Three Tips For Meeting Professionals in Your Industry

Learning good business networking strategies is one of the hardest skills for young professionals to learn but once you master it, you’ll be able to accelerate your career to another level.

Today we’ll be talking about our top networking tips for professionals, how to build your personal network, and why building professional relationships can be excellent for your personal development.

1. Go To Industry Networking Events

Industry events aren’t just places to learn about the latest developments and movements in your professional sphere—although that is certainly useful. Events and conferences are also ideal places to network, meet like-minded people, and make a lasting impression.

If you have a portfolio you can show, then make sure to have it on hand. When you meet someone who’s interested in seeing your work, it’s always better to be able to strike while the iron is hot. Pulling out a laptop and showing them your work there and then lets you capitalise on their excitement. Sending them an email when you get home is much more likely to land you inbox hell.

Of course, you don’t have to have a portfolio. If you’re knowledgeable, passionate, and interested, then it’s still good to be at these events talking to people and getting to know them.

2. Build Professional Relationships

One thing you professionals underestimate is the power of social skills. It’s easy to think of your job with a very work-focused attitude. If you’re an app developer then your job is to write code. If you’re a graphic designer, then your job is to make images. This is all true, but your technical skill is only half of what an employer is looking for.

The further people get into their career, the more they come to value good professional relationships. Put simply: people want to work with people they like.

Now we’re not saying you have to be Captain Rockstar Charisma, striding into every room with the kind of entrance music that might be more at home in a WWE match. Everyone’s personality is different and whether or not you click will have a lot to do with individual relationships.

What we are saying is that making the effort to be outgoing and friendly while still staying true to yourself will give people the chance to get to know you.

If this sounds like the kind of advice you’d hear on a school ground, then that’s because it is. For all that we might act as professionals, at heart everyone is still human. Social dynamics still apply. People still want to make friends with other people. In any professional space you’ll find cliques, subcultures, and niches.

That might sound daunting but remember that there’s bound to be someone else out there who feels the same way as you. Just like making friends at school, the key is to find your people and connect with them about the things that matter to you.

3. Network For Professional Development

The power that good networking can have over your professional development cannot be understated. Many people think this is simply because of the “not what you know but who you know” dynamic but this is only half true.

There’s no doubting that getting to know the right people will always be the best way to get a leg up in professional spaces. It might not feel fair but it is true that many employers would much rather hire someone they’ve met and formed a professional relationship with than do the leg work of finding someone who’s 100% perfect for the role.

With that said, this is far from the only reason that it’s valuable to build professional relationships. Learning takes time and many of the best lessons come from experience. While you can’t replace that process you can speed it along by speaking to people who’ve been where you are and can point you in the right direction

Many people end up trying to learn in a vacuum. Ultimately they become demotivated and have to try something different. Only then do they ask for help and find that the answers were there all along. By getting to know professionals in your industry with more experience than you, you’ll be able to jump past the common pitfalls and pain points to focus on the skills and lessons that really matter.