Are you a career woman? Do you work in a male dominated workplace? In Melt The Glass Ceiling, your career coach, Lisa Liszcz, will share tips and strategies on developing the career of your dreams. New episodes drop each week.
What if you could unlock career opportunities just by changing how you connect with others? In this episode, we promise you'll learn how to transform networking from a dreaded chore into a powerful tool for career growth.
We'll explore why networking is essential, not just for job searching but for ongoing professional development. With insights revealing that an astounding 85% of jobs are filled through networking, maintaining an active and vibrant network has never been more critical. Lisa will guide you through practical steps that you can start on today.
And don’t miss out on my free downloadable checklist designed to help you implement the strategies we discuss.
Whether you're aiming to climb the ladder within your current company or seek new horizons, this episode will inspire you to embrace networking as a rewarding part of your professional journey. Get ready to shift your mindset, take actionable steps, and elevate your career to new heights with expert advice and tools.
Click here to download your complimentary checklist here on "Networking for Career Success."
This week we are talking about networking. Why on earth do we want to talk about networking? You know almost every podcast I've done so far. In each episode I have in some way shape or form referenced or talked about networking and the importance of networking in your career. And that could be if you want to move outside of your company or you want to stay in your company. It doesn't matter.
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It's still really important that you develop relationships in your career with people who can support your success and people you can reciprocate with and also support their success. It helps everyone grow and be successful in their careers. It is also one of the richest aspects of your career. When you look back on your career one of these days, decades from now, there will be projects and jobs and trips that you look back on fondly, but what you're really going to appreciate is the relationships that you developed in the course of your career. I know networking can be so cringy. It can be so cringy and most of us don't make time for it and a lot of us let our networks go stale and then, when we're burned out and looking for a change, or we get laid off or we get a new boss that we can't stand and we know we need to make a move. We've got this tired, dusty, old cobweb covered network that we need to refresh, okay, so we're going to talk about that today.
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Here's an important statistic for you from Zipia, which is a really great site. I'll put the link in the show notes. It's a great site that has a lot of statistics on career development and also some good resources for you. I've just discovered it recently. I'm not an affiliate, I'm not attached with them anyway, but I am impressed with what they're putting out. According to Zipia, and a few other sources as well, 85% of jobs are filled via networking, with either personal or professional connections. If you're someone who ever in your life personally has filled out a ton of job applications, or you know someone who has, I am so sorry, because that is not the way that most jobs are filled, and it is even more true for people who have some experience under their belt. If you've been working post-college for 10 years or more, there's a very high probability that your next job is going to be found through networking. So let's make this a little bit more fun and a little bit more interesting so that you can get excited about it.
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So how do you get your networking game where it needs to be? Well, I've got three steps for you. Number one let's do a little bit of work on just our idea of networking. If you're like me, networking is something you resist a little bit. Why do we do that? Well, it can be uncomfortable. It takes some motivation to schedule some time to go and meet new people. A lot of us feel in that situation that we're being judged, that we're being evaluated. We get uncomfortable. We don't know what to say. Okay, if that's you, let's just reset this whole thing.
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Don't call it networking. Think of it as connecting with people, reconnecting with people or, my favorite, just think of it as benchmarking or sharing best practices, or think of it as an experience exchange. You're going to learn, you're going to grow. If you are introverted or you're stressed out, you're tired, you're exhausted, going to an event in person or virtually can be overwhelming. How can you get yourself excited about it? What if you thought about meeting new people who are just as uncomfortable with this as you are, and that that's not the only way in which you are like-minded? They also are facing career challenges. They're ambitious, they have aspirations, just like you Do you need more people like that in your life? This is where you find them.
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Let's talk about this benchmarking, sharing best practices idea. You don't have to give any intellectual property away, don't share any secrets, but this is a great time to talk about what you're working on, what challenges you're facing, what creative solutions you've come up with, and to hear the same thing from other people. So that's the big paradigm shift, that's the mindset shift and that just really diffuses a lot of the pressure that we put on ourselves when we think about going into networking situations. So just make that shift and get a lot of the pressure off. Let's talk about the nuts and bolts, and this is a tactical section. I want you to leave with action items that you can put on your calendar and take care of this week. First, find an event to go to. Where do you find the people that you're interested in networking with? You can network at a social event. You can network with friends. Think about asking your friends about their friends and pay attention to if you feel interested in meeting someone in particular and ask for that introduction.
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Network with your professional associations and look for women's groups. Maybe your profession or your industry has some women's groups. There are some great ones out there. For example, here in Houston, we have a very large chapter of the Women's Energy Network. They're very active and very strong. I'm not an affiliate. I just really admire what they do and I hear great things about them. We also have a very strong chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, nabo. See if you have chapters of either one of those organizations in your city, these are great places to network. For example, wen if you are in the energy industry, oil and gas, manufacturing, chemicals find a WEN chapter and attend. If you're an entrepreneur, nabo is phenomenal Find a chapter and attend. In women's organizations like these, there's a lot of support and you're going to find people who are like-minded and who share similar challenges to you. Yes, there is networking online and that's a great innovation that came out of the pandemic, but studies are showing that the best and most effective networking is still happening in person and that people who network in person prefer that and get more out of it and really wind up building stronger relationships with people through those in-person experiences. So I strongly recommend that you go in person. It makes a big difference.
