{"id":150,"date":"2009-05-01T14:32:53","date_gmt":"2009-05-01T06:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.hp.com\/hpcoach\/2009\/05\/01\/networking-with-a-purpose\/"},"modified":"2009-05-26T07:54:27","modified_gmt":"2009-05-25T23:54:27","slug":"networking-with-a-purpose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/career\/networking-with-a-purpose","title":{"rendered":"Networking with a purpose!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I work with individuals on career coaching, we often have a discussion about networking.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s the concept:\u00a0 To expand the possibilities of taking your career where you want it, it&#8217;s good to network with people who are working where you want to be in the future.\u00a0 You want to be a manager?\u00a0 Develop relationships with people who are doing that job.\u00a0 You want to move into that other organization over there?\u00a0 Go find out who they are, how they think, and what they need.<\/p>\n<p>But I know that this all seems so random and frustrating.\u00a0 I&#8217;m supposed to go hang out with those guys over there, and &#8230; do what?\u00a0 <!--more-->What do I talk about?\u00a0 Why should they want to talk to me?\u00a0 What&#8217;s the point?<\/p>\n<p>The point is this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You&#8217;re trying to accomplish a career goal, either specific or vague.<\/li>\n<li>There are other people who will help you to realize that goal.<\/li>\n<li>Find out what they know.<\/li>\n<li>Get their help.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Let&#8217;s say that I&#8217;m\u00a0an engineer\u00a0in business unit A, and would like to leverage my skills to work in business unit B.\u00a0 There&#8217;s a number of people who can help me do that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People who work over there in business unit B<\/li>\n<li>People who create the jobs over there, or know when a job is being created<\/li>\n<li>People who have made this kind of transition and know what works and doesn&#8217;t work<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are the people you need to connect with.<\/p>\n<p>Second, why should they want to talk to me?\u00a0 Here&#8217;s the secret:\u00a0 <em>Give them value<\/em>.\u00a0 No, really.\u00a0 What value might I have to give?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Knowledge and skills I&#8217;ve developed over many years<\/li>\n<li>Information about business unit A<\/li>\n<li>Things I have yet to learn, but would like to<\/li>\n<li>My time, energy, and passion<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I might volunteer to help them with some issues they&#8217;re dealing with.\u00a0 I might agree to go gather some information even though it will take some effort.\u00a0 Heck, I might even look out for a person who wants to move from business unit B into A &#8211; wouldn&#8217;t that be a cool win-win scenario?<\/p>\n<p>But remember, <em>value is in the eyes of the customer<\/em>.\u00a0 Just because you think it&#8217;s valuable doesn&#8217;t mean they will.\u00a0 You have to actually hold conversations to find out what they need and how they think.\u00a0 That&#8217;s called developing relationships.<\/p>\n<p>The end goal is that you wan those other people to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Know about you<\/li>\n<li>Know what skills and insights you might bring to them<\/li>\n<li>Think positively about what they know of you<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When you have these things, r\u00e9sum\u00e9s and CVs won&#8217;t matter anymore.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll know much more about you and want to bring you on board at the next opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I work with individuals on career coaching, we often have a discussion about networking.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s the concept:\u00a0 To expand the possibilities of taking your career where you want it, <a href=\"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/career\/networking-with-a-purpose\" class=\"more-link\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,6,7,10],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-carl","4":"has-more-link","5":"post-150","7":"format-standard","8":"category-career","9":"post_tag-career-coaching","10":"post_tag-coaching","11":"post_tag-job-change","12":"post_tag-networking"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}