The benefits of networking in person and online
Active networking is vital to career growth. Many shudder when they hear the term networking, associating it with awkwardness and the idea of ‘selling’ yourself. However, despite its reputation, networking is actually about building long-term relationships and an elevated profile within your industry or field of expertise. Good networking is done on a basis of trust and support. Doing networking right can mean the difference between a mediocre career and a phenomenal one. Anyone can be good at networking and with the help of technology, not all networking needs to be done in person. Here are a few benefits of networking on your career and some tips for becoming an expert at the craft, whether in person or online.
Benefits of networking
Effective networking can have lots of benefits on your career, including:
1. Strengthen business contacts and connections.
Networking is about sharing, not taking. It is about forming trust and helping one another toward goals. Regularly engaging with your contacts and finding opportunities to assist them helps to strengthen the relationship. By doing this, you sow the seeds for reciprocal assistance.
This can be done by referring contacts for roles that you hear about, forwarding articles relevant to their interests or career, arranging introductions with mutual contacts and simply congratulating your networks via LinkedIn when they reach a career milestone or get a new job.
2. Get fresh ideas
Your network can be an excellent source of new perspectives and ideas to help you in your job. Exchanging information on challenges, experiences, best practices, business techniques and goals is a key benefit of networking because it allows you to gain new insights from collective experience. Similarly, offering helpful ideas to a contact is an excellent way to build your reputation as an innovative thinker.
3. Advance your career
Being visible and getting noticed is a benefit of networking that’s essential in building your career. Regularly attending professional and social events will help to build up your professional profile, which in turn keeps you top of mind when new opportunities and job openings arise.
Professional networking opens many doors in the form of career advice, lasting relationships and even landing your dream job.
4. Build confidence
By continually putting yourself out there and meeting new people, you’re effectively stepping outside your comfort zone and building invaluable social skills and self-confidence that you can take with you anywhere. The more you network, the more you’ll grow and learn how to make lasting connections.