How do you approach professional networking? What has worked for you? I‘d like to expand my networking strategies as I work on pivoting to a new career.
Hi Melody, how comfortable do you feel reaching out to cold/warm-ish contacts? What's helped me is:
making a list of industries/roles I'm interested in
reconnecting with people from each "phase" of my life (high school, college, grant programs, former jobs, etc.) and reaching out to people in the above industries/roles
meeting new people via Elpha, Peppercorn, and friends of friends and reaching out to people in above industries/roles
reading books by people who have pivoted ("Leaving Academia" lol lol) and either reaching out to them or finding the community that's also reading those books via Meetup, LinkedIn, etc.
reaching out to fellow participants I feel a connection with at Zoom events/workshops
Many people I've talked to are ex-PhDs...former advisors...former colleagues...and many new friends as well (thanks, Peppercorn ;) )
I come from a field where it's fairly hard to get appointments with people or where I feel like I have to "measure up" in knowledge in order to even merit a meeting with them, so it's actually been super refreshing to see how willing people are to talk and share about their jobs/lives.
I've actually been taking a hiatus from social media over the past several years, so a beautiful thing about this process has been just reconnecting with old friends I haven't talked to in over a decade.
Hi Melody, I have just started building my network in US. What I would suggest is to not to be afraid to introduce yourself. It is tempting to spend time speaking to the people we know but we should try to expand our network by talking to people we haven't met before.
Hi Melody, how comfortable do you feel reaching out to cold/warm-ish contacts? What's helped me is:
making a list of industries/roles I'm interested in
reconnecting with people from each "phase" of my life (high school, college, grant programs, former jobs, etc.) and reaching out to people in the above industries/roles
meeting new people via Elpha, Peppercorn, and friends of friends and reaching out to people in above industries/roles
reading books by people who have pivoted ("Leaving Academia" lol lol) and either reaching out to them or finding the community that's also reading those books via Meetup, LinkedIn, etc.
reaching out to fellow participants I feel a connection with at Zoom events/workshops
Many people I've talked to are ex-PhDs...former advisors...former colleagues...and many new friends as well (thanks, Peppercorn ;) )
I come from a field where it's fairly hard to get appointments with people or where I feel like I have to "measure up" in knowledge in order to even merit a meeting with them, so it's actually been super refreshing to see how willing people are to talk and share about their jobs/lives.
I've actually been taking a hiatus from social media over the past several years, so a beautiful thing about this process has been just reconnecting with old friends I haven't talked to in over a decade.
Hi Melody, I have just started building my network in US. What I would suggest is to not to be afraid to introduce yourself. It is tempting to spend time speaking to the people we know but we should try to expand our network by talking to people we haven't met before.