Building a professional network is an integral part of career planning. As the saying goes, it’s not WHAT you know, but WHO you know. Networking can be the key to sourcing employment, but additionally it’s a great way to build your contacts for future collaboration, and to learn from other like-minded individuals. You should never stop building your networks – the people you meet today may be the contacts you need for tomorrow.
Career Services provides an extensive range of career-related events that can help you to build your networks. Sometimes these events are formalised networking opportunities with industry stakeholders, however others can informally become a great way to network with other people generally. For all upcoming events, please visit UniSA CareerHub.
Mentoring is a form of networking where you can learn from and be coached by someone generally more experienced than yourself, for the purpose of reaching goals and objectives. For example, a new accounting student might find it helpful to be mentored by a more experienced accountant who is already working in industry. This could be valuable in supporting them to achieve their own career goals.
UniSA offers a number of formalised mentoring programs, including the Business Career Mentor Program and the Executive Partners Programme. Alternatively, you could consider speaking with your Program Director, Course Coordinator or a representative from your program to see if there might be other informal options available to you.
For further information on the benefits of mentoring, please visit the Self-Help Career Resources.
Do you have an active LinkedIn profile? Are you using it regularly to keep your profile up to date, build your professional networking, follow key companies of interest, and learn from others? LinkedIn is a leading professional networking platform and an essential business tool for professional networking, as well as job search. If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, you’d be strongly encouraged to create one. Our Self-Help Career Resources page includes a number of pieces of information about LinkedIn, and why it’s so important for you to use it effectively. From time-to-time we also invite guest speakers/experts on LinkedIn to facilitate presentations, look out for these by logging onto UniSA CareerHub.
For more information on why networking is so important, please visit the Self-Help Career Resources.
Remember to check out your weekly Careers eNews to see what new work opportunities have recently been posted on UniSA CareerHub.
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