NetworkingHow to Improve Your

Career

Introduction

• Networking is a common synonym for developing and maintaining contacts and personal connections with a variety of people who might be helpful to you and your professional life.

Important• Our ability to network

effectively often corresponds with our ability to get promotion at work and your status in the industry, which can also improve your chance of getting more lucrative offers from other firms.

Networking & Career• Networking with colleagues

has the added benefit of creating new business opportunities.

• Even if you're not in the job market, staying in touch with others in your industry provides a chance to brainstorm strategies and share best practices for remaining competitive.

Networking - Benefits• It is an especially important

aspect of career, since it is helps you keep abreast of:– Career opportunities in your

own firm. – Career opportunities in other

firms .– Industry trends .– Pending developments in your

firm and their ramifications for you.

– Sources of technical expertise that you can tap.

Strategies to Develop your

Networking

Make a Great First Impression

• Smile, make eye contact, have a confident handshake and show a genuine interest in the people you meet.

• Remember you have exactly one chance to make a good impression!

Don't Be “The Salesman”

• Networking events, parties and conferences are not the ideal place for the hard sell.

• Trying to sell can make you look desperate and is not the way to build successful business relationships

Always Follow Up

• Timely, relevant follow-ups are one of the keys to successful business networking. Just meeting someone once will rarely bring you business.

• You have to repeat the contact, by email, face to face, pick up the phone, just make sure that you follow up and keep contact.

Bring your offline networking online

• Many of the people you meet at a networking event will be on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or some other social networking site.

• Track them down and invite them to join your network.

• When you’ve tracked down your new contact look at their contacts and add any relevant contacts to extend your network further.

Make a Note

• Take a pen and jot down any notes about a contact as soon as you’ve finished talking with them.

• Do not just try and remember.

• You will forget key things about that person.

Choose the right networking events

• You will get better results from attending the right kind of networking events.

• Choose events specific to the industry you are in, or those industries you are targeting.

• Types of events include conferences, trade shows and events held by industry specific associations.

• I often find that trade shows are a great place to network.

Focus on the quality of your contacts

• Business networking is not a competition to see who can collect the most business cards.

• You’ll get much more out of a business networking event, and build more quality, long term relationships if you try and make a few good good at each event.

Listen!

• It’s all to easy to get drawn in to talking about yourself.

• However you will become a much more successful networker if you listen.

• You know all about you, try finding out about other people.

• Being a good listener is an often overlooked skill. You have two ears and one mouth, use them in proportion.

Be memorable

• When you go though them the next day how many people can you actually remember?

• Try to be memorable. • A great way to do this is to pick just

one thing to talk about. • Spend time on working on one

remarkable thing that you stand for and always make sure you get it into a first conversation.

Lico Reis Consultoria & Línguas

Prof. Roberto Lico Reis

www.licoreis.comlicoreis@licoreis.com

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Twitter: @licoreis