(I had written this in 2015 when I was just getting out of my coder life to find my passion)
How can a person with just 3–4 years of experience connect with the top management of his/her company or someone senior in another organisation?
The cardinal rule to networking is “What are the things that you can give first to the person you are networking with”? If there is nothing substantial that you can give back to the person you are trying to build a career fostering relationship with, then it’s not a worthy network. Wow! this is eerily similar to when you are dating. The senior you are trying to network with might do it out of sympathy or just completely ignore you. But, what can you give back to someone who is an industry prodigy and having significant number of years of experience in a field, where you just started?
The answer lies in what you do external to your work.
I lost my father to cancer and that left me devastated. The financial pressure ensured I had to let go a dream MBA. But I wanted a career change. But shifting from a pure I.T field to market research was tough. I spoke to number of HRs across my organisation but they never encouraged anyone without an MBA. I didn’t lose heart I went on seeking for seniors who could help me. One such instance I met a marketing manager who was willing to give me the role only If I got an MBA and I knew I could not do that — this was the sympathy networking effect which I was talking about earlier — I knew I had to change something.
My I.T experience quoted anywhere would only get me so far. So I looked inside to see what are the other things that I could do? I have been a toastmaster for nearly 3 years and never realised the potential networking goldmine I was sitting on. I started giving lot of speeches and taking up many roles both within my organisation as well as outside. I found my career mentor in one of the meetings. I told him about variety of things we did at toastmasters and he gave me a complete overview and even internships in various roles that I had aspired for.
I also had a good connect with young entrepreneurs who were also my friends my casual inquisitive questioning of their business was the necessary fuel for all the brainstorming conversations I had with my career mentor. This helped me show confidence to my career mentor and also help him understand better about how young entrepreneurs think and work. Finally I was able to make the transition to Market research which my career mentor had recommended me for.
The key learnings have been.
- Find potential networking events local, international, offline and online.
- Toastmasters is an international organisation. Clubs are found in almost every city in the world. It a fabulous forum to develop public speaking and leadership skills.
- Find and talk to young entrepreneurs they are more than willing to share their story. Look amongst your school and college friends many of them would have turned entrepreneurs. It’s wonderful to connect with old friends and the sharing will become more enjoyable.
- Work with an NGO: when working with an NGO you get to meet people from different walks of life and off late with the government mandate to reserve 2% of profits for CSR activity you should be able to see more senior folks from different industries.
- LinkedIn: You can read a lot about this online.
- Be creative to find other networks: It can be from an internship or a course you take online or a person you meet in the train.
- Networking and dating are the same: You go to both of them not with an intention to network or date but just to know the other person better and see if it’s a relationship worth pursuing. And like in a relationship what’s it that you give the other person first and you don’t have to worry about what you are getting out of it. You will get it default!!.
- Whats’ worth in you that your companies’ management/leader would come back to you: For me it has been my work in NGO where I was able to revive a loss making unit back into profits. Now when I say this there will be a few leaders who would want to know what I did? And how did I achieve it? And obviously my network in the NGO with other industry leaders and entrepreneurs is a worthy connection for the senior leader in my company too. Now you can see that give and take relationship.
Never lose hope: Sometimes the day you meet your leader might have been a bad day for him. Just move on. You will catch him smiling some other time!!
