A lot of people go barking up the wrong tree before even taking a moment to listen to themselves. I often have people approach me on my blog and ask me questions about how I got a scholarship for my degree or how I got a job in corporate finance etc - it's not like I don't want to answer these questions, but I hardly think it is useful information because I took a path that was right for me. No one else can follow in that path because they are not me - so for instance, how did I get a scholarship? Well the fact that I was a former national champion gymnast really made my application stand out, so if you want to follow my path, I hope you're flexible and have a lot of natural ability when it comes to gymnastics. Okay, that's a bit extreme but it is stupid to try to follow in someone else's footsteps because you can't take their path - you have to find your own path. A lot of young people lack the confidence to listen to themselves: but who else knows what makes you truly happy, what inspires you, what you really detest and loathe or what kind of people you like working with? Perhaps you are lucky to have a parent, an aunt/uncle, an older sibling or a best friend who knows you really well and can start dishing out advice that is based on a very solid understanding of you, but otherwise, the person who knows you the best is the person staring back at you when you look at the mirror. Learn to trust and listen to your instincts; if someone knows you well enough, then do seek their opinion but otherwise, let me give you a simple example of how it is difficult to give useful advice to another person when our opinions are really personal.
My friend Gina was going to Singapore for a holiday and so she asked me, "Alex, you're from Singapore, so what is your favourite dish from Singapore? What's the first thing you would eat when you go to Singapore?" I answered without hesitation, "laksa, an authentic Singaporean laksa. I love laksa so much. You don't even need to go to a fancy restaurant, it's a very common noodle dish that can be found in practically every food court or hawker center. That's always my first meal when I land in Singapore, I don't care if it is morning, afternoon or night - I'll have a laksa." So my blonde, blue eyed English friend Gina arrives in Singapore, goes to a hawker center, gets a bowl of laksa and positively hates it. She can't eat it for two reason: firstly, it is way too spicy for her English palate and secondly, she described the smell of the sambal belecan sauce to be like 'rotten fish' - well, it is fermented prawn after all, pretty high on the list of acquired tastes. Well, she was disappointed as she had heard so many people rave about how amazing food is in Singapore and she even came to me for advice; but when she told me about her unfortunate encounter with that bowl of laksa, I had to point out to her, "Gina, you asked me what my favourite dish was from Singapore and I answered your question honestly. If you had asked me a question like 'what should I eat when I am in Singapore', then I would have given you a very different answer given that most non-Asian people don't like the taste and the smell of laksa! I'm afraid you asked me the wrong question!" I would have started her off with something like popiah, cendol, chicken rice or bakchor mee instead of laksa.
2. Join professional groups online, start networking online today
There are plenty of online groups that you can join to start networking professionally, even if you are still a student or if you're looking to enter a particular industry. Take Linkedin for example, there are plenty of groups where professionals are able to network. Whilst anyone can claim anything on their Linkedin profiles, I think it is a far more reliable way to get sensible career advice because you're talking to people who are already working in that particular industry. Furthermore, people may exaggerate a little on their Linkedin profiles, but the number of people who would go all out to create a fictitious profile there would be very low because there's little for them to gain there. I'm in a group called Green Bonds on Linkedin and let's just say the discussions there aren't exactly exciting - not unless you're interested in Green Bonds in the first place! What is interesting of course is the fact that some people there are clearly keen to start a conversation, to network and to chat whilst others (like myself) tend to just lurk in the background and just read what the others are posting. So those people who are actively posting and participating in the group are those who are clearly more happy to chat to anyone and everyone who's keen to talk to them, including students and others trying to get into the industry. At least this way, you know you are talking to someone who is already within the industry and the worst that can happen is that they do not respond to your message - in which case, it is no big deal, just move on and chat to someone else instead. This is so much more productive than trying to get career advice from those online forums which are completely anonymous, seriously, stay the fuck away from those online forums where everyone is anonymous. On Linkedin, you know who you're talking to: you get to see their profile picture and their full employment history, they are not anonymous.
