Building a strong professional network can be a highly advantageous tool for your career advancement. Put conscious efforts into networking to find more career opportunities and broaden your horizons.
Building a strong professional network is one of the most important things you can do to enhance your career growth. Whether you are a job seeker or serving a crucial position in an organization, build relationships and grow your network to achieve your career objectives. It gives you a competitive advantage throughout every stage of your career.
What does a professional network comprise?
Professional networking means fostering long-lasting relationships with fellow professionals from your career field as well as from other relevant fields. A network typically includes friends, classmates and colleagues, mentors, professors, and people who come in contact through organizations, industrial seminars, corporate events, and social media.
Why should you build a professional network?
Professional networking assists your career development by providing you with many advantages. Some of the most prominent benefits of having such a network are mentioned below.
● Learning and development
● Building your reputation and brand
● Access to new opportunities
● Getting career advice and support
● Gaining a different perspective
● Increased confidence and self-esteem
● Discovering changes in your industry
8 Brilliant Tips to Build a Professional Network
Networking requires strategic thinking and developing skills that help you connect with others. Learning about this process and how to build a strong network can help you create professional relationships throughout your career. Consider the following eight tips to build and strengthen your network.
1. Define Clear Objectives
Setting clear objectives is a crucial first step in any endeavour, including networking. Your objectives help you prioritise and streamline necessary actions and work like a compass to identify who to watch, follow, and contact. This approach also helps you measure your networking progress. You can modify your networking approach to utilise your energy and resources efficiently.
2. Be Bold and Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
Networking is quite tedious for many, especially for introverted individuals. You need to learn to initiate and steer conversations in your desired direction while following other networking strategies. Initially, it might not be comfortable, but networking requires time to develop and improve. So be bold and keep following an outgoing approach until it becomes a comfort zone itself.
3. Present Yourself with Confidence
How you carry yourself is a crucial aspect of networking. You need to look professional, confident, follow appropriately fit dressing and be punctual to meetings with your potential network. Ensure to give a warm and welcoming vibe while meeting fellow professionals regardless of their title and appearance. Be respectful and attentive to what they say and appreciate their perspective on topics.
4. Foster Long-term Relationship
Look to build long-term relationships instead of reaping quick benefits. Show genuine interest in fellow professionals to build friendships. Every individual has a distinct purpose to meet and connect with you and that purpose may or may not be matching with your personal objectives instantly. Keep putting in genuine efforts over time since relationships take time to build but be patient.
5. Offer Value
Networking is a two-way street. You need to offer value to your fellow professionals while seeking their support for your career advancement. When you help others to build and grow, you create a favorable impression of yours on them. It strengthens your self-confidence and reputation. As your reputation grows, you tend to yield the benefits of your efforts over time.
6. Seek Help
Seeking help from the right people can be very beneficial for your career advancement. You need to present yourself appropriately and have a track record of providing assistance. When you offer value to others by assisting them, you better your chances of getting help at required times. Most people are willing to help when they discover you have value to offer.
7. Use Social Media
The Internet can be an incredible tool to create and expand your network. Among the myriad of digital platforms, social media has emerged as a very useful tool to connect and communicate with people without bothering about physical boundaries. Use social media and digital platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and X(formerly Twitter) wisely to connect with like-minded people and create a strong professional network.
8. Stay in Touch
Sustaining a relationship is equally important as establishing one, otherwise, networking endeavours will not be fruitful in the long term. Use appropriate channels to stay in touch with the relationships you made. Such efforts will strengthen the network. Afterwards, you can leverage your professional relationships strategically for a boom in your career.
Your network can be your career support system where you can learn and discuss industry trends and news. A professional network is valuable for career advancement as it brings recommendations for skills you should sharpen to ascend the ladder of career quickly. Must learn and utilise networking secrets for career growth.
Are you in the right job? Take the Free ‘Are You in The Right Career Assessment’ to identify whether you are in the right job and discover what type of jobs you will excel at. The results of this test will be your guide towards a successful career change.
Smita D Jain is a Certified Life Coach, Executive Coach and NLP Practitioner. Smita’s ‘Empower Yourself’ Personal Clarity Coaching Programs enable busy professionals unhappy in their jobs to tap into their passions and transform them into professions so that they work because they want to, not because they have to.
Before her journey as a coach, Smita had extensive experience of 14 years as a corporate and business strategy professional with Fortune 500 companies. She is also a speaker at various public forums, a published writer, and an Amazon bestselling author.
You can learn more about Personal Empowerment Life Coach and Executive Coach Smita D Jain’s ‘Empower Yourself’ Coaching Programs by visiting www.lifecoachsmitadjain.com and book a strategy session at https://www.lifecoachsmitadjain.com/booking.
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