My friend Alisha thinks very similarly to how I do about “networking,” and she just wrote a great post about it. Here’s an excerpt describing what networking should be and what a lot of people try to make it:
What is networking, even? To be honest, I hate the term. Networking to me is a couple of things:
- connecting people through genuinely exciting ideas
- being social and attending social gatherings
- fostering meaningful discussion
- building a community of friends, peers, and leaders who will shape your goals
- helping people help you achieve said goals
Networking is not the following, if you ask me:
- blindly handing out business cards
- steering conversations to be self-promotional
- upselling your skills or expertise
- faking your role in your industry
- talking buzzwords and schemes to make yourself look good
- stalking social media users online
- going to happy hour meetups all the time to score free food & drinks
As with anything else, there are rules to building your network and sharing it with others. The rest of the post gives some good pointers for not ruining the network you are constantly building.
Jen Bokoff 