Networking

Hello. I’m Eamon Dubaissi, a Research Staff Developer with Prosper, and here I’m giving an introduction to networking. We shall start by exploring different definitions of networking, pulling out some core principles. We will then look at why networking is so effective as a career development strategy. Then we’ll look more closely at the power of networking, exploring a few key concepts with the help of networking strategist Jeni Smith. Finally, we will watch a couple of videos where Jeni discusses how you can build confidence ahead of networking events, and establish trust in the relationships you develop. What exactly is networking? Here I’ve taken three definitions to compare and contrast. When you Google it the definition is, the action or process of interacting with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts. Merriam-Webster says networking is the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions, specifically the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business. Finally, Dictionary.com describes it as a supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having a common interest. If you take these definitions all together, some key elements emerge. Networking requires someone to be proactive, to do something, words such as interaction and interactive. It involves information transfer, words such as exchange and share, between people, so it involves relationships and social contact, and it is usually related to a professional environment, so for example employment or business. Why network at all? What is the evidence that employing networking as a career development strategy is effective? Well, actually there have been many studies into the power of networking, but if we take a few examples here, starting with academia in isolation, a recent study of over 100 working academics found that most participated in some form of networking, and considered it beneficial for their career. If you see the title of this paper, it uses a quote; there is no career in academia without networks. Another study showed that graduates who received jobs through social contacts tended to get jobs that fitted them better in terms of their educational attainment, and these jobs offered better career prospects. Taking a longitudinal study from elsewhere, namely two major accountancy firms, it was found that networking is a form of knowledge-sharing that helps individuals to manage and develop their careers. They came up with the concept of the networked professional, a type of identity which benefits those displaying this behaviour in terms of opportunities received. Now, if we take post-docs as a whole group, there have been some publications on the value of networking. In this quote from Sarah Blackford, networking is sometimes viewed cynically as using people, or dismissed as the old boys’ network, but it can be more valuable than other job-related skills. However, in another study of post-docs who identified as having imposter syndrome, many said they had difficulty networking, with the thought of networking being draining inducing anxiety, feelings of incompetence, and a sense of not belonging. We recognise that it can be difficult for post-docs to engage in networking activities, which is why Prosper is spending time exploring it further, offering tips and strategies to help. Now, I want to take the opportunity to explore a few key concepts of networking. These have come from Jeni Smith, a networking strategist and founder of NetKno, who also appears later in the presentation with videos on how to build confidence and establish trust. Jeni describes the core components of networking as being know, like, and trust. People first need to know that you exist and what you do. They then need to like you, or your product and service, and finally they need to trust you and what you represent. It is networking that provides these opportunities to create and establish these core components. The next concept is network diversity. Jeni advocates for diversifying your network. In simple terms, if people don’t have conversations across boundaries they don’t stimulate new ideas and innovations. This is represented here with academia, where you may know lots of people within the confines of academia but less people in other areas. These other circles could represent companies, government, other technology sector, for example. The same applies to career development and career exploration. If you don’t have the conversations with diverse groups of people, how do you really know what your options are or build a picture of where you’re heading? The image represents you allowing others in to share information. The next concept is connection marketing, and Jeni describes this as the promotion of yourself and your work through effective relationship management and matchmaking. A nice line is to build your brand by being nice, where you can showcase your qualities in even very small interactions, and this helps to build a rapport. Remember, networking is not a one-way street. You can create opportunities, share information, add significant value to those who know you. This notion of adding value to others is evidenced in small gestures, for example giving introductions for opportunities, sharing knowledge, and being reliable, which all helps to build trust, and also providing ongoing support to nurture relationships. For example, simply liking and sharing on social media, calling the person, or larger gestures such as hosting events. At this point, I just want to divert to discuss one strategy that we strongly encourage at Prosper, and that is to conduct informational interviews. Before embarking on informational interviews, you might feel that you are taking up the person’s time or being a burden in some way without adding too much value to them in return. However, you should zoom out to see the bigger picture. First of all, most people want to help others, and if they don’t reply to you it is more likely that they are extremely busy, rather than being actively hostile. Don’t be put off. This is because it is rewarding to help others. Imagine your reaction to someone coming to you for careers advice. In addition, it is almost guaranteed that the person you’re speaking to has also been helped before in the past, and if they realise the value of networking they also know that your paths might cross again in future, which takes us back to connection marketing. To end the video, we will look at how to build confidence ahead of networking interactions, and how to establish trust with the connections that you make. In a moment I’ll hand over to Jeni Smith, who talks about where confidence comes from, why you can use self-reflection as a means to build confidence, and how goal-setting can boost your confidence even further. In the video, Jeni refers to some worksheets that are available on the portal.

