The months of July and August are globally viewed as vacation months, time to get away from the office, spend time with the family, and decompress from the daily grind.
That being said, is it time for you, as an executive job seeker, to step back from your “full court press” of networking?
Absolutely not!
In fact, when life is slower paced during the summer, it’s a great time to successfully start working on your network and avoid some of the pitfalls that too many make when kickstarting their network activities.
Networking Tip 1: Cultivate new relationships in your industry every week.
- Always be looking for opportunities to strike up new relationships.
- Set yourself a weekly target or a regular routine that ensures growing your network becomes a habitual part of your working life.
Networking Tip 2: Focus on engaging with people and helping others – NOT self-promotion.
- Find ways to help other people and share content / insights that will enrich their lives. This makes people tune in to what you have to say.
- Promoting yourself or your services should be done sparingly, or it can be a turn-off. But get the balance right, and your promotional messages can be very effective.
Networking Tip 3: Connect with people and foster relationships in advance of needing help.
- Social networking is like your bank account–you need to have put value into your network before you can receive value from it.
- Appearing desperate is one of the top social networking mistakes.
Networking Tip 4: Share outstanding content / advice / assistance whenever you can.
- You want to build yourself to a position where people in your network are eager to see what they’ll learn from you next.
- You want to help others when you are able to, so that they, in turn, will want to help you when they can.
Networking Tip 5: Raise awareness of other people’s work.
- Help people market their work, articles they’ve been featured in, campaigns run by their company, etc.
- Help raise their profile and help them build their following. They will want to reciprocate, so promoting them ends up promoting you.
Networking Tip 6: Proactively make introductions – in other words – become a connector.
- Proactively make introductions to help your network win work / forge partnerships / secure employment / make hires.
- If you facilitate any of these things happening, you will have had a major impact on that person’s professional life–and they will in time find ways to reciprocate.
Networking tip 7: Go the extra mile to help contacts overcome challenges they’re facing.
- Helping someone in their hour of need is always going to be remembered; and the more “grave” the situation they face, the more your help is going to be appreciated and remembered.
- Examples: someone’s facing a challenge that’s derailing their career or finds themselves out of work.
Networking tip 8: Schedule time to devote to your social media success.
- Success requires a consistent commitment of time and a long-term outlook.
- You need to be ever present in your channels to be able to jump in and support people when it’s needed.
- Your activity levels need to be consistent so that people continue to look out for your next communication.
Summer presents new opportunities to network face-to-face that don’t always exist during the rest of the year. Attending baseball games, afternoon barbeques, and neighborhood picnics are chances to meet new people, reconnect with friends and former colleagues, and continue to build relationships. Consistent networking whether online or face-to-face will generate the best results.