The importance of networking and it’s role in professional development is often overlooked, as the focus for CPD is often on training opportunities and opportunities to learn new skills. These are fundamental components of career professional development, however networking is an equally important skill that can benefit your professional development. In this article, we will explore why networking is an important skill for your career development, and in this upcoming series of blogs, we will explore theories and strategies that you can utilise to effectively improve your career professional development trajectory.
What is Networking?
Firstly, we will explore what networking is. In summary, networking is the act of meeting new people within a shared or a related professional field to your own. By meeting new people within these fields, you can build up a list of contacts that may be useful in a number in furthering your professional development.
Broaden Your Mindset
Networking allows you to meet and to interact with individuals who are from different cultures, nationalities and business backgrounds. By meeting and interacting with a broad range of different people, you will broaden your mindset and your open mindedness. This will enable you to solve problems better and be better able to work with a wide range of people and personalities within the same team.
Create Opportunities
Knowledge, qualifications and experience are the fundamental requirements for most jobs, however your professional network can still play a big part in creating new career opportunities. When a career vacancy becomes available, it is still common for people to recommend people within their professional network to apply to the role if they feel that they are the best candidate for the role. If you have a large professional network, career opportunities may be recommended to you more frequently.
Advice and Knowledge
Having a large professional network allows you to learn a great deal from the knowledge and experience that the individuals in the network hold. When presented with an ongoing or reoccurring problem in the workplace, it can be helpful to seek advice for the problem from experienced people within your professional network. Taking advice from more experienced people or individuals that work in a different industry may give you a different perspective and a different approach to the problem. This may sometimes be all that is needed to reach a solution to the problem.
Identify Areas of Improvement
By having a professional network that is made up of professionals that work in related fields can serve as a benchmark for your own professional development journey. You can look at people who are in similar roles to what you are working towards achieving in your career, and you can look at what qualifications and what experience they have. This can serve as a good indicator for what areas you should focus on improving on in your professional development journey in order to be able to achieve the role you are working towards.
Book a Course With Us
At In Professional Development, networking is a topic that we cover on many of our other professional training courses. To find out more about our courses, visit our Courses page, and click on the relevant course. Alternatively, or if you’d like more information before booking, email us at enquiries@inpd.co.uk, send us a message using the form on our Contact page, or call us on 0161 826 3139. We look forward to hearing from you and advising you on the right course for you.
