We spoke to Isabel Sachs, founder of I Like Networking, the career and networking platform for people in creative industries with particular focus on supporting women and non-binary people.
I Like Networking started as a volunteer project in June 2020 and has been growing ever since. It is now a social enterprise offering a newsletter, resources and job advert platform, podcast and social media, where they share opportunities across the sector.
Speaking on the growth of the enterprise, Isabel said:
“It’s mainly just me running it. Sometimes we have freelancers, or interns, people who help out with the mentoring schemes. It’s so busy but I’m used to it – in Brazil I had a company where we ran 50 projects a year. If you want to have a very structured workday, you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur!”
I Like Networking makes its main impact through the mentoring scheme, which was a lot more popular than Isabel had initially anticipated. Over three schemes, the community has mentored over 700 people.
“The first scheme I launched had 500 applications but we had only 35 mentors. I thought it might’ve been a one-off because this was during lockdown – thought maybe 100 would apply and then we would get three mentees to each mentor and then they could decide. But we had 100 applications in 24 hours! We often receive up to five more times the applicants compared to available spaces.
“Luckily I put together an advisory board of different women to support me and since then the applications have grown, but the scheme has grown with it – we now have group mentorship too, such as sessions over a number of months, workshops, mentee connection groups and we now have Arts Council Funding.
“We also launched a talent collective which mentees can apply for. Companies that recruit through us can also connect with these people – we’re trying to provide a 360 service across the industry for talent and recruiters.”
The growth of I Like Networking has been fast, but organic. For its founder, the following is not central to what she wants to achieve:
“We now have a following of over 40 thousand people online. I think it’s growing well considering it’s been fully organic, and also not a growth that I can’t handle. The growth is great, but what really matters is that we’re actually delivering real impact and change to the sector – social media is a means to an end, I’m not an influencer or social media presenter.”
Through partnering and raising awareness all over the country, Isabel hopes to open the doors to the industry as wide as possible. She joked: “We don’t gatekeep anything!”
Even for Isabel, with over 18 years of experience in the creative industries and previous business experience, I Like Networking has been a learning curve: “My first company was a production company with strict costs, budgets whereas this has been constantly adapting and changing, it’s been a completely strange way to build a business, but the idea came from one person and I just wanted to do something.”
In 2020 during the first big lockdown, most of the creative industries came to a halt. She remembers: “One Sunday the arts jobs email came out completely empty. Everyone was freaking out and I was speaking to a friend in the film industry and she said ‘I don’t know how we’re going to do anything now because there are no jobs and also every job you get is through networking. I hate networking, I would pay someone to do it for me’.”
She thought she could help connect people she knew and “get everyone together”.
“If the industry is more diverse and easier to enter then it’s going to be better for everybody so I literally hassled friends and started connecting people. To credit people in the industry too – most people I reached out to said yes right away – everyone wanted to do something they just didn’t know how. And then I organised it and everything came from there.”
Isabel understands the power of networking through personal experience, as her career progression (with an initial theatrical background) has been largely due to her sociable and proactive nature:
“I’m a very proactive and solution focused person. I started my career in the creative industries at a super early age, I ran around film sets, got a job at an art gallery as a glorified receptionist, I just said yes to so many things.
When she moved to London in 2014, she “went for a lot of coffees, I got lost in London a lot, I wanted to meet people, to understand how things work.”
“I had to build myself from scratch which was hard. I do know that the vast majority of creative jobs are filled from networking – companies are small and don’t have the manpower to recruit so I know first-hand how important it is to get out there.”
More than its corporate meaning or setting, to Isabel, networking means connecting with and supporting others.
“It’s sharing and connecting with people in your professional realm. It’s a two-way street with connections, but it’s not that thing that people make it seem like people are there pitching themselves – that is a way but it’s not the way. I do believe networking is about connecting with people that can support you in your career, and also people that you can also support, one doesn’t exclude the other – people connect with people, we just need to create spaces and opportunities for people to access the spaces – if the spaces are members clubs, X amount of people, that is a problem! Plus, it’s just so much nicer and easier to navigate life with people in your corner.”
Speaking about the future, Isabel hopes to continue the growth of I Like Networking and tackle systemic issues. She said:
“I really want to scale our impact without losing quality and grow a stronger community, make sure people are engaging. I would like it to become a great sounding board for people in the industry to make a change in the industry.
“We could start simply with not allowing unpaid work – that should be illegal. There are many things I would change, and lots of places to start!,” she concluded.
Image courtesy of Isabel Sachs
