Brendan D. asks…

Q. I’m in college and I’ve been told I should be developing a network. How do I do this?

A. When I speak to a classroom full of college students I tell them to look around, the people in the classroom represent new contacts on everyone’s networks. The course instructor is a node on everyone’s network, I am a node and so are all the other students. The idea of a professional network may seem foreign to students but guess what? They may have already started their professional network via their social contacts on Facebook, LinkedIn, perhaps classmates from the high school they attended, fellow employees at their last place of employment, or friends from their military service. Some day you may want references from a few of these people or capitalize on business opportunities that may come your way from one of them so it is to your advantage to stay in contact with them. This is called networking.