How to develop a good professional network

Direct contacts are those people who you know and deal with on a personal level, people with whom you can easily get in touch. They are usually family members or close friends, as such, they are generally limited in number.

They know you and about you as a professional and can help you by offering opportunities, talking to others, passing on other contacts... They are part of your personal as well as your professional surroundings.

• A consultant friend can send on your CV to different companies where she has worked.
• Your cousin, who studies digital marketing, helps you to improve your network presence and create a personal brand.
• A former work colleague has found out about a work offer in a client company.
• You and a freelancer who you met at a fair exchange business cards in hopes of collaborating together.
• Your technology teacher has a good network of contacts with many active professionals and can post a tweet looking for work opportunities fitting your profile.

It is important to know what kind of information each contact has and to propose a clear plan of action. For example: Do you know someone who works in this sector? In this company? Could Silvia—who used to be the head of human resources—introduce me? Could you recommend a job in the sector that you feel to be relevant?

Even though your direct contacts are people very close to you, it’s important to remember the philosophy that must be in place behind the network. The trust that you have in them shouldn’t be translated into pressure or insistence, nor in transferring your responsibility. Consider, above all, in how you could help them, act generously, always being genuinely thankful for the help you may receive.

Your direct contacts have their own network. The people who form this network are your indirect contacts, as well as acquaintances and second-degree contacts. With them, compared to your direct or first-degree contacts, interaction is more sporadic, since they belong to different social circles than your own.

For that reason, if you want to form an effective network of contacts it’s important to get in touch with these people who you don’t know directly, but whom you have the possibility of accessing, in the sense that they are contacts of your contacts.

• You didn’t have the chance to meet him, but your former colleague has connected you with her department manager. Now he works in a major company in the sector and can indicate which specialties are the most prized in profiles similar to yours.
• Marta, your colleague’s partner, can provide you information about a specialised job bank where you can send your CV.
• Your neighbour's brother-in-law is going to participate in a job information workshop that you would like to attend and use to make contacts.
• Your teacher has a contact in her network who is a job coach and in her profile, there are lots of resources for researching jobs.
• Your brother-in-law's friend, with whom you go cycling every weekend, works at a growing young company in your sector. Surely if he passes on your CV, they will look at it with interest.
• An interviewer who forms part of your former colleague’s virtual network of contacts can provide you with orientation information that is of interest of you.

The key to networking is getting in touch with your contact’s contacts, with your own network growing considerably in the process. Don’t forget to reference your mutual contact and also think about connecting people from different backgrounds who you think could be interested in getting to know one another.

Given that you don’t know these contacts directly, and you have no personal dealings with them, it’s up to you to offer them a competent professional image in your field. Networking helps to spread your personal brand, as well as allowing up to keep up to date and learn from others.

• A small but well managed and connected network is preferable to a large but dormant one.
• Relationships need to be nurtured, it’s important to be careful of them. This is a positive relationship promoting mutual exchange and benefit. It’s very common that your contacts won’t be able to point you in the direction of a job offer, but will definitely help you somehow, through recommendations or proposals.
• Your network needs an objective. A long-term objective, which will take time and consistency to create. Once created, it will give you safety and confidence throughout your professional career.
• The Internet can help you to grow your network of contacts, but think about the value of each person who you add, what they can bring you and what you yourself can bring.