Hello. My name is Jeni Smith. I’m a networking strategist and founder of NetKno, and today I’m going to be talking to you about networking confidence. Attending networking events and having confidence to speak to strangers is a skill, and that means you can learn it, but it takes time. Sometimes we need a bit of confidence to be able to take that first step into the world of networking, and that’s what we’re going to help you do today. Firstly, I want to talk a little bit about lobsters. There’s a wonderful book called ‘The 12 Rules for Life’ by Jordan B Peterson, and in one of the chapters he talks about a study that’s been done into lobsters’ brain activity and their hormone balance. Apparently, lobsters are pretty gangster, and they have lots of fights and stuff. When the lobsters fight, the winner of the fight ends up standing and walking around, strutting his stuff, so that the other lobsters can see that lobster’s a winner, not worth messing with. That happens because when a lobster wins at a fight they get a release of serotonin, and that also happens in humans, not necessarily when we fight. This is what gives this lobster confidence, and it’s one of the things that gives us confidence as well. Serotonin makes us feel good. It makes us feel happy, but as well as that it makes the lobster stand up tall, but it also makes us as humans stand up tall, have our shoulders back, stand up tall, and it tells the world that we are confident and we know what we’re doing. There’s different ways that we can get a hit of serotonin. We can get it through exercise, being healthy and active. We can get it through a good diet, lots of fruit and vegetables, fresh ingredients. We can also get it from reflection. Humans, when we reflect on our past achievements, we get a chemical release of serotonin, which in turn makes us feel confident. That’s what we’re going to create for you, is this chemical hit of confidence so that you can then approach these networking situations a lot easier and start building up those networking skills. In order to reflect, we need to look back at what you’ve achieved so far. We’ve got two worksheets for you that accompany this short video. Worksheet number one is asking you to look back at what you’ve achieved. Thinking about you, what are your three best qualities and best skills? When is a time that you’ve felt proud of yourself? What have you achieved so far this year? What is your greatest personal and professional achievement to date? In the worksheet – you don’t need to print it off, it’s editable – go in there and answer those four questions, and start reflecting on all the amazing things that you’ve already achieved. Then what we want to do is continue to build on this confidence, so we need to create more by achieving more goals. Worksheet number two is going to ask you to think about how you can showcase your three best skills that you’ve already identified, and make sure you’re sharing them with the world. Set yourself three goals for three different timeframes. There’s a one-month, a three-month, and a six-month, or a… Anyway. Three different timeframes. Go and set yourself three goals, one for each of the timeframes that’s listed in the worksheet, and name someone that you are going to tell about those goals, and who you are also going to share your successes with. When you share your goals with someone else, you’re far more likely to succeed because you feel accountable to them. Finally, how are you going to reward yourself? You should reward yourself when you achieve a goal. Whether it’s getting a takeaway, going on holiday, getting yourself a new pair of shoes, whatever you want, but acknowledging your achievements is really important, and it will help to build your confidence. Now you can give yourself a boost of serotonin and confidence whenever you need it. What I want you to do is take all the things that you highlighted in worksheet number one, what you’re most proud of yourself for, your greatest achievements, your best skills and qualities, and turn that into a list. You can colour-coordinate it, print it off and laminate it if you want, or you can just put it in your mobile phone, in your notes, and you’ve got a list that’s accessible. When you need it, you can give yourself that boost of serotonin by taking a few minutes to sit back, look through that list, and reflect on all the amazing things you’ve already done. Moving forward, when you achieve your new goals set out in worksheet number two, add those achievements to that list so you’ve got an ever-growing, evolving list of all the amazing things that you’ve done and are continuing to do, personally, professionally. That is really going to help you build your confidence and approach uncomfortable situations to give you that opportunity to build up those networking skills. There you go. I’ll see you again soon.

