Chevening Essay on Networking - understanding the importance of networking, I arranged this

Chevening is looking for individuals with strong networking skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your networking skills, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.

(minimum word count: 100 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

I formed a sharing program

Several months ago, my fellow classmates held a 10 years homecoming celebration. I was appointed as the event leader. Me and the team tried our best to make sure as many people come to the event that we decided to contact and invite everyone personally. The result was astounding. Out of 164 civil engineers of class 2007, more than half of them made it to the event. It was surely a good number since most of the other halves were living overseas or in work duty that day.

We realize that keeping strong networking is very important for the long run, and having a success first homecoming will affect the next and more to come. So despite the immense workload at our work place, we tried to squeeze time in order making it a memorable one.

Reading up the alumni database, I recognized that even though all of us were graduated as civil engineers, we actually had turned in rather diverse fields. I realized this as a valuable asset and decided to bring it out so everyone could benefit from it.

So I arranged a sharing program, divided into 4 session: energy, transportation, construction, and education. For the energy session we had those who works at either national or multinational oil company, as well as those who works in renewable and non-renewable energy. In transportation session we had those involving in land, air, and water transportation. In construction session we had those who works at either national or multinational contractors and consultants, as well as those who works in governmental and private developers. Lastly, in education session we had our Ph.D. graduates, researcher, and lecturer. Since I also found it important to know the rest of our colleagues' current work fields, I arranged the giving away door prize session into moments where everyone might stand up and briefly present themselves.

A sense of contentment run through me, seeing how everyone were enthusiast on participating that day. This would create a good basis that enable further excellent collaboration. By the end of the event, we did not only get to catch up with everybody's current live and feel closer to one another, we also had a vast knowledge and got to understand various things from different perspectives.

If a class of civil engineering from one university can produce such thing, I can only imagine what a vary backgrounds of Chevening community can bring. I believe a group of people with a diverse specialty of knowledge that have the same dream of making the world a much better place can go a long mile. I do have a strong wish to be part of that and make notable collaboration in improving Indonesia's air transportation industry and the safety of air transportation globally.

In the end, I believe that if one want to go fast, they could always go alone. But if one want to go far, then one must go together.

This sounds more like an event planning ability presentation than a networking skill presentation. What you did during the reunion was merely organize the graduates into sections. There was no networking involved in that. What makes this worse is that it is an extra curricular activity that does not relate to your professional tasks, abilities, and requirements. If you review the networking prompt, you will see that it clearly indicates the need for you to describe how you develop your professional network and how you continue to cultivate this network for the benefit of your profession. It is important that you discuss a series of profession related networks, rather than a social network. If you noticed, not once in this essay did you ever claim that this network that was created became beneficial to you in the discharging of your profession. As such, it will be impossible for you to claim that this is a solid and professional network that can help to grow the existing Chevening network and also, allow you to assist your Chevening batch mates or future scholars that you will be mentoring. I guess I have to say it straight. This essay is not what the Chevening committee will be looking for. It does not deliver the requirements of the networking prompt. You need to review the presentation samples for this prompt that are available here so that you can get an idea as to how you can revise your essay based upon your existing network and experience in networking.

@Holt

Thank you very much. I get the point and when I read it through again it seems very clear that my essay is truly far from what is expected by Chevening.

I could not thank you enough for being very blunt about it. You have been very helpful with everybody and your input enable us to form better writing.

Thank you.