Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep38: Networking DO's and DON'Ts.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. In today's podcast, I talk about what you need to do when job networking. So networking right now, it's a very, very popular term. There are lots of professional online networking platforms such as LinkedIn and of course the more

Starting point is 00:00:45 traditional personal social media such as Facebook, Instagram and everything else. However, if you are networking for a job, there is something that is a little bit different to just general community networking with your friends for example. So one of the very popular networking sites, of course, for business or career is LinkedIn. And today I want to remind everyone that you need to ask yourself when you are on LinkedIn, are you networking for to, you know, get yourself better jobs and better career opportunities, or you are networking to establish yourself as an influencer. So these two sound very similar, but they're actually quite different. Whichever one that you choose, there's a very completely different strategy in terms of the people that you connect with and the kind of topics that you share

Starting point is 00:01:45 if you choose to share content and also the way you update your profile as well. So today I'm only going to focus on what you need to do if your intention is to network for a job. So that's establishing your intention upfront where you are basically using LinkedIn for job networking. So if that's the case, have a quick look at your connection list. How many of these people are recruiters? How many of these people are from HR or talent acquisition from a specific company? How many of them are thought leaders within the industry that you are currently working in? How many of them are thought leaders in an industry that you want to work in, right? Assuming if that's different. So these four categories,

Starting point is 00:02:46 how many of your connections belong to these four buckets? And the fifth one are what I call the others, right? That could be your friends, maybe your colleagues or people who resonate with your content, whatever else. So when I work with a lot of job seekers, they tell me that they spend hours and hours networking. But when I work with a lot of job seekers, they tell me that they spend hours and hours networking. But when I asked them to identify how many of their connections are in the first

Starting point is 00:03:11 four buckets, they really struggle to do so. So if you're spending time networking, you want to make sure that the networking is worthwhile and you are engaging with the right people and the right people that can connect you to the job that you want, or make you, or get you further along in the industry. Because if you're just networking and chitty-chatting with, you know, general people on general topics, then how do you think that's going to help you, that's going to help move you to the next role,

Starting point is 00:03:42 or to the next job, or to your dream job, whatever that looks like, right? So these are important questions to ask because I find that people don't ask it enough and that's just really on the online world itself, right? So I challenge you to look through your connection list and do that little bucket thing and just see where your attention is, right? And if that's in the right place. The other part that's equally important is the job networking that you do at your actual job, meaning your workplace, assuming that you are currently employed and you have been in a company, even if you're new or sometime, it is so important to build relationships with the stakeholders, with your team, your bosses, within your department, across department as well. Because these are the people who can really vouch

Starting point is 00:04:32 for the quality of work that you produce. They can, you know, confirm the quality, they can confirm you as a person, as a character, and more importantly, as a professional, right? Because online, like I always say, online branding is great. But if you don't have the core, you don't have the experiences and the skills, then even if you have a lot of connections online, who is really going to, you know, offer you a job or refer you to a job? Because they don't really know what you can bring to the table, aside from the couple of things that you say online which is honestly not really strong

Starting point is 00:05:09 however the people who really really matter are the ones that have i guess live evidence of experiencing you as a colleague as a team member as a direct member, as a direct report, you know, as part of a project team, for example. So these are the people that you need to make sure that you build a very good relationship with, right? And even if you have left the company, you should still keep in touch with, you know, some of the people who really sponsored you or understood you and really admired the

Starting point is 00:05:47 work that you did in the company right maybe get a testimonial keep in touch right catch up from time to time maybe reach out to them and say hey you know i'm looking out right now is there something that i can do in your company or do you know anything that you know might be helpful or might make sense given my skills and experiences because personally for me i've gotten a lot of job referrals over the years and guess what they are all from people who have known me actually worked with me and they consistently came back saying that hey mayping i i'm hiring for this role and that role is this something that you want to do and that's really where you want to get that.

Starting point is 00:06:26 Not becoming an online celebrity, but nobody knows really what you do at work and they cannot vouch for that. And in addition to that, you may have skills gap. For example, like communication, you know, strategic thinking, organization, leadership. So all these skills you

Starting point is 00:06:46 need to sharpen, right? Just by being an online celebrity is not going to help. And when you're networking, if you don't have any of these good skills, it does come across as well. So networking in itself sounds really simple. Okay, I just need to go and say hi. But it's not necessarily the case because networking is an opportunity for you to demonstrate what you know. And more importantly, what value can you add to your new employer, to your new department, to your new team? Because if that doesn't come across well

Starting point is 00:07:18 and you are just spamming people to say, hey, here's my resume, please review my resume, then there is a bit distasteful in that already so networking is about building long-term relationships and more importantly targeted relationships because let's be honest we cannot build the same amount of um we can't spend the same amount of time to build relationships with everyone but we can choose a specific group to focus our energy and attention to and these should be the people who know your performance they know the work that you can do they will be happy to recommend you right and happy to maybe bring you over to their team. Should they move?

Starting point is 00:08:14 Always be there and always top of mind for the people who really know what you can do. So again, the challenge I'm putting to you if you're listening to this podcast is how many i guess like the buckets right the first four buckets how many people are in the first four buckets and how are you really spending your time are you spending your time engaging with the guys who can really help you in your career or you are distracted by other things because some personal branding guru tell you that is the cool thing to do right really ask yourself this especially if you're a job seeker right now and double double especially if you are an active job seeker who has never who has not had a job for some time so really think through this because it's really important. And ultimately,

Starting point is 00:09:07 networking has a lot of benefits, right? There are many ways to get it right, but there are also many ways to get it wrong. So just keep some of these points in mind. I hope that you'll find it very helpful and work on establishing strong relationships with a select group of people who will always come back to you. They recognize your value, come back to you with new roles, new jobs. And like I said, you'll always be top of mind. So the little homework after this podcast is that I'd like you to take out a piece of paper and really start jotting down names and numbers and just to see where your focus is at right because if you're really busy if you're always busy getting caught up in the um the the little linkedin activities or even the day-to-day busy work we tend to forget

Starting point is 00:09:58 that but always ask yourself are you networking with the right people and are the right people recognizing the value that you can bring the right people and are the right people recognizing the value that you can bring, the good qualities that you can bring to the table? So I will leave you with this one. And right now I'm offering one-on-one career coaching as well as one-on-one LinkedIn coaching sessions where I will help you determine and design your career growth strategy, as well as helping you with your LinkedIn profile audit that can allow you to have more career opportunities. So if that's something really helpful, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or any other social media platforms, and I look forward to supporting you. And in the meantime, good luck and get started with

Starting point is 00:10:43 your homework. I wish you all the best see ya

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep38: Networking DO's and DON'Ts.

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