In this next video, Jeni talks about establishing trust, and why trust is important within your networks and relationships. She talks about character, competence, honesty, reliability, and knowledge, and how these come together to establish trust. Finally, she talks about finding a why, to attract the right people and build trust with them.

Hello. My name is Jeni Smith. I’m a networking strategist and founder of NetKno, and in this short video we’re going to be looking at how you can build trust across your network and in your relationships. There’s a fantastic book called ‘The Speed of Trust’ by Stephen M. R. Covey, and one of my favourite quotes with it is this; ‘Trust is equal parts character and confidence,’ and that’s what we’re going to be looking at in this short video. Character and confidence; honesty, reliability, and knowledge. These are three things that can help you showcase your character as a person, and also your professional competence. Honesty. Being yourself. It can be quite scary to be your true, authentic self, especially in a professional setting, but being who you are, people want to get to know you, and that’s you being honest. Making sure that you’re being yourself, and people will respond to that. Telling the truth in all situations. If you can’t meet a deadline, tell the truth. If you’re going to be late, tell the truth. That shows that you are an honest person, which builds trust. Asking for help. If you need something or you’re stuck on something, ask for help and it gives others the chance to be there to support you, which again deepens the relationship and helps build trust. Reliability. You can’t trust someone if you don’t think that they’re reliable. Always do what you say that you were going to do. Make sure that you get back to people and respond to them in a timely manner, and meet the deadlines. If you can’t meet a deadline, go back to point number one and tell the truth about it. If you say you’re going to meet a deadline, make sure that you do. All these things will help showcase how reliable you are. Doing this consistently over time will allow you to really build trusting relationships. Finally, sharing your knowledge. You are so knowledgeable at what you do, and so much experience to share. Give advice and support to others. Become a mentor and showcase how fantastic you are and all the things that you’ve learned. Write blogs, posts, and share information on your area of expertise. Share information that you’ve written or share information that other people have written. People in your network want to learn from you, so showcase how knowledgeable, well-read, and informed that you are by sharing this information within your network. That comes for experiences as well. It doesn’t necessarily have to be information. Share your experiences to showcase all the things that you’ve achieved. Finally, building trust with people. When we have something in common and shared beliefs, this is another fantastic way to build trust. There’s a great book called ‘Start With Why’ by Simon Sinek. He says, ‘People don’t buy what you do. They buy what you do it.’ That’s the same for anything. This applies to businesses and leaders. We don’t really care what it is they do. We care why they do it, and it’s important for you to share your why. What is your why? What are you interested in? What are your values, your passions, and the causes, the things that you actually care about? We’ve got a worksheet for you to do that’s going to help you find your why. It asks things like, what do you daydream about? Why do you do the research, the work that you do, and how does that work help people, or animals, or the world? Go and download that worksheet – you don’t need to print it off, it’s editable – and fill in those four questions to start finding your why. Then, once you’ve got those answers, that’s the information. That’s what you should be sharing with the world through your social media, through conversations, and people that have got the same passions and care about the same things that you do will be drawn to you, and you’ll build trusting relationships. There you go. See you again soon. Bye.

Thank you for taking the time to engage with this video. I hope you’ve been inspired to go out and network, and be a bit more conscious about what you’re doing and what benefits it has.

