If you have been reading my blog, you know that my goal in 2011 is to knock down my barriers to networking by participating in the 2011 Networking Challenge.  I am excited to strengthen my current relationships and meet new people in 2011!!  As promised, I am going to keep you updated on how I am doing in the challenge.  Also, there are quite a few other ambitious career girls who are joining me in the challenge for the new year.  Won’t you?

4 X 4 Networking Challenge: January Planning

I have narrowed down the people that I would like to meet with in January and have contacted each of them.  Many of them have not gotten back to my yet which is making me a little nervous!  But, I think this is just because people are still catching up from the Holidays and hopefully I will be hearing back from them soon.  What I am realizing is that the most important thing is to plan ahead so I don’t get stuck at the end of the month trying to fit in all the meetings!  I hope that the first month will actually be easy because there are plenty of people that I have been meaning to meet up with for the past few years.

My first step was to make a list of everyone that I could think of that I wanted to have coffee with.  I was actually able to create a pretty long list so here are the people that I am choosing to contact this month for a meeting:

4 People I Know:
  1. A boss at a previous internship (Date: Jan 14th)
  2. An coworker at a previous job (Date: Jan 21st)
  3. A friend I went to high school with (Date: TBD)
  4. Another coworker from a previous job (Date: TBD)
4 People I Don’t Know:
  1. A Senior HR director at a Life Science Company (Date: TBD)
  2. An HR Manager at a technology company that a career counselor recommended I contact (Date: Jan 4th)
  3. I will be attending an American Society For Training and Development Association meeting where I won’t know anyone!   Getting involved in associations and membership groups is very important in networking and I am hoping to make many contacts at this meeting to do future information interviews. (Jan. 26th)
  4. TBD: Still looking!!
Who do you need to meet for coffee?
If you would like to join me in this challenge for a month or a year, leave a comment below.