This is a more tricky one - there are plenty of industry events for you to actually network in person but not all of them are free. Organizing events are a big industry and there are conferences where you have to pay a few thousand dollars for just an entry ticket - forget about those, they're not for people just looking to get into the industry. Those expensive events are aimed at people who work for companies where they can just get their companies to pay for the ticket, "oh it is $4,000 for a ticket? I'll just get my secretary to process it, send her the invoice and she will charge it to the company." Do not cough up that kind of money from your own pocket for such events. Interestingly enough, I do have a German friend who has a trick that he pulls off to attend such events for free - he spends a few pounds printing up some fake business cards, claiming to be a journalist from a German newspaper. He deliberately picked a small regional German newspaper which doesn't have an English version of their website. You see, most conference organizers would gladly waive any admission fee for journalists as they want the press to cover their events and so they have a policy to give free passes to journalists - even if they are from a small, regional German newspaper. He told me that 9 out of 10 times, he would simply be issued with a media pass with no questions asked and sometimes he will be asked a few questions but nothing he can't handle. He has also picked a very common German name to be his fake journalist persona: Hans Schimdt so it is like trying to Google someone with the name John Smith or Jane Lee. So if you're as garang as my German friend, then you can even gain admission to these extremely prestigious events with champagne receptions for industry leaders.
But otherwise, if you're not prepared to pretend to be a German journalist from a small town in Bavaria, then no worries - there are still plenty of free networking events that you can attend in any big city for your industry. A good website to find such events is Eventbrite - they are active in both London and Singapore, I would broadly divide the events you can find there into two categories: free and cheap. There are events which may cost you a modest amount of money to reserve a ticket like £10 or S$10 but that is most certainly not going to break the bank. The thing about going to such events is that you need to have a thick skin - you must not hesitate to go up to a stranger and say, "hi, I'm Alex, how are you? What is your name?" Striking up a conversation with a stranger can be daunting to say the least, even for someone like me who goes to such events quite frequently, but I just bear in mind the fact that everyone at that event is probably feeling the same thing, so with that in mind, I realize the other person is probably grateful that I am the one who had the guts to break the ice and thus s/he would be happy to talk to me. But when you talk to people at such events, be prepared to kiss a lot of frogs - some people would be relevant and interesting, whilst others will not be of any real use to furthering your career. You need to be actually quite harsh in this version of 'speed dating' and be able to tell the difference between the two groups of people. I have had to put some really quite pleasant and friendly people into the latter group, not because I didn't like them but I had to recognize that our career paths are just too different to ever overlap meaningfully.
You'll be amazed how many event organizers would gladly welcome you as a volunteer - even if you're just some student looking for work experience or an internship. Perhaps trying to score an internship at a big company is quite a challenge, but if you're looking to help out organizers at an event, it is a one off and they're more likely to say, "sure you can volunteer with us, but you realize that I don't have a budget to pay you, yeah?" You may not do anything all that interesting, but you will definitely get to rub shoulders with people who are experts in the industry attending the event and as a volunteer, depending on your role, you probably will have good reason to chat with some of them. My friend who pretends to be a German journalist actually has a good reason to be at these events - he has his own company, he just isn't willing to pay those ridiculous prices for a ticket. So even if you do get into an event for free or you've paid a modest amount of money to get in, trying to strike up a conversation with a CEO more than twice your age would be a challenge. But if you were at the event as part of the organizing team, then you have a very valid reason to go chat with these people - once you have broken the ice, then at least you have the opportunity to try to make an impression with these people. Remember, most people who attend such events are hoping to meet someone more important or influential than them - I remember once meeting this lady at an event and she said, "I'm just the CEO's PA, he's over there if you want to talk to him." She just assumed that I wouldn't be interested in talking to her once I found out she was a PA rather than someone who holds an important position. So if you're a student, then do start looking for relevant events to volunteer at!
5. Keep in touch with the useful contacts, build a network
Once you've met these people, make sure you keep in touch with them by using social media - Linkedin is my preferred means to keeping my professional contacts organized. There are other ways of course and if you have say a preference on another platform like Instagram, you may or may not want to add them there. I have two Instagram profiles - one is my vanity platform, where I post selfies of myself in different outfits and the other is my travel profile, where I post pictures of myself on holiday. So the impression you get from the first one is that I probably spend all my time shopping for new clothes and posing for selfies, whilst the other one may make you think, "is this guy ever in the office? I can't take him seriously. He just seems to be on holiday all the time, has he taken earlier retirement?" Yeah well, I like to use Instagram for fun, rather than try to send out a serious business message thus you may want to think carefully about which social media platform you use to keep in touch with your professional business contacts. However, some of my work contacts have managed to track me down on Instagram and thus I am careful not to post anything too provocative even on my Instagram accounts. Keeping in touch shouldn't be difficult, simply comment on something that they post and maintain some minimum level of social interaction that way, so they will remember whom you are. The key thing is to show a genuine interest in what your contacts are doing, so it would appear that you do have some things in common with them.