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Hello my name’s Jeni Smith. I’m a networking strategist and in this session, we’re going to look at relationship management techniques. So practical steps and things that we can be doing to get the most out of networking opportunities. So things that we do before we even get there, stuff we can do straight afterwards, and then how we can nurture relationships on an ongoing basis. Networking’s not just about meeting new people, it’s about nurturing the relationships in the network that you’ve already got. We’ve all got networks; you all know loads of people. So before you even get to a networking event, here are some things that you can do to make the most out of it. See if you can get hold of a delegates list. So GDPR kind of ruined this for everyone, but still potentially some websites will provide lists of people that are attending, or you can contact the host to ask if they’ve got a delegates list that you can access beforehand. Just do some research. See who else is going to be attending the event, get a feel for the type of people that are going to be there. Search and use the hashtags associated with the event. This is especially applicable if it’s a conference. Most events now have their own hashtag. Use Twitter, use LinkedIn, search it, and start having conversations with people that are also going to be attending. ‘Oh, I’m going to this event too, be great to chat to you.’ Use it yourself, put it out there to the world that you’re going to be going, so other people can find you, and start having conversations with you, before you even get there too. Arrange meetings with them, especially again if it’s a large conference over a few days. You want to utilise that time. So pre-arrange meetings with other delegates. Say, ‘It’d be great to catch up for a coffee,’ or if it’s just a smaller networking event, maybe arrange to have a coffee with someone before or after the event, so you’re utilising that travel time as well. Reach out to the speakers. They’re just humans, they put socks on one at a time on a morning. Reach out to them. Tweet them. ‘I’m really looking forward to your talk at this event next week.’ If it’s Richard Branson or someone, they’re probably not going to tweet you back, but just a normal human speaker, they’ll probably be really chuffed, you’ll probably make their day. Invite your contacts along. So if you’re going to an event that you think’s going to be useful, and valuable, and interesting, invite people in your network along, share it with those people, and that’s a great way as well to potentially catch up with people that you’ve already got in your network, you’ve not seen them for a while. ‘Oh, I’m going to this event, do you want to come along, we can have a coffee before or after.’ Lovely. Prepare questions. Think about what you might ask during that Q and A opportunity. It’s a great opportunity to introduce yourself to all the other delegates and have a conversation with the speaker. It also makes you more approachable after. So if you put your hand up, you ask a question, especially if it’s a great question, the other delegates afterwards will come over and chat to you, and be like, ‘I thought that was a really good question, I was thinking something the same.’ Lovely. Great thing. Great opportunity. So now we’ve been to a networking event, we’ve done all this wonderful work, we’ve read the room, we’ve got into conversations, what do we do straight after? What’s the etiquette? So connecting with people on LinkedIn, fantastic. Following them on Twitter, wonderful. Make sure that if you do do this, similarly with sending an email if you’ve got someone’s business card or email address, make sure that you personalise the message, and try and add some value straightaway if you can. So you had a conversation with someone, afterwards drop them an email, ‘It was great to meet you.’ Gets your email in their inbox. They can’t lose that. Lovely. They can lose a business card; they can’t lose that. ‘Nice to meet you at this event,’ mention the event. ‘We chatted about X, Y, and Z, here’s a link to a blog that I read recently about that. I thought it might be useful.’ Wonderful. I want to meet people that does that for me. Or even better, ‘Nice to meet you at this event, I want to introduce you to someone that I think would be worth having a conversation with,’ and really network your network. Fantastic way to add value. Now on an ongoing basis, again make sure that we’re nurturing these relationships in our network, engage online. People post content on social media because they want attention. Shocking. Give them a little bit of attention, press a little like button, like, share, comment, whatever. Engaging with people online reminds them that you’re there, they’re reminded of who you are. It also, when people engage with our social content, we get a happy hit of dopamine, that’s why we’re all addicted to social media. It makes us feel good, and if you can be the cause of someone feeling good, that’s going to create positive associations in people’s minds about you. So if you do need to ask a favour, or if you want to catch up with them at some point in the future, they’ll be more than happy to, because you’ve just been there supporting their content. Fantastic. Make sure that you are continuing to share information and knowledge with your network. They want to learn from you. Showcase how knowledgeable you are, that helps build trust. So sharing information and knowledge that’s yours, but also that’s others. So if you read an article, or a paper, that you think’s really valuable, share that with your network. It adds value to them on an ongoing basis. Network your network. So make sure you’re always making introductions. Even if it’s not for anything specific. Even if it’s more of a, ‘Look, you two are working on something similar, I think it’s worth a conversation,’ and just facilitating those introductions between people. Then having catch-ups. Put some time into the people. Put some time into relationships. Send a message, send an email, book in a phone call, book in a Zoom call, or even better, the best of all is to sit down and actually have a coffee with someone, spend some time in their presence. That’s really where we build trust, and in order for people to recommend and refer us, they need to know us, they need to like us, and they need to trust us. So that’s a great way of really nurturing and just catching up with people, and see how they’re doing, spending time with them. So there’s some ways in which you can nurture and build your networks, and just add value, add value to them. Be lovely and add value. There you go.

