This article is republished with permission, courtesy of Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable Review.
Networking or Business Networking is one of the “Skills and Expertise” that you can include on your LinkedIn profile. You hear it emphasised by career development professionals, and Amazon has hundreds of books touting its importance. So what is this networking all about?
Networking is a socioeconomic activity where business relationships are built with the intention of establishing, forging and strengthening business opportunities. Many people liken LinkedIn to Facebook for your professional career – similarly, networking is in fact building friendships in the business sector! It is one of the key ways to market your business or personal brand to the larger community. Not convinced of its importance yet? Here are my top 3 reasons why networking is essential:
1) Hear about new opportunities and stay current
In this information-laden world, it is easy to lose track of even the most important goings on in your world. As a graduate student, it is impossible for me to read all the key journals in my field of synthetic organic chemistry, and still read all the headlines in the biotech and pharma scene! For example, it was a colleague who updated me about the Merck-Calibr collaboration when it was first announced. Strong interpersonal connections allow you to keep abreast about the most important current affairs. Frequently, your contacts will already have distilled the most important information for you, and also filtered through the trivialities, which saves you the time required to read and process the daily digest from ten different news sources. Whether I am inundated with deadlines or not, my time is invaluable, and I hope yours is too!
2) Develop new insights and obtain fresh perspectives
Don’t fall into the trap of burying your head in the ground, and upon looking up, realize that the bus has departed without you! Networking will expose you to numerous perspectives on any given subject, and on hearing more of them, you’ll be able to gain a deeper understanding and can start to generate your own opinions. Deep knowledge of a subject will often show when one engages in genuine discussions. Frequent networking is also really helpful to allow you to find out more about sectors outside your own. For example, at a recent entrepreneurship event, I met someone who is in the business of logistics and manufacturing, and very new to biotech – I don’t know anyone else who is a logistics expert, but I do know that if I am seeking some advice on supply chains, I know which page to turn to in my Rolodex. If you’re a bench scientist, this is the same reason why your PI frequently encourages you to talk to peers, whether in your field, or other!
3) It can get you a job
Whether you like it or not, the business world works via interpersonal relationships. Behind the business is a real person, who makes decisions like hiring or gives the green light for a project to be carried out. When the economic climate is bad, businesses don’t necessarily put out ads for hires – the hiring manager often gets handed resumes of potential candidates from peers and colleagues, with a personal recommendation. It is analogous to word-of-mouth, or Yelp – wouldn’t you prefer a business with 782 reviews and a four-and-a-half star rating, than a dodgy one with no website and three Yelp reviews from people who wrote two sentences each?
There are so many more reasons why I feel networking is extremely important in the business world, but the best way to find out why people do it is by experiencing it yourself. Every time I attend a networking event, I discover a new reason – and I hope you do too. Keep a look out for the next article in this Networking Basics series “How to Network”.