Networking for Nerds: Find, Access and Land Hidden Game-Changing Career Opportunities Everywhere

9 The Networking Continuum

Now that you have ideas and (hopefully) inspiration about how you can grow and cultivate your networks for your own professional advancement and that of your organization and your networked contacts, let's see what we can do to keep the momentum going throughout your career(s).

This last chapter is meant to serve as a way to help you put all of these ideas, tactics, and strategies relating to networking into practice. Our goal is to maintain our networking, keep our networking actions fresh and dynamic and constant, in order to nurture your networks and expand into new ones. And we also want to ensure that our networking activities become less of a chore and more of a natural and fun action that you don't even realize is “networking” when you are doing it. This is where you get some homework!

Homework assignment 1: Start networking! Whether you are in your postdoc appointment, grad school, college, high school, or yes even middle school, start speaking with those around you, your friends, your bosses, your teachers, your mentors, your parents even, and ask questions about their careers. Learn as much information as you can about the different types of fields that spark your interest and look for ways NOW to access Networking Nodes that can help you and your networking connections now and in the future. And remember: It's never too early to network.

TIP: It's never too early to network.

As I have noted in this book, networking must have a place ...