Chevening - Networking skills (Empathy as a good skill for networking)

Hi, I am planning to apply for the Chevening Scholarship and having a problem with writing the essay. Please read mine and tell me frankly about the contents, grammatical errors, or any other advices about it. Thank you!

Q. Networking skills

I believe that strong networking skill comes from the sincere empathy with others. When someone fully understands you, you would feel like to rely on that person and this leads to strong network.

I learned this at school after I contributed to changing the student council which was operated by only a few students to a place where all students can participate in. When I took on a leader of the publicity department, my goal was to make the student council attractive enough to engage many students in it. So I conducted a survey to the colleagues about the ideal image and role of the council and found plenty of new idea such as that many students had wanted to include their campus activities in the scholarship evaluation criteria. I definitely understood and empathised with their situations. With a firm will to reflect the voices of the students, I made the chief professor a proposition and could revise the criteria. This made it possible for the student council to gain the students' trust resulting in high participation rate.

After this experience, I always have tried to stand in others' shoes and this has brought on a great performance at work. As a person in charge of international cooperation, I once managed a training course targeted for foreigners for 2 weeks. Since their culture was different from my culture, I thought they might have felt a bit strange to stay in my country. So I decided to experience their culture myself such as meals, clothes and language. The trainees were impressed by my endeavour and they also began to try my culture actively. With the bond of friendship between us, they could accomplish the training course successfully and gave a very high score in the satisfaction evaluation. This good relationship has accelerated more active cooperation between two organisations.

During the Chevening year, I will be able to meet a lot of students from all over the world and it will be a great opportunity for me to learn other cultures including that of UK which I have really desired to know. Through experiencing the differences and comprehending, I will positively try to explore good idea or system which can be also introduced to my country regarding the disability employment. Moreover, I will apply this to my job on returning to my work and implement appropriate cooperating projects with other organisation.

Janet, there is no professional networking skill, or any networking skill for that matter, indicated in this essay. What you have written is somewhat applicable to leadership and influencing, but still cannot be used because it is not a professional experience. This is purely academic and is not usable as a basis for a Chevening essay. When the prompt speaks of networking, it wants to know how you have managed to do your job all these years. Who were the people, organizations, associations, or other important factors that contributed to your success. How do you manage to gain help from other people in the business? How do you keep in contact with them? Do you think they will be useful to your career in the future? Explain why. Then finally, convince the reviewer that this particular network that you have can enhance the Chevening experience because you will be more happy to share this network with them. You can always refer to the other networking essays as samples in this forum so that you can at least have a guide in developing your own networking presentation.

@Holt Thank you so much for your comments. Now I figured out that I did it completely wrong. I have a few questions though.

1. What do you think of my writing skill? Do you think the sentences are too simple or weak in terms of the composition?

2. Should the examples be things happened at work? I mean should it be related to professional stuff? I wonder if I can write examples which I experienced at school.

It would be appreciated if you can answer these questions. Thank you very much!

Janet, while your writing skills are academic level at best, you should not concern yourself with that. The method by which you write the essay is not as important as the information contained within your essay. Don't worry if your presentations are simple, there is no scoring in this instance. You still need to make sure though that you present your paragraphs in clear and understandable formats. So be aware of your grammar and sentence structures. You can ask other people to read your work and ask if they understood what you said. If they have questions, then you may need to revise the essay to become easier to understand.

Your examples, as best as possible, must be profession related because improving yourself in your quest to increase your professional capacity is the reason why you are applying for this essay. In a networking essay, the method you use to create your network and how that network has helped you in your professional advancement is just as important as the conferences you attended. In fact, how the network has grown and increased your professional profile is of great interest to the reviewer.