by George Webb
RCEL Industry Relations Director
In Part I of this article, we discussed two core principles of networking and two specific tools you can use to connect directly to specific people, even while traditional networking events are on hold. Today we review a few online tools that will help you broaden and deepen your network while building your personal brand.
Tools for making connections
With or without a pandemic, LinkedIn and its Rice-specific version, Sallyportal, remain the digital bedrock of networking. Whole treatises have been written on how to use LinkedIn most effectively, but for now a few reminders will suffice:
- Keep your own profile clean and up-to-date. You don’t want people who see it to think it is an old or stale profile.
- Contribute content – but you don’t have to create it. A consistent presence is more important than originality, and the simplest way to consistently contribute is to share things from other people. A short post today sharing an article you like is better than an insightful essay tomorrow that you never get around to writing.
- Again, focus on other people. There are two simple ways to apply this principle to your LinkedIn and Sallyportal posts:
- Share news aboutsomeone: “Congratulations to my friend Jill van Arsell, who just started work at / received an award from / was mentioned in an article about…”
- Share news withsomeone: “Jill van Arsell, I thought this article might interest you and your colleagues…”
Making your posts about others does two things: it strengthens your own connection with the other person, and it puts your name in front of their contacts in a generous and positive light.
Tools for keeping up to date
News updates from Rice, technology sites like Wiredand IEEE Spectrum, and local or regional business journalsare great resources for things to share on LinkedIn and Sallyportal – or in a quick email. Rest assured that you don’t need to follow all this news religiously, and trying to do so would be overwhelming. Instead, just be opportunistic: when you do see something that is about or would interest someone you know, try to take a few minutes to share it. An advantage of sharing someone else’s news (a job success, an award, etc.) is that it makes you more likely to remember that news yourself – which makes your connection to that person more meaningful.
Tools for staying in touch
While “social” social media channels like Facebook and Instagram are not the best tools for creating professional contacts, they are extremely useful for staying in touch with people you know as friends. As you advance in your career, your peers will also advance in theirs. So keeping in touch with your current friends or reconnecting with old friends today builds your professional network for tomorrow.
With so many tools available, there is a danger of thinking that you need to use all of the tools, all of the time. You don’t. The point is not to be a perfect networker, or even a great one, but simply to network. As the philosopher Voltaire wisely advised, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
George Webb, RCEL’s Industry Relations Directors, is a Rice alum (BSEE ’88, MEE ’91) and a past president of Rice Engineering Alumni. If you have any questions or would like some assistance in professional networking, please contact George at (713) 348-2704 or gwebb@rice.edu.
Presented by RCEL faculty, the RCEL Tip Tuesday Series addresses a variety of topics applicable to young engineering leaders, and encourages them to learn more and improve.