Here Networking is defined as find people, join together, communicate with and within a group.
Network building will help you for getting a job/business / fund raising / Entrepreneurship / product marketing etc
How to start networking?
Building a network of people forms a vital role! It should start along with your academic activities. When you go to other educational institutions for tech festival or sports etc. get good friends, get their contact details and be in touch always. Don’t expect people to come and talk to you. You go and talk with them. Be a beginner, take ownership and that brings leadership. I personally know lot of good friends in this way who helped me in many ways and still helping. This is the time where campus interviews in colleges conducted and somewhat coming to end. If you do not get a job then you have to search for it once you completed your graduation. At that point of time this network of friends will be really helpful. You can forward your resume and ask them to refer you and forward to their friends. It will spread like retweets. When you go to other institutions for interview, try to get make contact with lot of people.
How to get connected to new friends and stay in touch?
Create your personal blog and write some stuffs that you are interested. Visit other blogs and make friends, form a healthy network. Who knows? someday blogging could bring a job for you!! It happens! Social networking sites like Linkedin, Orkut, Facebook, Twitter etc. will help you to find new friends and communicate with people who have similar thoughts and views. For eg: In facebook when an exam results are out people create a community and starts discussing about their career/higher education. They get suggestions/answers from new people.These social networking sites may distract you in someway. It is all depends on how you use it. Barack Obama’s Tweets played an important role in his election campaign which is a good example of how wisely one can use Twitter.
Transformation is going on. All the communication is being transformed slowly to cloud and people are getting ready for web 3.0 so you go ahead and start networking.
Questions/suggestions are welcome!
Happy Networking!
-Balaji
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