Personal Friends
Personal friends may not be the best business network, but they do provide valuable support and a place to start. While many of us have friends who are looking for jobs, we very often find we can't help them. But personal friends are exactly that, and no executive should make the mistake of expecting his or her personal friendships to fulfill their business networking purposes. Is wiser to rely on his or her personal friends primarily as a support network.
Business Contacts
The best place to begin your networking process is with your business contacts. These are the people who know you from a business setting and who probably have some understanding of who you are and what you have to offer a potential employer. (Remember, networking is a numbers game, and the more business contacts you have and can talk to, the better your chances of success.) Even if they themselves do not need your services immediately, very often they will know someone who does.
Bear in mind that your businesses contacts may not be strongly committed to supporting you, so don't get discouraged if they do not immediately come up with concrete ideas, particularly during the early stages of becoming portable, when you might be especially sensitive to a lukewarm response. Maintaining your business network that is, letting them know where you are and what you're doing is important in generating other networking opportunities. Be sure to capitalize on your personal business contacts, particularly in the early stages of building your network. They are stepping stones to a broader, stronger network of referrals to other sources.
Trade Associations
One of the most formal network groups is the trade association, which offers a rapid introduction to a particular industry, thus affording portable executives a tremendous opportunity to learn while they are seeking to create a job. The biggest risk in joining a trade association to network is that you need to be careful not to spend all of your time with your competition. You must distinguish between associations that are, in effect, comprised of one's peers and those that contain potential customers or clients. In addition, trade associations often prove to be excellent sources of other professionals with whom one can form beneficial strategic alliances.
Continuing Education Centers
Colleges, universities, and continuing education centers that provide ongoing executive training offer a wealth of networking opportunities. As more and more universities focus on the mature market of continuing education, it is becoming easier to find and obtain catalogs and other sources of information that might aid an individual in his or her job creation. Continuing education centers also offer portable executive's opportunities to participate on speaker's panels, give speeches, and teach, which, while appearing to be one way activities; often result in potential clients or valuable networking contacts.
Church And/Or Community Support Groups
Many local church and community support groups have sprung up around the country in response to the massive down sizings in the United States. These groups are specifically helpful in offering tremendous emotional support to those in the early stages of job creation. Relationships built during times of adversity often grow stronger over time and have the potential to evolve into beneficial alliances.
How To Approach Your Network
As homes in on the type of business he or she wishes to create and begins to research the kinds of organizations that can aid in the process, they should also be making a list of the types of networks that seem to offer the greatest opportunities to learn and make business contacts.
Networking in its various types and forms may appear complex to the executive new to the portable mindset, but it will soon become a way of life for and will pervade all of his or her activities. As more executives join the ranks of the contingent workforce, we may well find networking at the top of the list of ways to communicate and develop business relationships and opportunities.
Networking today is very different than it was only a decade ago. As down sizings and restructurings continue to empty corporate office space, the business community is no longer conveniently located and isolated in the typical glass and steel buildings. The network is the business community for the 1990s and beyond.
