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:
- A boss at a previous internship (Date: Jan 14th)
- An coworker at a previous job (Date: Jan 21st)
- A friend I went to high school with (Date: TBD)
- Another coworker from a previous job (Date: TBD)
- A Senior HR director at a Life Science Company (Date: TBD)
- An HR Manager at a technology company that a career counselor recommended I contact (Date: Jan 4th)
- 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)
- TBD: Still looking!!