Task 4 Networking Survival Guide

Networking Survival Guide (2003) explores the world of networking offering advice on the building connections for self-improvement. The author Diane Darling, shows examples of the benefits good networking can bring to people operating in business

In this book the author is trying to teach and educate the reader in the world of net working. By showing examples of how networking can benefit you in the business world. How it can create pathways to new opportunities of further knowledge and business deals that can lead to success. The book also touches on how people can perceive you and business through impressions.

“If you work for a company, remember that your behavior reflects on it as well as on you.” p.13

Also how experiences with brands, even friend’s experiences can influence your point of view over something.

If you’re already a net worker the book will help you successfully expand your networks. Its not all just about using the internet to network with people its also to do with face to face meeting people and being able to give and receive. We need to continue’ to learn and develop our skills, and as we live in an age where with a click of a button we can access the world via the Internet, we have the whole worlds knowledge at our finger tips and we should take advantage of it.

The author tells us that it is the most essential skill to take control of your own lives and its directions. Networking is you taking control of your professional career, and deciding how you want it to be directed. How you want to source work and build up your own personal reputation.

‘When you network, you are asking others to vouch for you. Your behavior reflects on them. If you are recommend you for a job and you do well, they look great! If the project is doesn’t come in on time or on budget its signals that maybe your standards are different from theirs and they wont consider one of your suggestions in the future.”p.12

This book is a training guide in how to network successfully. The writer has used experiences from her own life, and the work shops she hosts for companies. She wants people to know they are not on their own and there is a world you can access via networking to help you get on and to develop and to learn new skills and you can access it your self.

No man is an island, entire of itself: every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” – John Donne (1572-1631)p.4

The main assumptions that the author makes within this book, is that you only use networking as a business tool, when many people use networking as a social tool to meet people and to keep in contact with old friends. The age we live in and especially myself as a student I use social networking daily, well maybe even hourly. So why could they not tell you how to use that successfully?

If everyone in the world read this interesting and educational book we would live in a society where everyone networked not just in personal lives but in business also. This would maybe make business relationship better and you would find a much wider variety of knowledge and understanding of others and hopefully make the business world a much easier place to work.

If on the other hand this book was to be locked away and never to been seen again and the ideas that it promotes are lost with the book. The worlds business relationships will not widen and grow as affectively. People will find it harder to advance their knowledge out with there geographical location.

The author has a vision on helping people discovering new ways to connect to people through networking. The book is her tool to access more people than she already can via her workshops. This book means she can go global with her ideas of networking and how it can be done successfully.

I feel that more research into networking on a global scale would benefit peoples understanding on the importance of this skill. This would possibly help people want to develop their networking skills and further their careers and social networks.

Bibliography

Darling, Diane (2003) Networking Survival Guide (2003), p.12 – p.13, Ebrary, Inc.

Donne, John, (1572-1631) Networking Survival Guide (2003), p.4, Ebrary, Inc.