Networking: How to navigate challenges of the pandemic?

Networking is important and relevant for professional & personal reasons. The basic idea of connecting with people with a diverse interests, skills & cultural background helps in broadening one’s own thought process and many a times opens new opportunities.

The onset of pandemic since 2020 has posed challenges of virtual networking and also bringing its own fatigue and tiredness with it. Additional layers of challenges of finding jobs, finding right people for business needs, identifying decision makers has blurred the networking landscape. In my observation, the energy to network has seen similar pattern of the infection waves, with its own peaks & depths.

In the last few months, I have been approached with quite a few requests on understanding how networking can work in such times or approaching right target group using digital means and achieve the best outcomes. In this context, I am sharing some of my own experiences and general thoughts on how can people network with more efficiency. Some of the following points could be valuable for the community.

• If you are new to networking and looking to connect with people from Industry or for job purpose, define the purpose accordingly.
• Spend time in identifying people which match to your interests, skills, work, inspiration. Filtering list of people matching to your interests or needs can help in reducing fatigue.
• Bring value while connecting. Networking is a 2 way process or ensure to make it bidirectional.
• Engage in volunteering activities. Take up weekend activities that can support your main goal of networking by volunteering for events, organizing activities offline or online
• By engaging in activities such as writing articles, podcasts, event organization, moderations, workshops, hackathons or even hobbies such as particular sports can add real value in connecting with a diverse set of community.
• Showcase your skills by publishing your articles, code, designing tools, commenting on topics of your own expertise or interests.
• Bring creativity in networking by choosing different formats and adding some fun to the same tasks.
• Its important to also connect with people who are looking for support professionally or personally. Empathy is an important factor and building a community with members which can support each other is extremely valuable and matches to the need of the current times.
• Reaching out to former colleagues, friends and peers can also add a lot of value to the existing network.
• Showcase your leadership skills by attempting genuine reach outs to people of interest. Its important to set correct expectations and agenda for calls and meetings. This is relevant also in the case of applying for particular positions & connecting to professionals from the same company or organization.

The above listed points can provide guidance to young graduates and people looking to network in the current times. Networking for jobs or business requires further efforts and more direction to the attempts in addition to the above listed points.

I wish these pointers could be helpful for some of you looking to navigate networking landscape. Finally, also share your own thoughts and experiences.