Importance of networking

I have been reading and surfing a lot lately, as you can imagine, and one of the common themes is the importance of networking. This has nothing to do with Ethernet or Cisco you IT geeks out there, but concerns maintaing relationships throughout your professional and personal life. It is something I realize I don't do exceptionally well, and will definitely be improving on, not only during this job search, but as I move forward in my career.

It is hard to try and maintain contact with people you meet as you cruise through life and work, and we are all very busy. That is an easy excuse to use when we don't network effectively, even when we know we should. Think about it, how many high school or college friends or acquaintances do you keep in touch with? What about people from you very first job? I know there are not very many in my case. Actually since I have joined Facebook, it is amazing the people that find you on there.

But all of these people, no matter when or how you met them, can be connections to your next career. That sounds mercenary, and it is one of the reasons that networking is difficult for me personally. I hate just calling people out of the blue only when I "need their help". And that is exactly the reason why networking is so important! You have to constantly maintain these contacts so they are mutually beneficial, to you and the rest of your network. Think of it as your personal web, all those people you know, well of course they know people, who know people, etc etc etc. Like that shampoo commercial from the 70's I think it was.. they tell two friends, and so on and so on...

A great example of someone who does it well just contacted me yesterday. He has reached out to me almost constantly since he left our last job together, with little emails and updates, asking how things are going. When he heard I left my former company, he reached out, discussed updates of where he was and gave me some pointers on how he had been conducting his job search. When he emailed me yesterday, he requested an introduction with someone in my network, at a company where he is interested in a position. He found the connection on LinkedIn, the Facebook for business contacts. And of course I am going to give him an introduction. Not only is he a great guy, and did well when he worked for me, but has stayed in contact and worked his network.

For all of you in my network, I apologize if I contact you out of the blue, but I promise to do better in the future :-)

By the way, you can find me here on Facebook and here on LinkedIn. feel feel to reach out and add me on either site!