Networking

“Network for net worth” ran the tag line of our Intra College cultural festival Transloocent last year. The focus unmistakably was on networking.

My cousin always keeps saying, “As much as your academic qualifications, professional achievements, hard work and dedication, the recommendations you get are required for you to move higher up in an organization or elsewhere, an equally important determinant of such a growth would actually be the power of your network”. Those words actually seemed to be pretty heavy to me when he first said that to me, way back in my engineering days. I hardly understood any network other than those we used to solve using Kirchoff’s laws and Star-Delta conversions back then.

But yes, reflecting back on it today, from the threshold of entering a new company with new responsibilities, I guess it’s absolutely true. Being in the right network, or within the circle of right people, is one of the important keys to one’s rapid professional growth.

No wonder we have seen many networking sites mushroom over the years. In the era of the internet, getting back in touch with your long lost schoolmates or college mates is no big deal. In fact, the power of internet and social networking has made sure that the world has indeed shrunk. Earlier, it never used to be this simple, but thanks to social networking, not only me, but people from my dad’s generation have been able to get in touch with their long lost friends and acquaintances very easily.