by Pardingtone Nhundu.
Networking is a main character activity for every business or career. It can be ridiculously frightening if you don’t know how to do it or face the boring process of it. But there has been much teaching of Networking which today we dig deeper to Making Contacts!!!
Networking is mostly associated with the exchange of business cards. A person making contacts does not just distribute 50 cards at an event and call it a success. Working with a target to exchange your card with a prospective contact and making an unforgettable introduction or story that stays longer prompting the the other person to remember you when you call or force that other contact to call you. Here are a few tips on doing that perfectly:
1. Be a Powerful Resource: Networking is sharing contacts and importantly a two way traffic. To be remembered best is to be reckoned with a unique power. The secret being a powerful resource that the contact you are targeting will be interested in. You can be resource through your academic background, volunteer experience or the mere ability to speak with eloquence.
2. Share Your Passion: Networking is mostly characterized by the Sales Pitch which seem to work most times. But as you are making contacts for career transcendence share your passion. There is nothing more breathtaking to a potential employer than an individual moved by passion in following a career.
3. Smile: Simon Sinek says, “You hire attitude not skills. For skills can always be taught.” Smiling puts you at ease, you attract people with the same attitude you better still you can sub-consciously brighten someones day. Your attitude is the greatest teller if you are receptive to continuous learning, a team player, an effective communicator and all. So be at ease and smile!!!
4. Simplicity Skill: There is a very thin line between asking sophisticated questions of interest or irritating questions requiring a different forum. Ask easy questions! The questions that drive conversations and better still prompt for a second meeting. You can be remembered for asking sophisticated questions that never push a potential contact want to connect again and that’s not our target.
5. Second Date: The goal for every guy after meeting a potential for the first time is a second date. At the second date you are now digging deeper. More information is being shared. You are now showing what you are bringing to the table or offering. In Zimbabwe, this is a much needed skill in the case that unemployment rate is said to be around 90% or so. One needs the skill to meet again with a potential employer and present how they can uniquely contribute to the goals of the organization, why that individual considers him/herself worthy of it, if its a new position why do they think its very important for the organization. But most importantly, what is the financial gain of it all?
