Grab them damn it!

In today's age of cut throat competition, opportunities are anyway hard to come by. To top it all you have challenges like the global economic crisis breathing down everyone's neck. In such a scenario when people fail to prove themselves at crucial junctures, it clearly indicates lack of preparedness. Whether they lose out owing to shortage of wits or skills hardly makes a difference as at the end of the day, they are termed 'losers'. As they say, "Strike the iron when its hot".

Lets take the example of something as inconsequential to our lives as the Indian Premier League (IPL). The tournament presents a golden opportunity for youngsters to prove their mettle. Yet you have some of these Indian fringe cricketers failing to perform at crucial situations and making a complete mockery of themselves. Obviously, there would be some who would say that performing under pressure isn't such an easy task. Well my answer to them would be, there couldn't be a better chance to prove yourself than when the spotlight is on you. One has to be ruthless in pursuit of goals, irrespective of what the external factors are. If you are unable to maintain the level of intensity during tough times, you surely don't deserve to be one amongst the rare breed of successful people.

From a moment lets shift our focus from sports to politics. The recent election results highlighted a fundamental set of values which was neglected by the BJP and they had to bear the brunt for it. How many times have you heard the learned scholars talk about the importance of concentrating on your own strengths instead of focusing on the opposition's weakness. In the pre-poll days, the BJP had tons of opportunities to promote itself on the basis of its strengths and highlight its USP but alas it got way too busy criticizing the Congress and its leaders. You had someone like Mr. L.K.Advani screaming his lungs out, inviting Dr. Manmohan Singh for a live debate but not for once did you hear him talk about what he had in mind when it came to nation's development. You had the BJP coming up with campain tracks like 'Bhay Ho' in response to Congress' 'Jai Ho'. Initially people did respond to these negative tactics but eventually they backed out for the simple reason that they didn't come across anything that BJP was offering to them except for negative comments. Deservedly so, the BJP suffered mass demolition.

On the contrary you had the Congress (read UPA) doing the basic groundwork, reaching out to people, talking about policies and governance and spreading its network with a positive intent. You had someone like Rahul Gandhi travelling from village to village trying to connect to people. Fine, some may argue it was a case of political necessity but so was the case for BJP. The difference lies in the fact that while the Congress made full use of its opportunities to promote its intentions, BJP was found making a fool out of itself.

On a more general basis, its a well known fact that socializing and networking skills are of paramount importance these days. Digging and maintaining contacts is the need of the hour for the simple reason that you never know who might help you out in desperate times. Yet, I see people neglecting contacts either by getting judgmental about them or merely acting lazy. Either way, its a loss for them and I seriously pity their mindset and attitude. These are the times when you even need to get well along with people you detest to the core. The good old "I don't care" attitude just doesn't work anymore. One needs to be smart enough to realise where the opportunity lies and take full toll of it.

The art of networking has drastically evolved over the past few years. Gone are the days when you would think about the utility of a person before trying to befriend him/her. These days almost everyone you come across is a potential useful contact, be it a top notch business executive or a cab driver. So you would do well to leave your ego aside and be in the good books of anyone and everyone. Moreover a large contact base could never prove to be a drawback anyway.

Eventually its your ability to take advantage of the limited opportunities that would decide your fate. The difficulty level and multiplicity of hurdles just can't be excuses to escape from your true worth. So before the golden goose slips away, GO GRAB IT!

Making the best out of 'Online Networking'

Let me begin by asking you three straightforward questions:

• Are you a part of any of the following social networking platofrms - Orkut, Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wordpress, etc ?
  

• What exactly is your purpose behind the association with such platforms? Casual timepass, professional networking, increasing contacts, covering up for lack of social circle in the real world.

• Have you ever been left in a dilemna with regards to the time you've been committing online for such networking sites?
  

Before reading ahead, its important that you try and come up with honest and precise answers to the questions above. In today's age of Web 2.0 technologies, social networking sites are springing up everywhere, but which ones are actually capable of solving your purpose? I recently came across a post which seemed to provide a decent methodology to the madness. Let me state a simple real life analogy which would help you understand the utility of the various networking tools in a more precise manner.

When you happen to select someone as a prospective future member of your professional /social network (not the online one), you probably wish to know more about him/her before reaching a final decision. You wish to know about the person's profession, thought process, etc which helps you form an opinion. In contrast, how do you get to know an absolute stranger on the internet. In case you happen to be on Orkut or Facebook, for starters you have to send an add request, right? In case the personal profile does have some info, its an added advantage. But what next? Are you sure that the content that has been put in the personal profile is actually correct? Can the profile help you decode an individual's nature with precision? The answer is 'NO'. But, hold on...platforms like Orkut and Facebook anyway don't intend to provide you serious background info before you befirend an individual. So, what do we do? Explore other options before we turn back to them... The likes of Blogger, Wordpress & Twitter.

If you've been following someone's blog for quite some time, you probably know half as much about the individual as his real life friends. After all, a set of 10-15 posts is more than enough to expose the basic mindset of an individual. Imagine this...you happen to be a hardcore corporate guy. You've been following someone's business blog pretty closely and most of his posts make a hell lot of sense to you. What do you wish to do next? Get in touch with the blogger on a personal level and add him to your contact group. The point to be noted here is that, its the blogger's thought-process which motivated you to get in touch with him. This clearly isn't a case of coming across a random stranger and adding him to your network just for the sake of it. There's some serious reasoning behind your approach, right? This is what differentiates tools like blogging from hardcore networking sites like Orkut. But hey, this doesn't mean that platforms like Orkut and Facebook don't solve a purpose. They do! They could help you cement your contacts. May be you could add the business blog's owner to your Orkut network and get in touch with him every now and then. The point is, its the purpose behind each of these online networking tools that needs to be clearly understood. Here's a process chart which might help you network online in a more meaningful and methodical manner. It might prove specially effective for professional networking.

Professional Online Networking

Now you know how to make the most out of online networking tools. However, at the end of the day despite all the hype around online networking, nothing could be more effective than face-to-face networking. Hence, online networking should never really be considered as a replacement for social networking, just an added advantage.