He is also, by his own admission, an introvert who finds social situations nerve-wracking. For years, career fairs and networking mixers left him feeling worse about himself than when he arrived. So he built a different approach. One that played to his strengths and didn’t require him to become someone he wasn’t.

Let’s talk.

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