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Hello, my name is Jeni Smith, I’m a networking strategist and during this session we’re going to look at how we can add value to the people in our network and the impact that that has. So when it comes to adding value, this is all about building that like element of know, like and trust, which is so important when it comes to building effective relationships within our network. So I refer to this as connection marketing. So it’s all about you building your personal brand by being someone who’s nice, which sounds dead simple, but there’s a little bit more to it than that. So in more detail, connection marketing is the promotion of yourself and your work through effective relationship management and matchmaking to create opportunities, share information and add significant value to people who know you. So the big point to highlight here is the ‘add significant value’, because when we add value to the people in our network, we become someone who’s valuable to know and more people want to know us. Plus, when we add value to someone, they can’t help but want to do that in return. So every time we put something positive out there and we help someone, it comes back to us 100 times over. So there’s different ways that we can add value to the people who are in our network. We can refer people for work. So if someone has a job opportunity that they need to fill and you know someone in your network that would be the perfect candidate, make that introduction, make those facilitated introductions. You’ve got someone there who gets, potentially, a fantastic new job opportunity and you’ve got someone who fills a position with someone who’s brilliant. So you’ve got two people there out in the world who think you’re fantastic simply by passing information between them or making introductions. We can also make introductions for general opportunities. So you don’t have to refer people for a specific job or a sale; it can just be the fact that you know someone in your network, you meet someone new and you think, ‘You know what, you two have got something in common. I’m not really sure what it is, but it’s worth having a conversation.’ Sending that email, ‘Hi, I’ve just met so-and-so, cc-ed in, please have a chat. I think you’ve got some stuff in common. It’s worth having a conversation.’ You never know where those introductions are going to lead and this comes back to, again, networking your network. Knowledge transfer, adding value to the people in your network by sharing your knowledge and experience with them. They want to learn from you, I want to learn from you, connect with me so I can learn from you. So sharing your knowledge through your social media content, through public speaking, through writing blogs or doing videos, but also sharing the knowledge of others that you come across that you find valuable, pass that our there to people in your network too because they’re probably going to find and get some value from it, as well. Invite people to events. If you’re going to a networking event or a conference and you think it’s going to be useful, other people in your network might find it useful too. Share that information with them. It’s all about transferring knowledge and information to create opportunities and add value, and event invitations are a fantastic way of doing that. Supporting people’s social media content. We know that people love to get a bit of attention from their social media. Giving them that bit of attention, sharing it with your wider networks and just being generally supportive of people, support their social content. Also being there as an individual, someone who is supportive, that’s reliable and consistent that others know that they can pick up the phone and ask for advice and you’re going to be there, and that’s a fantastic way to add value to the people that are in your network.[END OF TRANSCRIPT]

Hello, my name is Jeni Smith. I’m a networking strategist. During this session we’re going to talk about career progression through networking, and how it can help us progress in our careers and get where we want to be. So I’m going to highlight a bit of research that was done by UCLA. It was called the ‘Centre of the Universe’ study.

What this study did was looked at a group of individuals, and these individuals were based out in the French Riviera. They all had the same educational background. The only core difference between the group was that half had a strong personal network, and the other half didn’t. They followed their career progressions over five years to see what happened, where they ended up, and if having a network impacted their career progression at all. Unsurprisingly it did. The results were that people with a strong personal network moved up their industry ladder faster, so they progressed in their careers quicker, they had better job security, so they were less likely to be fired, or to move organisations, so they were more secure in the jobs that they had. They were paid more. So the people who had the strong personal network, were paid more than those that didn’t, but really interestingly was that they were actually less productive in their day jobs. So the jobs they were getting paid to do, they were getting paid more, but they were actually being less productive in those jobs.

