How Networking Put Our Careers in The Spotlight

In the early days of the Strategic Relationship Marketing programs when professors talked about creating new connections and the relevance of networking for our careers in Canada, was easy to hear “I do not feel related to networking”, “It feels awkward to set a meeting with a stranger”. 

But the truth is intentionally or unintentionally all of us networked in some point of our lives. Since we refer a friend to an interview, or we were part of a club of people that talked or did something interesting to us. Networking is the action to interact and create new connections with other individuals or companies to exchange information, experience and create opportunities to develop professional or social contacts. 

 

We can blend marketing and networking and talk about Network marketing as a method of marketing that promotes individuals to enhance their personal networks to grow a business or products. 

 

In the strategic relationship marketing course, we have been learning the basics of how to build strong relationships with clients and how the different methods of marketing impact the businesses in diverse ways. Our course has been covering marketing fundamentals such as experiential marketing, CRM (Customer Relation Management) strategies, incentive marketing, digital growth, influencer marketing, and from a marketing perspective I would say that nowadays the strong unique relationship with customers and companies can be impulse not only by these marketing strategies but also by promoting a culture of networking in organizations and colleges. 

But how can networking help us drive our careers to the spotlight?

- By Creating more opportunities that help us build the career that we want to achieve through distinct types of interactions. 

For example, as a student from an online course, it is difficult to connect with everyone and establish a relationship considering the barriers that come from technology in terms of creating true connections. In fact, online people create perceptions about others that sometimes are not correct. Also, the opportunities to interact during online classes are reduced. For that reason, for me to create opportunities to meet my peers in person was crucial to building depth-relationships. 

Although it is easier to connect with our peers, there exists the opportunity to connect with professors. In fact, I had the opportunity to network with Professor James Voulakos, professor of Strategic Communication class who through consultation about my skills helped me to recognize my strengths and weaknesses. That consultation has been helpful during the interviews for the co-op position and helped me find my part-time job at Andrew Peller Vineyard Company. 

Also, networking enhances the opportunity to improve our social skills. In my case, I had been assisting different activities organized by GBC such as webinars and a day Kayaking at Toronto Island where I met students and professors socially expanding my connections. On the other hand, by assisting with group interviews I had the opportunities to meet amazing manager teams from different companies such as Universal Consulting Investing and Browns people who I stay connected with through social media. 

I did not participate in any volunteering. However, there exists a strong opportunity in volunteering to increase your connections, as a student and as a professional. For that reason, I would like to encourage you to be a volunteer since, unlike networking events, it is completely natural. Volunteers create the perfect conditions to share ideas, and values and demonstrate skills. Also, it could apply not only to a type of job that you want to achieve but also to a specific cause. 

Job hunting is not an easy task and even more since the market is more challenging every day. I am still looking for the co-op experience, but I would like to say that every connection matters. It is important to be able to expand our possibilities to apply in our college website careers, LinkedIn, and Indeed and is important to consider the country that we are to use a platform that is predominant in the market.

Dawn Billings Author and Architect at Relationship Help at Home through a LinkedIn share best practices for a successful networking: 

1The first impression, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Networking exposes us constantly to first impressions. Dress according to the occasion and work on your communications skills, make eye contact, and prepare a speech to present yourself to impress others naturally. 

2. Be flexible and do not dominate all the conversations, instead of that communicate and be authentically focusing on listening, learning, and laughing. 

3. Understand the personality and the audience that you are meeting with help to connect in a deep way.
 

4. Be consistent in looking for business networking opportunities. Considering diverse types of events such as team activities, and sports picnics. 

5. Be focused on what you are looking for to achieve and select the activities to achieve that. 

Overall, networking is becoming more popular every day, we can achieve benefits in our careers and companies. To achieve that it is important to be true to our kind of business, personality, and goals. Besides, to start networking remember that it evolves people that we know and friends of people that we know such as a brother, sister, cousin, or neighbor. Afterwards, we can start to move to the next state to meet new people.