SolveYourProblem
Article Series: Networking
How To Successfully Network Yourself
How
To Network when You're in a New City
Networking,
both professional and personal, in a new city now centers
around one precious tool: the Internet. The original context of the term ‘networking’ was that you
use the people that you already know to get to new people that
can be good contacts for you. This sort of networking usually
took place at meetings, dinners, lunches and other in-person
gatherings of people that work in a common field. At such an
event, you might have a known contact introduce you to someone
new in your field whose work you might have heard of and admired.
The bottom line is that networking happened face-to-face, person-to-person.
While networking still happens, for the most part, person-to-person,
it no longer is primarily face-to-face. The vast majority of
networking, especially when settling into a new city, happens
over the Internet. MySpace.com is an extreme example; MySpace
is geared at very young people, but it still has a networking
feature. Of course, a 16-year-old’s idea of networking is meeting
cool people; the point is that networking happens nowadays
by searching for people or for businesses that are of interest
to you, for whatever reason, online.
When arriving in a new city, it is helpful to have prepared
one’s arrival, to a certain extent, before actually arriving.
It is always a good idea to have at least a few contacts, whether
professional or personal, before you even arrive. This will
not only give you connections in your new home, but it will
also give you a greater sense of purpose as you attack all
those boxes to be unpacked and possibly a foreign language
to decipher. People who already have a few contacts prior to
arrival tend to jump in running instead of having a series
of false starts in their new city.
There are numerous websites that cater to just this purpose.
There are national and international, not to mention regional,
sites that offer everything from housing notices to job announcements
with everything you could possibly imagine (and some things
you can’t) found in between. The international sites even offer
opportunities to find language partners with whom you can exchange
your native English for the local language; this is a fun way
to spend one lunch break a week, much less demanding and expensive
than a formal course, and you get to interact with the locals.
The most important thing to remember as you prepare to move
to a new city is that you are the one responsible for
every aspect of your life. If you take a strong hold of the reins
and decide to be assertive, you will find networking in your
city of adoption to not only be possible and easy, but also
to be enjoyable. It’s those people who sit quietly, waiting
for connections to come to them that do not do well in a new
city. Start searching the Internet months or weeks before you
go and get your name or the name of your company out there.
Not only will you be able to network this way, you will also
help yourself (whether it be personally, or for your business,
professionally) to keep yourself or your business thriving
in your new city. It’s a global, mobile world, and people who
are ready to capitalize on that fact are the ones who are embracing
new cities and new regions.
Once you’ve gotten the ball rolling, you will find that the
typical kind of networking kicks in. That is, after all, the
beauty of networking; it has a snowball effect as it carries
on. A small seed that you plant three months before arriving
in your new city just might result in a complete tree just
a year or two after arriving.
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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