[GUEST POST] by Dr. Charlotte Huntley: 3 Tips for Building Your Professional Network
About Charlotte
Charlotte Hughes Huntley PhD, MPH is an epidemiologist, consultant, and podcaster with a diverse background in healthcare and public health. Dr. Huntley provides a variety of epidemiology consulting services, and is the host and producer of the Public Health Epidemiology Careers Podcast, which she started in 2017. The podcast serves as a mentoring platform, sharing tips and strategies that help students and graduates prepare for and transition into careers in public health.
Echo’s Note: I met Dr. Huntley on social media and really appreciated the work she was sharing. She also interviewed me for her podcast! We can learn a lot from the field of public health and health communication, and one podcast episode that really stood out to me was on communicating about vaccines. In addition to her podcast, she specializes in helping others grow their professional network. As I mentioned in another post, one benefit of learning how to be an effective presenter is that it’s a way you can build your network.
Being Creative While Growing Your Professional Network
Growing your network is vital and should be a part of your professional lifestyle. Too often, people will wait until they are actively looking for employment to start networking. A better approach is to consistently work on building professional relationships in a genuine and authentic way, and don’t be afraid to get creative.
I’d like to share 3 of my favorite tips for being creative while building your professional network.
1. Be genuinely interested in others
Show genuine interest in what others are doing in your career field of interest. Read their profiles, comment on their posts, ask questions about their business or job that are conversational. Avoid going straight to questions about job openings. Get to know them, and their organization, first.
2. Let your personality shine
Don’t be afraid to let your personality show and shine, naturally of course. Be enthusiastic about your work in a technical, research, or scientific industry. Although your industry of choice may not be exciting to others, they can be drawn to the topic because of the energetic way that you speak about it. You have an opportunity to display this type of zeal in your conversations, presentations, social media posts, emails, and anywhere you are communicating. It demonstrates your passion for the topic and can easily attract professionals to your network.
3. Share your work
Share your projects, presentations, articles with others when possible. Find ways to share your work and open the door for discussion among your peers, which will naturally attract new professionals to your network. I think this is one of the easiest ways to attract new professionals to you, but be careful not to go overboard. Find a good balance between talking about yourself and your work, and listening to and responding to the work from others around you.
I hope these tips are helpful and encourage you to get a little more creative in your approach to professional networking. Please check out my podcast, and connect with me on social media.
Ready to build your network? Check out Dr. Huntley’s course!
I created Optimizing LinkedIn for Professional Networking in Public Health with these principles in mind, being creative and practicing a professional lifestyle of continuous networking. The program is a step by step beginners guide to setting up and optimizing your profile, getting found by the right recruiters and professionals, finding clients and business connections, and growing your network on LinkedIn. You can explore the program details here and consider enrolling if you’d like step by step help with networking.
This is an affiliate link. All that means is if you end up enrolling in their course I receive a small “thank you” amount for spreading the word. You don’t pay any extra for the course and I would never recommend anyone I don’t stand behind. These small amounts help me continue providing free content on my website.
