In order to make the right choices regarding where, when and with whom you network, it is best to have specific professional objectives. When you have clear goals, decisions about where to invest your time and energy networking is much easier - and optimizes your chances for building mutually beneficial relationships that will help you achieve those goals.
Let's take for example an expat professional who wants a job in advertising. They find out about an upcoming advertising conference. They believe that this would be a great networking opportunity and so they go online to find out how to register. When they discover 250 advertising agencies will have booths at the event they think: "Fantastic - I am sure to meet lots of industry people and make some good contacts."
The day of the conference arrives. This expat has their business cards in hand and are dressed in their smartest suit. They arrive early and pick up the conference program to see what the first day holds in store for them. The conference program lists 50 different sessions that will take place over 3 days. It also provides a list of the agencies exhibiting at the event.
Unsure of which sessions would be best to attend, they decide to start at the exhibition hall. They begin to walk down the aisles looking at the booths... so many agencies... many people are crowding around certain booths so they assume that these places might be a good place to start. After waiting for 10 minutes to speak to someone at a booth, they tell the company representative that they want to find out more about more about this particular agency and ask if they are hiring. The representative gives them a company brochure and tells them that the openings are listed on the website. The day continues on... many different companies...many of the same answers.
At the end of the day they have had a few interesting conversations and now have a lot of business cards, but not too many connections that seem promising. They are exhausted, having visited over 50 booths in one day. They are not looking forward to going back the next day. They are wondering how they are going to possibly visit all 250 companies and are unsure of which would be best to visit first, given the limited time left. And they do not even want to think about having to choose which of the 50 sessions they should attend.
If this person had more specific professional objectives and clear goals, the day could have gone much differently. Knowing that they wanted to work for a mid-size advertising agency with offices in North America and Europe, they could have done the research on which companies listed as exhibitors on the conference website would fit that description. That would have taken the list down from 250 companies to perhaps 100.
Had they been clear about which industries they were most passionate about - for example healthcare, technology or finance - they could have further reduced the list to those agencies that have a history of working with clients in those sectors. That could have taken the list down to 30. Then considering where these agencies are located, which have job openings on their websites, or other factors, the agencies on that list could be prioritized so the one most suited to their goals would be visited first. They would not have wasted time at booths of agencies who did not ultimately offer what they wanted.
They could have even taken a step further and attempted to locate people that might be attending the conference from these top companies ahead of time. They could have tried to set up a meeting with them at the conference so they could insure they were connecting with the right people and maximize the limited time they had at the conference.
Knowing that they were interested in working in account management for an mid-sized international agency that specialized in dealing with healthcare would have also made selecting sessions much easier. Being able to target just a handful of sessions that were highly relevant to their goals would optimize their opportunities for learning as well as increasing the opportunities to meeting the people from the types of agencies they were interested in working for.
In sum, expatriates can save time, energy and make networking an enjoyable and effective experience by clarifying their professional objectives and using them to inform their choices around when, where and with whom they network.
YOUR EXPAT SUCCESS TIP: Identify your professional objectives for 2009 - whether you are looking for a job or new clients or not. Then make a list of events, networks and people who could potentially help you reach those goals. Create a strategic plan for how you will use your time, energy and focus in approaching each networking opportunity you've chosen that you are confident will help you accelerate your professional or business success.
YOUR THOUGHTS?: Do you have stories to share about how you've been strategic about networking that has helped accelerate your career or business success? Do you have ideas about how others take a more strategic approach to networking? Please share your ideas and experiences by leaving a comment.
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