How to use networking for your career...it’s a doddle

Imagine the scene, you stand in the kitchen and the boiler goes bang, it is January and minus five degrees outside with snow on the ground. What do you do? After starting to shiver, are you going to reach for the yellow pages and hastily look up P for Plumber or H for Heating Engineer or are you going to phone your mate who you know had a similar problem last winter and ask them what they did, who they used to solve their problem quickly, and generally find out their experiences?




No prizes for guessing. This simple analogy is networking at its best; you are in a difficult situation and need a bit of friendly advice to give you some information. Hey presto the same concept is absolutely true for all areas of networking.



We tend to do a lot of networking when we are booking a holiday to somewhere we have never been to, yes we check trip advisor but we are much more likely to listen and act on what someone we know has experienced.



So if we are so happy doing this networking thing for some areas of your life why not do the same for your working life?



Good networking is simply about being organised about what information you would like to have that you currently don’t have.



In my head I have an ongoing list of things I’m actively networking for. My current list is:-



Find out more about mobile phone aerials within residential areas

Get to the bottom of hash tags in twitter

Understand exactly what the different sectors and division of social services all do.

Find out what people think of Lynda Gratton’s new book, is it worth buying.



These are just a few, there are lots more, I could go on, but you get the idea.



Anyone and everyone I meet each day, from my post lady to clients, from security men to people I meet in the swimming pool I engage in conversation, have a chat, and ask them some questions around my list if they seem to know something vaguely in that area.



Easy peasey, isn’t it?