Eating alone - Your network is your net work (Chevening scholarship)

Question: 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.

Please help me to review the essay below.

"Never eat alone"

Since I was a freshman, I read the "Never eat alone" which is the most famous book on networking. It brings me lots of precious learning how to build strong networking both personally and professionally. For me, networking is a particularly valuable skill, especially when I move up higher levels. It helps me not only to become a strong leader but also to achieve my own success.

My first experience to build networks was started when I was a founder of a non-profit organization about environmental education for primary students in 2011. I have to build and utilize my networks to operate the projects. To begin with, I developed appropriate networking plans to approach enterprises, NGOs and press. With persuasive sponsorship proposal, I convinced them to offer financial sponsor and free media exposure for these projects. As a result, my organization got strong supports during 3 years and became one of the biggest environmental organization in Vietnam. From this achievement, I gained wider network which helps me to open up my mind and acquired more valuable soft skills. Despite 4-leaving-years, I usually keep maintaining these networks via calls, emails, coffee-talks. Until now, these networks are still useful to me especially when I work in marketing field and look for supports with environmental marketing campaigns.

Together with building career plans, I always strive to create networks as much as possible. During the "Future Entrepreneurs" contest, I was received training and coaching courses from investors, CEOs of large companies in Vietnam and US. I tried to reach out these people to build relationship and engagement by sending thank-you letters, sharing my passion and intended careers also. I thought it was the best way to make me stand out from the crowd. As a result, I got the good offers for marketing job at PepsiCo right after contest thanks to good connections.

As an International marketing manager, I have great chances to meet up and work with partners both locally and globally. I build a strong network with technology-company such as Google, Facebook, as well as agencies across industries: advertising, digital, market research... Beyond that, connecting influential people from different fields by holding events, workshops and seeing what these relationships yield are also my passion.

I strongly believe those samples demonstrate on how networking skills were supposed to be utilized in order to make a positive influence. Hence, if I am awarded scholarship, I want to become a Chevening Ambassador who actively promote Chevening scholarship and develop community throughout my networks. In term of online channels, my aim is to maximize Chevening's exposure by utilizing my social media networks of Facebook, Google and press network such as Thanhnien, Tuoitre...On offline channel, I will encourage more people applying for scholarship, share UK's culture and history as well as community's activities to future scholars. Besides, I expect to share passions and exchange experiences about marketing with other scholars and alumni, to extend my international networks and also to enhance my capacity as a marketer.

Greetings,

You have mentioned how you have used your networking skill in the past to achieve many things. In addition, you have also mentioned how you will use your networking skill to contribute to the chavening community, but, I think you should also mention how you will use your network and networking skill to propel your professional career in the future. You havent really talk about this in your essay, which I believe is important to talk about.

Thy, the content of your essay is choppy and seemingly unrelated at times. There is a lack of transitional progression in your presentation from your college years to your professional years. You need to smoothen the presentation so that it appears that your networks are actively intertwined within the performance of your current duties within your profession. The presentation is not focused on showing a working network but rather, a simply created network, which is not the same thing.

The networking essay should primarily focus on the development of your professional network as it applies to your duties and responsibilities at your current job. In this essay you are glossing over it rather than detailing it. So my suggestion is this, remove paragraphs 1 and 3, then change your concluding paragraph to explain the importance of your network as it pertains to the Chevening community of scholars. Replace paragraphs 1 and 3 with more of a professional networking presentation that will show how you started with your college network then, using the same college network, developed a more professional network within your within your field of expertise. The professional network should show how your contacts have helped you develop as a professional through the development of your work skills.

By the way, you should revise paragraph 2 to sound more suitable for a networking essay. The current emphasis of that paragraph leans more towards the L&I essay requirements due to the influencing that you had to do. If you don't alter that content to be more networking centered, you will have to remove it completely from this presentation because it throws the whole essay out of balance in terms of suitable paragraph presentations.