Informed Careers

Networking is one of the key skills for exploring career options and gaining in depth career information for making informed decisions.  Career networking is different from social networking as it has a specific purpose and a defined approach to be most successful. 

Career networking is using your professional contacts to gain information about what is happening in a particular industry, organization, functional area, or type of business.  People are generally happy to share thier insights and knowledge if done in a professional and valued manner by a skilled networker.  In addition to gaining valuable insights and information, the skilled networker will seek to gain referrals to others for that will further add to their learnings and continue to expand thier network.

Using networking to purely identify a specific job opportunity rarely works well as most people will hesitate to contact you if they do not have an open position or share names of others that may not have a job opening either.  If someone has an open position that they feel you may be a fit for, they will mention it to you.