Professional networking for a better career

Abstract

Finding a job as a recent graduate can be challenging in the best of circumstances. During job search, networking is a key element for professional success. A solid and extensive network provides with an overview of trends, as well as information on new job prospects. Social networks facilitate the maintenance of relationships and allow to make new acquaintances, therefore new contacts. This research mainly aims to study the effect of networking skills in getting a better career and demonstrate how sometimes it can be a more efficient factor than competence itself. The following questions were addressed in the study. • What are the key behaviours to make networking an effective asset towards career development? • How can early career employees and job seekers develop a professional network that can help their professional life improve? The research generated qualitative and quantitative data with one method (survey). The number of respondents were from two categories (job seekers and recruiters) answered different surveys, the first survey got 65 respondents which mainly generated quantitative data, and the second generated qualitative data with 3 answers from 3 recruiters. The analysed results help understand the effectiveness of networking in improving careers and offering more opportunities to job seekers. The results indicate that networking helps pre-select and ease the hiring method for recruiters. The paper also discussed that the job seekers have many areas to develop to use networking better and stated some of the good practices and challenges that face a person towards a better network.