Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

Your network is your net worth!

Targeted Audience: Students

Networking is always useful in any walk of your life. Finding opportunities, converting those opportunities into actions, and accumulating these actions for the ultimate success – all these things cannot be achieved single handedly. My mentor, Rajesh Setty always taught this to me –

What we know is important. But, who we know is more important than what we know. What is also important is how we know who we know.

During our academic life, when we are away from our parents, our friends and our seniors are our new family members.

These new roommates and friends play a vital role in our academic success by staying with us in both good and bad times. It is very crucial to get nice roommates. And that’s where our network of old friends and seniors come into picture.

Instead of trying to figure out things for ourselves by ourselves, we need to leverage our network to provide right opportunities for us at the right time. Seniors guide us in selecting relevant courses based on their experiences and industry requirements.

They inform us about the potential vacancies for RA or TA positions when they are graduating and leaving those positions.

When they are working in corporate world, they help us in forwarding our resume in their companies and guiding us for interview preparations. And referrals work much better than any job application process. It is like half the battle won.

They provide us their used materials like photocopies, books, notes, which help us to save a lot money.

The advantages of leveraging from your network thus goes on and on. But it’s not always about taking. It rather first starts with giving. We need to invest time to give without expecting a return for some time. These relationships do not happen as it is. They have to be carefully constructed and then maintained. Every relationship takes considerable amount of our time and we should consider that time as an investment towards building that relationship.

We may not see the benefits and rewards of these investments immediately, but in long run we will see the time invested in building these powerful networks getting to its fruition.

For more articles from this series, please visit – Beyond Intelligence
 

#1. If I ever finish a speech, and I can still standup, then that was a lousy speech. — Tom Peters

#2. To lead men you have got to lead them with affection. — JRD Tata

#3. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change a nation; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. — Dr. Margaret Mead

#4. Respect your efforts, respect yourself.  Self-respect leads to self-discipline.  When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power. — Clint Eastwood

#5. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. — Henry Ford

For more quotes, please visit, Inspiring Quotes.