How to build a Network for your Career Development
Build your Network for career development In the book by Jeffrey J. Fox “How to become a CEO” a series of instructions on how to progress your career in a company are listed, for example:
- Form alliances with employees at the same level as you (14)
- Remember the names of all your colleagues (15)
- Make that extra phone call (17)
- Keep an “archive of people” (24)
- Send handwritten notes (25)
- Stop to listen and observe (40)
- Learn to speak and write in a style that is simple and clear (45)
- Treat everyone like they are special (46)
- Be polite with everyone, please (47)
- No success or prestige without patient work (51)
- Reflect, prepare, experiment (52)
- Don't make hasty decisions (53)
- Do not underestimate your adversaries (60)
- Join the club of people who say “I shouldn't have” (62)
- It’s not the idea that has to perfect, but how you implement it (63)
- Make a note of you mistakes and be proud of them (64).
Number 24 Keep an “archive of people” is without doubt worth noting. The instructions are as follows:
Get yourself a large good quality diary or an electronic agenda and straight from your first day at work start creating an archive with all of the details of all the people you meet, work with and become acquainted with.
Don’t forget to write in your diary the activities and position of every person you meet, for example: head hunter, product line manager, supplier of printers, professional stockbroker. Use a pencil to write in your diary as people change jobs and telephone number numbers all the time.
Every six months send a note to the people you don’t meet that regularly or frequently, e.g. former classmates, colleagues and so on.
Always ask people for their business cards in order to encourage them to ask for yours and thus get into their archive.
Keep a copy of your people archive in a safe spot.
Use the archive throughout the course of your entire working career.
Don't fail to make to perform this simple activity of “connection with people”: hardly anyone is likely to do it as carefully and with as much attention. Invest without hesitation in people.