Why is that? Why were employers allowing this to happen? Or how were they being able to get ahead through having a strong personal network? So when you have a lot of strong relationships, and a personal network, doors are open for you, people put you forward for opportunities, you find out about opportunities before they’re public knowledge. People refer you, recommend you, because they know you, they like you, and they trust you, and they’ll put you forward for exciting new projects, and get the chance for different progression that you wouldn’t have, were it not be for the fact that you’ve got these relationships. All these general referrals either you give referrals to others, or others to you, allows you to move forward in your career quicker, it allows all these doors to be opened, and it’s internal networking that has that real impact. So when you’re working for large organisations, whether it’s in or outside of academia, beyond academia, having relationships within the organisation in which you are working can really impact how you progress within that organisation. It’s a massive asset. These are valuable skills that you have that employers value to the extent where they were actually paying staff more to be less productive, because having the ability to build, and maintain, and nurture effective relationship, is a massively valued skill. So if you can start practicing, and being able to do that, that’s something that can really set you apart, and allow you to really progress in your career a lot faster, and more effectively.

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Hello, my name is Jeni Smith, I’m a networking strategist and during this session we’re going to look at network diversity, and this is something I’m really passionate about and can be hugely impactful.

So I’m going to start by telling you a tale, a little story of a man named Galileo, and Galileo was many a things to many a people. He was a scientist, he was a philosopher, he was an astronomer, and one of the things that Galileo discovered was that the moon has mountains. So until Galileo came along, we all thought that the moon was a perfectly round sphere floating in the sky and he came along, looked through his telescope and said, ‘No, no, my friends, the moon has mountains and craters,’ and everyone was shocked. Ah, but he was right, he was, the moon does, in fact, have mountains and craters. How was Galileo able to tell this? Did he have access to any fancy new technology, any fancy telescopes that the other astronomers didn’t have access to? No, he did not. Did he have access to any additional information? So did he know some stuff that the other astronomers didn’t know, that no-one else in the world knew about that meant that he was able to make this discovery? No, he did not.

Or was he a time traveller? Did Galileo come into the future, see that the moon has mountains and go back and tell everyone? No, he did not. Galileo was able to tell that the moon had mountains because he had diverse knowledge. It was his experience in geography that allowed him to recognise that what he was looking through, the exact same telescope as everyone else, he was looking at was the shadows cast by mountains and craters. So diverse knowledge is what allowed him to do this.

Scientists who have got hobbies outside their area of expertise, especially in performing arts, and things, are three times more likely to win a Nobel prize. So this diverse knowledge, having knowledge and experience in different areas can make you spark innovations and spark ideas that can be hugely impactful. The problem is, especially with networking, what happens is we tend to have here’s the people in academia, there’s the academics, there you are – lovely – asking questions, doing research, finding out, solving the world’s issues – amazing. Then over here we’ve got the people in technology, the techies making things work faster and making our lives easier – amazing.

Then over here we’ve got people outside of academia, we’ve got the businesspeople who are making the economy go round and buying things and selling things and creating new stuff and products and… Wonderful. The problem is that we all stay in our own lanes and when we do that, when we only talk to people that we know, that know what we know, we never learn anything new. I’m going to say that again for dramatic effect. When we only talk to people who know what we know, we never learn anything new. What we need to do is we need to start taking down these barriers and sharing this knowledge and information that we have with each other so we can learn from each other, so that the academics get to talk to the people outside of academic and people in tech talk to the charities and the charities talk to the academics and everyone shares this amazing knowledge and experience to spark these fabulous, wonderful new ideas.

Now, the reason that we tend to stay in our own lanes, there’s two reasons. Firstly, by default, academics go to academic conferences and meet other academics, people in tech go to techie events and meet other people in tech. So by default, we tend to network with people in our own sectors. We also find it easier to communicate with people who think the way that we do, that understand what our lives are like. It’s just easy; we built trust with people that we have things in common with. So it does take a little bit of a push to take that step out and start building these amazing diverse networks and start sharing all that knowledge and learning from others, as well, and that’s where amazing things happen.[END OF TRANSCRIPT]