I usually organize professional football matches - Chevening Networking Skills Essay.

Hello friends,

The following is my essay for the networking skills part on the Chevening scholarship application.
Your comments and corrections are highly appreciated.

Thanks

Chevening is looking for individuals with strong networking skills, who will engage with the Chevening community ...

Networking is about building useful communities by genuine relationships based on mutual respect and understanding. Since elementary school, I had the motivation and the passion for sharing knowledge and contributing to group activates. I have engaged in organizing school radio programmes, and in different sports activities with my classmates.

Football is my favorite sport and I usually organize professional football matches to meet with friends and enjoy our leisure time together. In summer 2002, we won the beach football championship U17 in XcityX. Sports community is great for networking. However, I always consider the academic community as the most powerful community. Throughout my academic journey, I have focused on building an academic network with strong social grounds. It is my networking goal since my enrollment to the University of XcityX in 2005 as an undergraduate student, and until the present time as a Lecturer. Participating in lectures, and studying with colleagues were my effective tools to initiate a network when I was a student. My professors inspired me to develop my teaching skills and how to communicate with other younger people. After my graduation, I was chosen to work as a teaching assistant and then as a lecturer which improved my communication and presentation skills and helped me to expand my academic network to younger generations and higher academic layers.

The recent developments in technology facilitated the establishment of international networking among people with common interest and profession. In 2009, I have joined the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and since then I have realized the importance of participating in international conferences and new horizons were opened for me. I was able to expand my social, economic, and political relationships. In addition, I have presented a research paper at the 11th international Arab Conference on Information Technology (ACIT'2010) and contributed in organizing the 1st International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (ICECE 2013) in XcityX. Moreover, I have taken the advantage of working with Huawei Technologies to engage with business communities and widen my industrial community.

Volunteering is a crucial factor for developing my networking skills. It helped me more than what I thought. I have volunteered to work with Sons of XcountryX Charity Association in 2011. We have done great works such as maintaining XcityX Airport, and delivering fuel, and medical supplies to West Mountain and XXX city. Further, I have voluntarily supported our customers to recover parts of the damaged mobile network during the current war in XcityX.

My future plans are to consolidate all my skills and experiences that I have acquired from different communities including Chevening community and to use them for society benefits such as peacebuilding, technology advancements, and building trust between the public and the decision makers.

Hi Tarik. You have a well rounded essay here. You have managed to show your social, academic, and professional networking skills in one essay. However, the sports portion is quite underdeveloped and as such, can't really help to expand upon the idea of sports as having been able to help you grow your network. Could you develop the sports part as a separate paragraph from the academic mention? While the activity may have taken place in school, sports is considered different from the academic aspect of education so giving it a stand alone paragraph would better highlight the benefits that you got from that activity.

You should also work on better representing your academic networking skills. Right now, you are just telling the reviewer that you created a network, but are not offering a solid representation of if. One example should suffice, specially if it ties in with the way that you developed a network as a lecturer. As a lecturer, I feel that you should only mention your professional network development. Networking with the students is not something that is of much use to the teaching assistant or lecturer. You are already of a higher stature than that of a student so your networks should be at least a step higher than that of a student.

The volunteering part doesn't really exemplify how you could have managed to create a network during the time you participated in the activities. Could you be a little more specific about your duties that encouraged the development of your networking skills? It just seems like the discussion is more geared towards the team participation than your individual contribution.

@Tariks

Hi, welcome to an academic community online

my instruction are only what I have observed to be able to help, so for your other errors and/or any writing that have not responded to the question may have some better solutions from ant other academic fellows here.

For the introduction
I think that you do not need to express the reviewers back too far to the elementary school, I suggest you to make brief outline at a glance to tell the reviewer an overall story of your leadership and somethings that attracts them to be interesting in your skill by selling yourself academically. moreover no need to definite the word networking by general, striking its meaning alongside with what you have inside to hit the reviewers to read more.

The second paragraph

organize ------> organized

you should separate your football experience out of your academic experience for networking skills, because when readers is following your story smoothly, you just stun them by a quick change of different story in the same paragraph. Perhaps you can decide to extend only one story here or keep them both but in two paragraphs (still meet the maximum word count), if you would like to keep both

The second Para. you can possibly present your teamwork with physical and emotional task to meet your victory in this sport.
And
The third Para. You must cut all a whole academic experience up there in previous paragraph to combine with the paragraph in which you have described your participation in conferences to be more clear and relevant.

The Fourth, your volunteering experience was great, however, you have to show reviewers how could you use your skills to brings people together willingly, write the point----> why----> you have to do that,-----> how you manage that-----> by giving evidences, in addition you can add your own principles and definition here.

and do not forget to link what is/are your future network(s) back home and how can Chevening inspire or support your prospect.

Good luck, and hope we will meet each other in the UK, LOL

@Holt

Thank you for your valuable feedback. I will definitely take your suggestions into consideration :)

@Phoowadon

Thank you for your comments and recommendations. I will revise the essay accordingly :)

I hope to meet you there as well. Good luck :)