Alexandra Mondalek explains Stacy's 36,000 LinkedIn connections:

Stacy Zapar, the most connected woman on LinkedIn, credits her 36,000+ connections to her love for “paying it forward” and helping people grow their networks. 

Zapar began her career on the agency side of recruiting, working as a technical recruiter for Fortune 500 clients.

After working directly for big corporations, she became an open-networking recruiter. Zapar was an early and active user of the LinkedIn site, joining in 2004, networking heavily, and putting herself out there to the point that invitations started coming to her.

That led to her to become the most connected woman in 2008. Over time, that network turned into something much bigger.

"It’s a living breathing network where people constantly share, learn, find jobs, hire people, grow their business, etc. I love being able to pay it forward and help my network where I can," she says.

Managing such a big network takes time.

"I spend about an hour a day responding to messages in my LinkedIn network, but it's worth it," Zapar says. "It’s all about relationships and nurturing those relationships both professionally and personally. I invest in my network and my contacts, in turn, take time to help me back."

While she still recruits for companies and uses her massive and active LinkedIn network to do so, Zapar also has her own blog, and now runs her own company Tenfold Social, where she trains other recruiters on how to use social media and technology to be successful in their sourcing and recruiting efforts.

“Keith Ferrazzi put it best: ‘The currency of networking is generosity.’ In order to get the benefit from LinkedIn, you should give first. Help others. It will all come back to you. I'm living proof of that. It’s also been great for my personal brand," Zapar says.

I do agree that the currency of networking is generosity.

But I've never met Stacy, I'm not connected to her, and I have nowhere near 36,000 connections on LinkedIn.

Thanks for your share and your comment, Adam. Happy to connect with you anytime. BTW, just tweeted you... seems you have quite the following yourself! :) Take care! Stacy 

Stacy, I do what I can. I never really had a plan the way you do.

It just happened slowly over the course of a decade.

I will be sure to send you a LinkedIn connection, too.

Adam - Thanks for sharing and linking to this. In some of your writings, I sense that you are 'anti-planning' when it comes to relationship building and that you really value the organic. Is this accurate? How do you balance strategic relationship building vs. organically living values like generosity?

A little bit of planning is useful, but you're right that mostly I try to listen to my instincts.

So I'm about 20% plan and 80% organic living my values.

I've seen successful people with the ratios opposite.