How to Build a Professional Network When You're LGBTQ+

Most networking advice assumes you are comfortable being visible. For a lot of LGBTQ+ professionals there is a prior question — how much to disclose, to whom, and when — and that question sits in front of every piece of standard advice about "putting yourself out there". This guide is about building a professional network with that question honestly accounted for, rather than ignored.

The data suggests the two things are linked. Deloitte's LGBT+ Inclusion @ Work, fielded in early 2023 across 5,474 LGBTQ+ employees in 13 countries, found 43% were comfortable being out at work overall — but 37% among junior staff against 51% among senior. Visibility rises with security. Which means, uncomfortably, that the people with the least positional power are the ones for whom visible networking carries the most risk, and they are also the people who most need the network.

The good news is that most of what actually builds a career network does not require disclosure at all.

Start with the network you are already inside

Your employer's own employee network — ERG, affinity group, whatever it is called — is the cheapest entry point available, and the most underused. Attendance is not a declaration. Plenty of people at any given session are allies, curious colleagues, or people who have not decided what they are yet, and nobody is taking a register.

What makes these worth your time is not the events. It is that they are one of the few places in a large organisation where hierarchy flattens — where a graduate ends up in a working group with someone four levels up who is there voluntarily. That is a set of relationships that would take years to build through your reporting line.

If your organisation has no network, the second-best move is to find the person who would run one. They almost always exist, and they are usually already doing some version of the work informally.

"Employee Resource Groups are largely driven by volunteers who are passionate about creating positive change, but that work is made possible through leadership sponsorship and encouragement."

Caroline Johnston, People Partner, Novartis Ireland

That observation cuts both ways when you are assessing whether a network is worth investing in. A group with senior sponsorship and some budget will still exist in two years. One running entirely on unpaid evenings is one resignation away from disappearing, and the relationships you build through it are correspondingly fragile.

Networking when you are not out, and do not intend to be

This is the section most networking guides skip, and it matters — roughly half of LGBTQ+ employees are not comfortably out at work, and in some markets that figure is far higher.

Almost everything that compounds into a strong network is orthogonal to disclosure. Being the person who follows up after a meeting. Being reliably useful to people one level up and one level sideways. Writing the summary nobody else volunteered to write. Turning up to the cross-functional thing when you did not have to. None of that requires you to say anything about yourself.

Two things are worth knowing specifically. First, virtual and cross-company events are meaningfully lower-exposure than in-person ones at your own employer — you can attend, learn and make contacts without your attendance being observed by colleagues. Second, if you do want to connect with someone specific, a direct message is a far safer instrument than a room. Most of the useful conversations in anyone's network happened one-to-one.

The distinction that matters most: mentors versus sponsors

A mentor gives you advice. A sponsor spends their own credibility advocating for you in rooms you are not in. Both are useful; only one changes what happens in a promotion round.

Mentorship is easy to ask for and people say yes readily, because it costs an hour. Sponsorship is never granted on request, because it costs reputation. It is earned by being visibly good at something a senior person cares about, and by that person knowing it in specific terms rather than general ones.

The practical implication is narrower than "build relationships". It is: make sure at least one senior person can describe, in a sentence, something you did well. Vague goodwill does not convert. "She led the network through a restructure" does.

This is also where network leadership is routinely wasted. Running an employee network is genuine leadership work — managing volunteers with no formal authority, influencing senior stakeholders, delivering under constraint — and it is frequently filed in the "interests" section of a promotion case rather than the evidence section. If you do that work, make sure whoever writes your review documents it as leadership. If you sponsor someone who does, write it up that way yourself.

What to actually say

Most people's difficulty with networking is not strategy. It is the first thirty seconds. A few openers that work without requiring you to perform anything:

• To someone senior, at an event: "I wanted to hear what's actually going on in your part of the business — what's taking up your time at the moment?" People answer this honestly far more often than they answer "what do you do?"
• To follow up: "You mentioned X — I came across this and thought of it." Sending something useful is the only follow-up that reliably gets a reply.
• To ask for a sponsor without using the word: "If something comes up that you think I'd be right for, I'd welcome you putting my name forward." That is a concrete, low-cost request, and it tells them what you want.
• To volunteer for visible work: "I'll write this up and circulate it." The person who produces the document is the person the room remembers.

If you are on the other side of this — a manager or senior leader wanting to be useful to LGBTQ+ colleagues rather than merely supportive — our Ally's Field Guide covers the twelve small actions that actually register, each with the words to use.

Where myGwork fits

We are a professional community as much as a jobs board, and the parts most relevant here are these.

WorkPride runs each June as a free virtual conference — panels and sessions across career development, allyship, leadership and industry-specific tracks. Being virtual, it is one of the lower-exposure ways to hear from senior LGBTQ+ people across a lot of organisations at once.

WorkFair connects candidates directly with recruiters at inclusive employers, which is a different proposition from applying cold — you are talking to someone before your CV is one of four hundred.

Employer profiles let you read an organisation's policies, benefits, employee networks and reviews before you ever speak to them, and see which of your prospective colleagues are already in the community.

Membership is free for individuals and graduates, and joining does not require you to disclose anything about your identity to your employer or anyone else.

Frequently asked questions

Can I network professionally without being out at work?

Yes, and most of what builds a durable network requires no disclosure at all — being useful, following up, and volunteering for visible work. Virtual and cross-company events carry less exposure than in-person events at your own employer, and one-to-one messages are lower-risk than rooms.

Does joining an employee network out me?

Attendance is not a declaration. Most networks include allies, and many are explicitly structured so membership is not visible to anyone outside the group. If this matters to you, ask the network lead directly how membership data is held before you join.

What is the difference between a mentor and a sponsor?

A mentor advises you directly. A sponsor advocates for you in rooms you are not in, spending their own credibility to do it. Mentorship can be requested; sponsorship is earned by a senior person being able to describe something you did well in specific terms.

Is networking worth it if I am happy in my job?

The relationships that matter in a career are built before they are needed, not during a job search. The moment you need a network is the worst moment to start building one.

Where to start

If you want the wider picture of how this fits into a career, our guide to choosing an employer, getting hired and progressing covers the three stages in full. If you are looking now, there are currently 65,872 roles on myGwork at employers who publish their policies and networks for you to read first.

myGwork is the global business community for LGBTQ+ professionals, graduates, inclusive employers and anyone who believes in workplace equality. Membership is free. Figures are attributed and dated in the text.