But as a word of caution, please keep the interaction intelligent - let me give you a simple example. When I went skiing in Spain, I posted pictures of myself skiing on my Instagram and one of my Taiwanese contacts posted a message that he didn't know that it snowed in Spain. Good grief. What a dumb thing to say - even if you didn't know that it snowed in the mountains of Spain during winter, why would you admit your ignorance in social media? Even if he didn't know much about Spain, why did he say that to me on social media? At some level, you need to censor yourself on social media rather than admit everything with complete honesty. So imagine if I got food poisoning whilst on holiday, would I shout about it on Instagram and share all the gruesome details of the aftermath? Hell no, even when I did suffer from food poisoning, I kept quiet about it. Why? Because it serves no purpose to share those details, it would only make people say, "that's so freaking gross, like why are you telling me all that for crying out aloud?" So for this Taiwanese guy to comment that he didn't know that it snowed in Spain, I can only roll my eyes in disbelief - but why share on social media that you are so incredibly ignorant about Spain? That's simply not the kind of thing you do on social media as you have nothing to gain by sharing that information. If he thought it was a cool picture that I posted, he could have simply liked it and said nothing. Hence if you do decide to go down this road and use social media to interact with your professional contacts, remember not to do something stupid like what that Taiwanese guy did. Exercise some common sense and think before you post - think about the kind of message and impression you would like to give the person you are interacting with and if in doubt - don't say anything. Only choose to post when you do have something insightful to share.
You need to be patient. This is a process that takes many years but the longer you do it, the better you get at it and the easier it becomes. So for example, I was introduced to this guy recently at an event and I said, oh I'll add you on Linkedin - turns out we already have several mutual friends so it was easy to connect with him on that basis. You also need to put this whole process in perspective: if you have 500 contacts on Linkedin, maybe you'll become good friends with like 100 of them and you would have worked with like 50 of them or so. Then perhaps only 5 or 6 of them are in a real position to help you get a better job or help you make some money - so you need to focus your attention and energy on maintaining your relationships with that top 1% to 2% of your contacts - you need to play favourites and make a genuine effort to sustain that relationship even if you guys don't actually have that much in common socially but professionally, they are good people to keep in contact with. But without actually amassing that vast number of contacts, you're not going to have a top 1% to 2% of useful people to connect with. It is indeed a numbers game - you reap what you sow. Yes you need to do this intelligently in order to get the best possible results in the least amount of time, but there are no real short cuts that I can teach you. Hence, a lot of the problems I have observed in the recent cases I have written about on my blog relate to people who have studied very hard at school and university, but have made virtually no effort to think about how they can start to build a professional network of business contacts - they simply assume that as long as they get good results at school and university, then somehow everything would automatically fall into place: that simply doesn't happen.
8. Be prepared to help people and expect nothing in return.
This is one of my mantras in the business world and I have learnt it from other successful people I have met along the way - always be ready and prepared to help others. I have actually met many people who have gone out of their way to help me in the world of business, knowing that it is unlikely that I would ever be able to return the favour but they help me regardless. And as you can tell from the way I blog, I also often give my time to help people who desperately need some good advice or just for someone to point them in the right direction - why should we do that? Firstly I do believe in good karma. I have received more than my fair share of kindness and good luck in my life time - you might even argue that I've done little or nothing to deserve this much good fortune so I believe it is only right for me to offer help to others whenever the opportunity presents itself. Secondly, if people remember you as someone who is helpful and kind, then that's a great way to leave an impression on another person - maybe you will be rewarded somehow in due course, maybe you won't but at the end of the day, I believe all that really matters is that knowledge that you did the right thing. There are also situations where it is not that straight forward in terms of A helps B, A gets nothing in return but B gets the help he needs: sometimes, there can be situations where both parties can benefit from working together and I'd like to think that in at least some of the cases where I did go out of my way to help someone, there is the possibility of me reaping some kind of reward in that process. But if I don't get anything out of it, it doesn't bother me at all - I do still believe in helping others.
This book echoes your view of helping for good karma.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.8freebooks.net/download-give-and-take-a-revolutionary-approach-to-success-adam-m-grant-pdf/amp/
Thanks for sharing :)
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