The other day I added up the time I spend on volunteer work, you know, contributing back to the community and the like.
I used to see this as just an hour here, and hour there, no big deal. I just consider it to be part of what I do.
However when I added it all up and came up with a yearly average. It was a bit of a shock.
The amount of time I spend volunteering is a little over an hour for every workday. It’s around 240 hours annually.
You have been to all the networking events, chatted to people, exchanged business cards. Even found a few contacts that would be worthwhile leads in the future.
Still after all this, it just doesn’t seem to be working.
So you go to few more events, you have been really listening to people and you have your opening networking pitch perfect, it’s all going well.
However still the results aren’t that great. Sound familiar?
The problem is business networking doesn’t stop once you have left the event. It’s about the longer term networking post event. This is often the most important aspect of networking besides the event.
I don’t know about you, but I have been to face to face networking events where it’s basically been like pulling teeth to get the people in the room to talk and discuss what they do and the benifits it has for me. There is nothing wrong with the event itself, it’s just some of the attendees don’t know how to network.
Networking doesn’t come easy, you can’t just expect to turn up to an event and it happens, you have to work at it. You have to build the trust and connections with people. You have to get people interested in you and vice-versa.
Now Perth can be busy place, with lots of professional networking events every month, seems that there are even more now with this financial hiccup, as people scramble for those networking contacts.
Funny thing is that most of the new ones now want to sell me something or get me to join some exclusive networking group that will bring me riches and world domination by afternoon teatime. All I have to do is just sign over a few thousand dollars a year and feed thew group them all my business contacts for good measure. Now I don’t know about you but the only bugger getting rich here is the person that set that scheme up in the first place. Pyramid anyone, just without money.
Gary Barber
I’m an independent User Experience Consultant.
I design interfaces, build information architectures, prototypes, do UX research and conducting usability & accessibility tests and audits.
I can work within your existing team or as an external consultant on a contract or adhoc basis.
You can contact me via my company, radharc.
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