Crafting Your Career Network

Hello and welcome to the travel introvert. Today we are going to talk about building your support system, specifically for career success. So, the reason why I want to talk about this is because a lot of the time I'll talk with clients and they'll come to me with an issue at work and I'll ask them what other people outside of work or or their contacts have thought about whatever the issue is, and a lot of the time they will say that, well, they haven't talked to anyone else about it. And it's great that they've come to me about this, but it's also really helpful to start building and have a network of humans that you can talk to who are not involved in your work drama, but maybe do the same role as you but in a different type of organization or in a different industry, and or people who are earlier along in their career journey, and people who are further along in their career journey. So you get a good three sixty degree feedback review on whatever that issue is or just see how different people work through and or solve different challenges that they come up against and then you can take some hints from that so it's really really helpful to start building a network of people that you can go to for various reasons and even if it's not a career thing if you are a business owner even more so that you have connections in areas like marketing and finance just so you have people to go to talk to when something comes up. And so a support system is really really helpful it can be emotional support, professional support, informational support, and what you kind of want to do is at least the idea is to help you with your blind spots or your weak spots or areas that you might need more help or more growth or just just don't have the knowledge and quite frankly you don't have to learn that knowledge because we can't be good at everything and know everything no matter how much we want to research it and try. And so one of the things you want to do is sort of identify. Start identifying who can be part of your support network, mentors, peers, colleagues, friends, families and see where they might fit in and you've got to reach out and it might not be a hey, I'm going to use you as part of my support network, you don't necessarily have to say things in that way, but depending on who it is that might be really really helpful.

And with this, keep in mind that you are relationship building and you are network building and so part of that relationship building is keeping in touch. However, that looks like. Is it an email once a month? Maybe it's a voice message on WhatsApp? Maybe it's an email or a message on LinkedIn? Or maybe it's just a thumbs up on Facebook? Whatever works for the two humans is what's really really important and knowing that you might have different people for different things and you won't always go to one person because, you know, if you keep going to the same well eventually that well will be dry. So think about how to maintain regular contact so that person knows what's going on in your in your life or in your career so that when you pop out and be like oh hey I need I have a question about this they're not totally blindsided and they don't really know what's going on. So keep them up to date on the things that you're doing, the accomplishments that you have. No matter how small they might seem to you, letting other people know about it keeps you top of mind so when maybe you are looking for a job or you're asking for feedback they already know the things that you've accomplished or the things that you are working on. Another thing you can do is, join online communities or offline communities that deal with the type of work that you do, maybe there's a specific software that you use, maybe there's a particular challenge or certification that you've gotten and there's definitely normally a lot of alumni communications and groups and forums around certain certifications, so you can help build that forum that way and you know when you when you're reaching out don't feel sort of overwhelmed and maybe doubting why you should be even be reaching out but feeling stupid or that they won't recognize you as a leader in your field. You're asking for help and that is one of the best things you can do as a human and as a leader knowing where your boundaries are, knowing what you do and don't know is a really key strength.

So, I really encourage you to just start thinking about the areas where you might need a little bit of help or need someone to ask questions for and start to pinpoint mentors or coaches or humans that you can reach out to when you have questions to start building that support system to help you with your career success because they will become champions for you and what you do later on down the line. Thanks for listening, this is Janice at The Career Introvert helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.