If you are not heavily involved in professional networking, you are probably doing yourself — and your career — a disservice.
Consider these observations from Lindsay Kolowich, writing for HubSpot:
“When done right, networking is an incredibly valuable investment of every professional’s time and effort. It helps us make meaningful business connections, get feedback, and advance our careers. And best of all, it pays significant dividends over time. So why does it seem so unpleasant sometimes? It can feel fake, it’s exhausting, and frankly, standing alone in a sea of unknown faces with nametags and cheese plates can be utterly painful.”
According to Kolowich, here are common networking mistakes that people make:
- “You’re waiting to build your network until you need it most.”
- “You aren’t keeping up your personal brand.”
- “You’re afraid to attend networking events by yourself.”
- “You don’t follow up with personal messages.”
- “You ask the same questions everyone else is asking.”
- “You dominate networking conversations.”
- “You’re overeager.”
- “You don’t venture outside your existing network.”
- “You don’t ask for anything, or you ask for too much.”
Click the image to read a lot more.
After reading this article, I have come to the conclusion that networking is simply about meeting people and connecting with them, similar to dating.In order to go on a successful date you have to make a good impression, keep the conversation going, sell yourself while remaining relatively humble, and know when to end it. Even doing all of that doesn’t always give you positive results though. What it really comes down to is the chemistry you have with a person. You could go to a networking event and talk to someone until you’re blue in the face, but unless they are interested in you opportunities will not come your way.
I agree with the point this article is making. Connections are important to have in any career but especially in the business world. Other than having personal connections networking is the next best thing to establish those professional links. The conclusions that I have come to based on this list of mistakes is that: networking is all about having a balanced composure in how you present yourself to others and to consistently keep up and modify your network or brand through interpersonal communication and online platforms.
According to this article, to make our network efficiency, we could：
1. To be proactive when it comes to networking, seek the networking opportunities out before you need them.
2. To continuously develop your personal brand online in addition to regularly seeking out new connections. Keep your profile updated and responding messages, emails kindly.
3. To be brave enough to attend networking events by yourself.
4. Do research on the people that you’re going to meet and the event that you’re going to attend.
5. Follow up with personal messages after you’ve met someone that you want to have further connect.
6. Remember to take other people’s contact information after you given them yours.
7. Be creative when you’re going to ask someone questions. It’s a good way to make others a positive impression.
8. Make a two-way communication, do not stealing the spotlight of the conversation cause that would make a communication into your own show.
9. Find some polite ways to gracefully ending a conversation. You don’t want to be trapped in an endless conversation and lost the opportunities to connect with more people.
10. Being a likeable person by friendly and professional words, instead of overdoing it.
11. Being helpful. Cause what goes around comes around.
12. Expanding your network by building relationships outside your existing network.
13. Ask people in a proper way- make your” ask” clear enough and don’t ask too much of someone.
What did you learn?
I must say this is a very, very meaningful blog post, be sure to click on the picture of the ice cream, and you’ll enter a new world.You’ll see 13 networking mistakes listed by the author, and more importantly, there’s a link after the mistakes to get you through them.It’s really enlightening.Although I once boasted that my interpersonal skills were good, I found so many omissions after reading.