Believe it or not, millions of people before you built great professional networks before LinkedIn was even a thing.
Many of the people I’ve worked with are less than comfortable with their networking options. If you were to ask them where they could meet professionals to network with, they’d be hard pressed to come up with ideas beyond LinkedIn.
Here are some ideas to help you expand your networking outlets:
(1) Industry conferences and meetups
Nearly every profession has some number of conferences and meetups you can attend; many of them for free or a small registration fee (typically to cover space rental and whatnot). If nothing else, go a bit broader than your specific profession (i.e. instead of engineering meetup, look for tech meetups in general) and browse around websites like www.meetup.com.
(2) Alumni gatherings
Whether it’d be college, university, or even trade school, you’d be hard pressed to find an institution that doesn’t have at least a small alumni network you can leverage.
(3) Coffee shops and cafes near company headquarters/offices
This one’s my personal favorite. A few of my favorite opportunities actually spurred from people I’ve met striking up a conversation over some morning coffee or a light brunch.
Your network can only expand as much as you invest into it. The more opportunities you have to network, on and offline, the better!
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