ME3 Networking 1: what is it and why do it?

Unpublished article for ME3 Magazine by R. MORA

Introduction

Since the beginning of the ME3 ’10 master we have been aware of the importance of networking: well before starting, people were already talking to each other on Facebook and MSN. Many shared a flat in Madrid before even knowing each other personally.

As time has passed, we have increased our network to IMIM in Madrid, MLPS and PM3E in Nantes, as well as ME3 ’09, Erasmus friends, former roomies, lecturers, etc. It can easily be said that each ME3 student has at least increased its social network by 50 new contacts with 17 different nationalities. This obviously represents a unique added value and competitive advantage for each one of us, but how can this potential be exploited? How do we capitalize this social networking into a professional networking strategy?

What is networking?

Investigations related to networking began around the 1930’s [1] although the concept became more known in the late 80’s with the boom of business strategy and finally in the last 10 years the concept has been used to refer to the Web 2.0 explosion.

Networking basically describes the interactions of an organization (individual) with its environment or context [2]. The organization’s actions depend on these interactions and with time, the context (suppliers, clients, interested parties) also becomes dependant of the organization’s actions. In this context, networking becomes successful as the organization is capable of building strong connections and is able to create new connections rapidly from previous acquaintances. Figure 1 shows a very simple representation of what the context of an organization’s network is.

Although social networking has become increasingly common in the last years, it is still done instinctively by most people, and despite being aware of the potential it represents for personal benefit few people have a networking strategy. It might be said that personal networks are for socializing, but in the job market, studies have shown that a job searcher who has a high amount of employed friends will have a higher chance of finding a job and increasing its productivity [1].

ME3 networking

As an organization, ME3 has an academic context per se, but it is also true that its international context gives it a diverse context (language learning, multicultural, plurireligious, etc.) and its management and engineering context gives it a leadership and industrial/services context in the job market.

With these in mind, creating a networking strategy has proved to be more difficult than expected, basically because we might be talking of several objectives that must be linked in such a way that it remains diverse, yet useful for all the interested parties.

Why network?

In this first part, I would like to propose some objectives of why build an ME3 networking strategy as a way to invite the rest of the community to become active in the action plan execution of such strategy.

T. Barkan, from Globalization Strategies [3], suggests the following steps should be defines in order to develop a succesful networking strategy:

• Your audience (current and potential): future, present and former alumni, lecturers and academic administrators or liaisons at universities.

• Your objectives (in no specific order):

1. Build a long term international community:

a. Keep in touch and updated with the ME3 community.

2. Increase participation in the academic market:

a. Recruit future ME3’s with high potential and performance.

b. Increase the master’s reputation and recognition

3. Increase participation in the job market:

a. Find top quality and relevant internships and jobs for ME3’s.

b. Promote entrepreneurship and champion young entrepreneurs.

The remaining steps will be discussed in future articles:

• Your message

• Your platform(s)

• Your Intellectual Property (IP)

• Your network champions

• The process, structure, plan and resource allocation to implement your strategy

• Measurement