So we hear all the time and everywhere about the importance of networking. I do believe in its relevance, specially in a case like mine that I’m not only trying to find a job but also to grasp and get involved with this place that is now my ‘other’ home (last time I went ‘back home’ to visit my family it felt weird, when filling out the immigration paper I got in the airport, to write under the country of residence field ‘The Netherlands’, followed by providing a Dutch address).
It’s definitely not going to happen much if I just stay at home interacting with my laptop and with my Scottish boyfriend when he comes back from work. It has turned so important to me that in the moments when I loose the perspective in this job search/integration process, I stop feeling discontented with my situation by reminding myself that one of the best things I can do and I’m actually doing right now is getting involved with activities that allow me to interact with other people, exchange information and develop contacts that can help me take further my social life and career.
So having that clear, the issue I’m trying to deal with right now is knowing exactly what to do with this new contacts that I have made. Sometimes it’s quite easy: I drop an email once in a while to keep in touch, I get CV’s spread around, sometimes this leads to an invitation to give a talk, the initiation of a new project, or just to an interesting exchange of information that is still pretty valuable for me. But it turns out that I have this good luck that puts in my way people who have very important positions not only in my field, the art word, but also politicians, high level executives, etc. Persons that are the kind of contacts that many would like to have and I don’t have a clue how to intelligently “use” them.
A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk in Den Haag about a very famous Colombian artist for a very selective audience: people interested in Hispano-American culture (bah! normal, you will say) which included diplomats, members of different organs of the United Nations and a bunch of ambassadors. The talk went pretty well (despite of having struggled 20 minutes with the beamer-pc connection) and at the end of my presentation I felt very surprised and grateful when many people approached to thank me for the images shown and the knowledge shared; they sounded sincerely pleased. Some of them left me their business cards asking me to keep in touch and offered to be at my service whenever possible. At the end of the night I returned home with the contact information of a couple of ambassadors, diplomats and alike. Could they help me find an interesting position in an international cultural organization? Or support me in the arrangement of some exhibitions abroad? They surely know influential people! Yes, they are just another human being and I should not make a big deal out of it, but… they know so many influential people!
*I got a very kind suggestion by one of the blog readers about checking my grammar and spelling. I ask you to excuse me for the mistakes! Sometimes, even if I check, double check and triple check the text, I only notice my English flaws when I read the text already published (and yeah, my English could always improve)!