Contacts Template For Networking

Templates and forums for improving your networking game

Author: Patrick Curtis
Patrick Curtis
Patrick Curtis
Private Equity | Investment Banking

Prior to becoming our CEO & Founder at Wall Street Oasis, Patrick spent three years as a Private Equity Associate for Tailwind Capital in New York and two years as an Investment Banking Analyst at Rothschild.

Patrick has an MBA in Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School and a BA in Economics from Williams College.

Reviewed By: Hassan Saab
Hassan Saab
Hassan Saab
Investment Banking | Corporate Finance

Prior to becoming a Founder for Curiocity, Hassan worked for Houlihan Lokey as an Investment Banking Analyst focusing on sellside and buyside M&A, restructurings, financings and strategic advisory engagements across industry groups.

Hassan holds a BS from the University of Pennsylvania in Economics.

Last Updated:October 1, 2022

Networking is one of the key factors in the success of most young professionals.

Whether it is gaining valuable advice or getting a leg up in the hiring process, networking opens doors and unlocks knowledge that would otherwise be hard to find.

Best Way to Track Networking Contacts

As you meet contacts in finance and build your network, you will need to track and monitor your relationships with these individuals.

It is important not to let a relationship die off, and it is also critical to remember certain key components of conversations of the past.

Attached at the end is a free networking template that helps you determine when you need to reach out to contacts and helps keep track of your database better than LinkedIn.

Business Contact List Template Excel

The contact list in the template is broken up into “Senior Level”, “Junior Level”, “Coworkers”, “In College”, and “Family.” It is important to differentiate your contact levels.

For one, it is ideal to keep your senior to junior level contacts around 50/50 in order to maintain relations with experienced and mature employees who may retire in the next 10-15 years and those that will grow with you in your career for the rest of your life.

There are two columns to record both current and previous employers. This is because if at some point in the future you have an interview for a particular company, it is beneficial to be able to track down any contacts you may have which would have an insider’s perspective to the company, or very well may be able to refer you to the people hiring.

You will notice in two of the columns, there is a differentiation between “Last contacted” and “Last in contact.” The difference between the two is that "Last contacted" is the date on which you wrote last, and "Last in contact" is the last time they actually replied to you.

Following Up With Networking Contacts

The general rule of thumb for following up with contacts is to have at least spoken to them in the last 6 months.

You can have it shorter or longer, there is no fixed time here. Keep in mind, however, that in our template, the months since the "Last contact" column will turn red when it is more than 6 months.

We hope this helps set up a basic framework for each of your contact lists.

More Resources:

We hope these templates help you land that dream IB job! Please check out the following additional resources to help you advance your career:

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Networking_WSO[1].xls 51 KB 51 KB