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Okay, so you're introducing yourself, you're at your event. What do you say? You need a 30-second elevator pitch. This is where you say what your name is, what you do and what you're passionate about, or what you're good at. Have fun with this. It should be one or two sentences. Write it out and practice, practice, practice. Say this out loud when you're driving, when you're in the shower, when you're going for a walk, when you're exercising, because you just want it to flow off of your tongue. Here's an example I'm a technical advisor in IT and I'm passionate about innovations related to downstream operations in the oil and gas industry.
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Easy peasy, quick and if you're talking to someone whose interest is piqued by that elevator pitch, you've just teed up a great opportunity for them to ask you some questions or to tell you about themselves. Here's another example I'm a leader in operations in the electronics industry, focusing on business development. I really like developing others and growing our business in creative ways. That's interesting, that piques my interest, that piques my curiosity. So get your elevator speech together. Get ready to share about what you're doing or the culture where you work, because you're likely to get some questions after you. Share your elevator speech and get ready to ask questions. Show an interest in others. Ask people what they do. Not everybody's going to show up with their elevator speech, so you can help them along a little bit. Ask them what they do, what they like about what they do, what challenges they're facing, what they're excited about. Ask them how they got into what they're doing. Ask them about what they see themselves doing next and listen. This can really be fun.
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Okay, a couple of resources you're going to need. I highly recommend that you have some business cards. If you're currently employed, okay, use those business cards. If you're not, create some personal business cards. There's some great templates online and you can get them printed at your local print shop. There's some great apps out there, but actual business cards are still the best way to share your contact information. I've gotten into situations at networking events where someone wants me to download the app that they use for sharing contact information. That's kludgy. It's just kind of a pain, so don't go there.
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Also, create a networking log. This can be easy peasy, but you're going to want a record of who you met, where you met them, what you talked about and your follow-up process. You can create this in Excel or another spreadsheet tool, or you can go to LinkedIn and make some notes for yourself there. If you have another idea or tool you use as a networking log, I'd love to hear from you. Just send me a message using the link in the show notes. If you have a tool you like and you share it with me, that gives me the opportunity to share it with a lot of others. I haven't seen a great tool yet, so what I've used in the past is Excel. If you have something you like better than that, I hope you'll share with me. Okay, so that's the highlights of the nuts and bolts of networking. I went through a lot of information there pretty quickly, so I've got a little freebie for you where I summarized everything that I talked about in terms of the nuts and bolts of networking. It's my Networking for Career Success checklist. You can download yours today. It's free and the link is in the show notes.
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And step number three exude positivity. Why do you want to exude positivity? People are drawn to positive people. There's so much negativity in the world today and there's a lot of negativity and cynicism at work. You make yourself more attractive and you come across as more confident when you're being positive. So relax, have some fun, enjoy getting to know some new people or reconnecting with people that you already know. Make a commitment to listening and asking follow-up questions and enjoy the process.
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Sometimes this is a self-talk activity, often just telling ourselves this is fun. This is socializing. This is a great-talk activity often just telling ourselves this is fun, this is socializing. This is a great opportunity to do something different and enjoy the company of others, and just thinking that can make all the difference. It can help you relax.
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We're in a world where people's lives are becoming more and more isolated, and networking and going to these events is one of the benefits of you being an ambitious career woman. This is an opportunity to learn from others, to grow and to help yourself ultimately advance in your career, whether you're networking inside your company or outside your company, so appreciate it for the benefit that it is. If you're worried about feeling judged or evaluated, just remember everybody else is in the same boat. Most of us deal with those feelings at networking events, so use your self-talk to talk yourself out of that and remember that you're making connections, you're having fun, this is relaxing, and that this is a benefit for you in your career. You know it's my goal to help you accelerate your career success and to experience that success with joy, because otherwise it's not really valuable. I don't really think that success without joy is really success. One of the big ways that we all do this is through creating and nurturing relationships. So networking is key to the success and joy in your career. Remember you are going to shift your paradigm, manage the tactical side of networking and stay positive. This is going to benefit you and a lot of other people too. So if you can't do it for yourself, do it for the greater good.
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I'm looking for a topic for next week and I'd love to do a topic for you. What's your biggest challenge in your job right now? Message me the link is in the show notes and let me know what is a big challenge for you right now, and I'll do an episode on it. In the meantime, remember to download my Networking for Career Success checklist. If you don't already have this checklist, download it now. It has the steps I coach my VIP clients on and it's free for you today and it summarizes a lot of the points that I went through in today's podcast. The link is in the show notes. So I'll see you next week and in the meantime, go melt the glass ceiling.
