AFTER just nine months in her adopted country, Englishwoman Marina Meehan was miserable at work and aching to go home. A phone call from somebody she had never met changed all that.

“I was packing my bags when the phone rang and a stranger said, ‘I heard you’re going back to the UK. Don’t — I’ve got a job for you.’ They had heard of me from someone else,” she said, adding that it was all thanks to some casual networking.

The job turned out to be a great one and Meehan hasn’t looked back since. Neither has she forgotten the power of networking. “All my career moves have been on the basis of networking and I’m a total convert to it.”

That includes her current job as learning and development manager in an IT multinational. “I got a call out of the blue from a human resources person I had met at a networking event a year previously,” she said.

Her contacts have proved a corporate asset as well as a personal one.

“When I started, I was told my success would depend very much on my ability to build networks around me, and that has proved to be the case. My chief executive makes a point of building strategic relations for 20% of the working day.”

Growing networks has become a way of life and Meehan makes a point of talking to at least one stranger every day, from taxi drivers to colleagues she hasn’t met.

“I saw (entrepreneur and politician) Brody Sweeney at a function recently and went up to him and said, ‘I’m networking, can I talk to you?’,” said Meehan. “He then came to give a motivational speech at work, which was fantastic and another example of the power of networking.”

She collects business cards avidly and constantly passes on referrals to those looking for particular types of skills or services.

Leanne Papaioannou, the founder of Chilli Pepper Marketing, a consultancy, and the president of Network Dublin, a networking organisation for women in business, believes networking is an effective weapon.

“When I’m asked to add value to the marketing strategy of an organisation, one of the first recommendations I make is that staff attend a course on how to network,” she said.

Networking skills work on two levels: raising the individual’s profile within the organisation and within the industry.

And there is no reason to restrict yourself to your own area of specialisation. “Some of the most innovative and productive work projects I come across have arisen where people get to know others in completely different industries,” she said.

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