This morning Rob Cullen met with the group at Griffith college to give us a presentation on networking.  During his presentation, a lot of it was review to me as I am a Senior In college and have been networking for quite some time. Although, I did pick up a few things from rob that I plan on using the next time I meet someone new.

Now, I’m going to go into detail on some universal networking techniques that I have learned over the past few years including from Rob today. When in person, it’s always great to start off by introducing yourself briefly followed by a firm handshake. If I had a networking event with name tags, the name tag should be placed on your right shoulder so it’s easily legible for the other person to read.  If approaching a pair of people or a group of people look for a peer group that have some space in between them so that you’re not just barging into the conversation.  The goal of the conversation should be to get that next coffee or lunch with that person.  Creating your network works much better if you build trust with someone and are able to make a personal connection like speaking about sports rather than talking about your current job placement.

Knowing names of people that you’re talking to is key so you have to do the best you can to remember the peoples name that you’re talking to.  Some techniques that may be universal to Ireland could be meeting up at a pub after work to have a drink rather than a coffee or lunch.  No matter what country you’re in, you always have to take into account the culture of the people that you’re not working with and adjust your strategy accordingly.

If you are networking online is a similar strategy except for the fact that you can’t have a handshake with the person. You should still be after the same exact goals if networking online that you would be if you were networking in person.

There are a couple of techniques that I heard about today from Rob that I will be implementing into my future networking events.  The first of which is I will try to be a connector in networking events.  If I see separate groups of people or individuals that have not met yet I will try to connect them with each other.  This will allow me to develop a greater mutation for myself as well as leave a positive impact on the people.  I will also be sure to have my name tag on my right shoulder in my next network event to make it easy for people to see my name. This will also make it easier for people to remember my name if they see it a lot while we’re talking.

Lastly, Rob is filled with amazing information and is an amazing networker. I’m very thankful to have met him. His presentation fit in wonderfully with the theme of this trip and for some people may be vital to their future.

The featured photo in this post is of my group and I right before we did our final presentation on think house, which our consulting project was based upon.  The first image detached below is from today’s lunch which was carrot cake.  I got this from a very small pop-up diner with a few people from the group. The second image attached below is a beautiful picture for my road trip to the Glendalough on Saturday.