Making Connections Through Networking

Networking

Networking is an important skill we need to acquire since childhood and carry that skill with us throughout our adulthood. Failing to acquire the skill of networking, our social circles will remain small and our influence on others will be minimal.

Through effective networking, not only do we widen our social circles but we will also be able to impact others with the resources of our knowledge, skills and actions, and in turn benefit in return from those who are in our social circles.

Make Connections Through Networking – Yoong Ee Chuan’s Pathway Project

“Make Connections Through Networking” is an elective Level 3 project for those toastmasters taking the Motivational Strategies track for Pathways Education in Toastmasters.

In this project, the toastmaster is required to attend a networking event and then share about the experience, describe what he/she learned from the event and discuss on the benefits of networking.

This is a Prepared Speech Project presented by Yoong Ee Chuan and he shared about his experience in which he volunteered to help out in his alma mater, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Alumni Mentoring Networking workshop.

Speaker: Yoong Ee Chuan, ACB, CL, MS2

Pathway: Motivational Strategy

Level 3, Project 2: Make Connections Through Networking

Title: You Are The Sum Of Who You Know

Date: 18 November 2021

Ee Chuan’s Prepared Speech Introduction

No man or woman is an island. We are all connected to each other through social networks. They are our families whom we live with, our friends whom we met, our colleagues and customers that we worked with in our lives.

My speech today will cover the NTU (Nanyang Technological University) Alumni Mentoring Networking workshop that I attended. I will share in my speech:

• what I have experienced at the workshop; 
• what I have learned about the benefits of networking and mentoring; 
•  how we can use networking as a way to be more engaged with life. 

The NTU Alumni Mentoring Networking Workshop

In today’s competitive environment, all of us know that networking is very important. We need to basically build connections with people as we go on to the workforce. With that in mind, NTU Career Office organises a networking workshop to help mentors understand NTU Career Office programme where they match the NTU undergraduates with professionals who either are entrepreneurs or professional workers from different industries.

First, what I experienced at the workshop. To prepare for the mentoring workshop, I identify my skills and abilities that I could offer to the undergraduates. These include internal audit, fraud awareness as well as compliance.

The facilitator of the workshop basically brought us together to run through the nature of the programme. This involves the NTU Career Office helping to match between people like myself who wants to volunteer our experience and services to help the next generation of undergraduates who may need a helping hand in learning more about the workforce at the workplace before they graduate.

The requirement for the course was for us:

• to at least spend 10 hours with our mentees;
• and over three months to give them coaching to guide them along their journeys;
• to find out more about career life after graduation.

While this session was to help train the mentors like myself, it was also a networking session because we were given some airtime to do our elevator pitch, where we shared our skills and abilities, and what we were able to offer our mentees. For those of you who do not know what an elevator pitch, it is basically a very compressed summary that you could deliver in a time it takes to get to an elevator and get to another floor.

Benefits of The Networking Workshop

Secondly, now what did I learn about the benefits of networking? In my career journey I benefited from networking with other professionals in internal audit and finance field. Such networking help build the bridges and allow for easy access to a wealth of knowledge and skills across peers as well as some mentors who have experiences that I could benefit from.

My previous bosses have helped me along the way. They have taught me how to lead and manage people by engaging them on why they are doing the things that they are doing, and the work assignments that we are given.

Just as I have learned from the seniors in my industry, it is only fitting for me to transfer some of this committed knowledge, skills, and experience to the next generation after me. How can we use networking as a way to be more engaged with life?

In today’s pandemic world, networking has become even more critical because it is harder to find opportunities to connect with people face to face. We typically initiate video calls or send emails to people we have already known. In order for us to find out more information about things that we need to know that are related to our work and careers, it is important for us to tap on our existing network of people that we have already known, and for them to refer us to others who may have the information, the contacts, or the background that we need to access in order to do our work.

Different Ways To Network

Now Singapore is a very small place. It is not uncommon to be able to relate to people we have met for the first time through either reference to mutual acquaintances, from family ties, from our current or past work environments and companies, or even communities, for example, Toastmasters community, or whichever of our volunteer community.

Singaporean men who have served National Service, actually have a very powerful networking tool.

We can exchange with each other our national service experiences, what your military vocation was. From there we are able to build pictures to understand each other better, make friends and start connecting and form a network which we will be able to tap on in future.

School ties are also another way for us to connect as alumni from our primary, secondary, junior college or polytechnic. Even tertiary institution alumni networks are also a source for us to connect and network with fellow peers and seniors just like what I have done with the NTU mentoring. It is an opportunity to network with fellow professionals.

Conclusion

Now to conclude, I would like to say that connections can only grow, and our networking can only flourish if we nourish them with deliberate engagement with the conscious effort in continuing to meet new people and to make friends professionally. The event I attended that was organised by the NTU Career Office, helped to bring like-minded alumni as well as non-alumni of NTU together.

Since our common purpose there was to learn and engage in the topic of mentoring, in doing so we also networked, learned more about our fellow alumni, as well as some of the non-alumni entrepreneurs who also participated in this programme.

Our very own Toastmasters meetings and Toastmasters activities are also another excellent way for networking. They allow us to practice our networking skills and take it to the next level.

It helps us to know more people, and for the same people that we already knew, we get to know them even better. I believe this will enrich the wealth of our experiences in life. As I do believe we are the sum of who we know.