With A Little Help From My Friends (Part 1)


One of the tenets of networking is that you seek to help someone first before you request their help.  

And the help you give could be a small thing like an introduction, a referral or even a “like” or comment on a post!  Little things mean a lot sometimes.

One of the things that I like to do to help is to give a shout-out in my LinkedIn posts.    
  
Whitney Johnson is a “Thinker, Author, Speaker, Advisor, Coach.”  Ms. Johnson is the author of a book called “Disrupt Yourself.”  You can follow Ms. Johnson on LinkedIn, or you can check out her web site here and subscribe to her newsletter. 

In one of Ms. Johnson’s newsletters, she invited her readers to participate in a networking initiative.  If you wanted to participate, she would pair you up at random with someone on her newsletter distribution list.   The pair would contact each other by phone or Skype, introduce themselves and then seek to help each other by offering advice or making an introduction.  

Ms. Johnson’s networking initiative and the title of her book “Disrupt Yourself” got me thinking. 

There are people in my network who I haven’t ever talked to (we just “connected” on LinkedIn and that’s about all).  There are others who I talk to regularly via LinkedIn messaging or meeting in-person.   

Here is my novel idea: If you are in my network and you are interested in networking over Skype, I would love to do so…please message me! 

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Christopher Leabeter give a workshop at Jeff Waldman’s SocialHRCamp on May 14, 2016 called “techKNOWLEDGEy – You Really Should Know This."  Chris is a “Career Services Guru and Freelance Web Developer.”  Chris works at Lighthouse Labs, and you can check out the Lighthouse Labs’ web site here. 

I am a Human Resources Job Seeker who would like to work at a technology company or a company that wants to build a positive workplace culture.  Chris’s presentation got me thinking that I don’t know a lot about technology.  To remedy this perceived gap in knowledge, I’ve taken two courses on lynda.com, and I’ll be reading a book by Obi Ogbanufe called “Technology Made Simple for the Technical Recruiter.”  Thank you, Chris, for giving me some food for thought about how I could learn more about technology terms and concepts!

I thought that “With A Little Help from My Friends” from The Beatles is an appropriate title for this post. 



I am receiving some nice encouragement from friends.  With your encouragement, I feel supported and am encouraged to “pay it forward” and provide a helping hand to my friends.

All this love and support becomes a virtuous circle. 

Originally Published on LinkedIn:  May 23, 2016
Image Credit:  iStock



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