Being Proactive

I had been in LinkedIn for about a month and was getting very disheartened by it all. I had dug into the deep, dark recesses of my brain to remember names from the past. Oh, I remember that person, they were really nice. What was their last name? How do I spell it? I had maxed out my connections at 60.

My career consultant suggests I start being active in my discussion groups. Discussion groups? That means I have to write, I’m a numbers person, I don’t write. I couldn’t even do my own resume and that is about me. How was I going to participate in discussion groups? So I start scouring my groups for a topic I could write about. I search and search, I find topics from statistics, IT processes to personal development and so many acronyms but nothing that I could write about. I know I was just avoiding the writing.

I finally find a topic I could understand ‘Non – IT Projects’. I am a non-IT BA so I’ll put up a comment. I started my comment by saying this was the first ever comment I had posted on a discussion board, I think I was doing the ‘please be kind’. I did not answer the question, I answered the question relating to my previous role which was not project driven. Over excitement about the topic.

Great, the first comment I post has made me look silly! Oh well, its all out there in ether land and nobody has said I didn’t answer the question. Phew! Then somebody answers my comment privately, they actually took notice of what I had to say and had sent me an invitation to join their network! Wow, my first outside network connection. We continued the discussion offline and agreed that we agreed.

I recently wrote to this connection asking why they had sent me the invitation even though I had not answered the question. The reasoning was my “jump in and splash approach” in a “normative behaviour surrounding it”. The approach was similar to themselves, whom they hadn’t thought about for 20 years. They had also told me they had been following along (the campaign) as a lurker. Every connect can bring a smile to your face whether just as a connection or in general conversation.

Elbow on table, head on hand, I scour some more. There in the corner advertising box is a conference ‘JobCamp – Getting Australia Working’, Win Personal Branding Campaign. Let’s look at the speakers, the only speaker I knew was Iggy Pintado, author of the Connection Generation, we had more than 10 shared connections, through colleagues in my previous role but we did not know each other. Conferences, expensive, price $495 but due to the Global Financial Crisis nominal contribution. Ok, this sounds good, This will be a good chance to meet with a shared connection, allow me to network with more people and be able to create my own discussion for my groups if I can win the prize.

I have registered for the conference, now I have to put something together to try and win the prize. Personal branding, I had been hearing about it since I had been out of work but what was it and what could I say to win the prize? I had to write again! What was I going to write about!!??

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