With more job seeking advice focusing on the importance of networking, and building the widest network of contacts, it can often seem daunting to those who aren’t sure how to get started. In this blog, career consultant Simon North tells you how to go about it, a step at a time…
“Sometimes it’s useful to understand molecular chemistry! This isn’t some sort of test; it’s just about the concept of understanding how individual atoms attach to one other and build out into a stronger structure. Every molecular structure starts somewhere and when it comes to networking in order to build your own support structure, you are the starting point. Get a blank sheet of paper and put your own name in the middle it. Think about how you’re going to build out your structure without any sort of pressure on you to network in the traditional sense.
Following the steps below will help you on your way…
- Add the names of the people that you know to the sheet of paper. Start with those who are closest to your world—not closest to your work world but closest to you personally. Networking without networking is about natural interaction and flow, which is what you have in personal relationships, relationships where there is unconditional love, trust and liking.
- If you wish, you can put down on the same sheet of paper the name of a person or employer that you’re targeting in order to further your career. Plan how you’re going to work your way from the personal contacts on the sheet of paper to that person, or indeed those people if you choose to have more than one target.
- Turn your focus to the other people you’ve come to know throughout your life. Our social identity as human beings is deeply connected to people that we like and who like us. Sometimes we’ll use a generic or collective term such as ‘family’ to describe that system of connections of which we’re a part, but there are other connected systems that we will have operated within. These include the schools, college or university you attended, where you will have gotten to know the people on the course you studied and the fellow members of the clubs and societies you were a part of. Other ecosystems you were a part of may include sports clubs, community groups, church-related communities and so on.
- As you think about this, you’ll begin to feel that there are a huge number of people you have a connection with in the present or past. Focus on engaging with these people. Doing so is not difficult as the connection is already established.
- Harness the power of eye contact. In one of the UK’s leading business schools, there is a new professor of networking and what she has to say about the core skill of networking is very interesting. She believes that it is eye contact, in the face to face encounters, that is right at heart of networking.
- Strike up a conversation that actually means something to the other person. Networking is very much about you being interested in the person that you’re speaking to. It’s not about asking so who are you, how come you’ve come to this place, to this event etc. The question you ask is ‘how are you’? It makes for a very different conversation when you ask them how they are. You get a response that’s coming from feelings. Take an interest in whether the person is feeling up and energetic or low and exhausted. That combination of asking the right question and taking an interest in the answer is at the heart of all personal, human conversation.
It’s about conversation; it’s not about networking – except that it is and therein lays the magic of networking!
The best networker will never even know that that’s what they are doing. Their relationship with people includes their natural interest in them. It is the same level of interest that they’ll have when they’re with their family. The other people are just an extension of their natural social circles.”
Simon North is the Founder of Position Ignition, one of the UK’s leading career consultancy companies which created the Career Ignition Club, a leading-edge online careers support and learning platform.
by
Mervyn Dinnen
on
08/05/2013
