Research has shown that 70-80% of all professional jobs are obtained through effective networking

Cheapening scholarship. I look forward to positive response and remarks

1. Networking Question

Networking signifies proactive efforts by individuals to develop and maintain personal and professional relationships with others for the purpose of mutual benefits in their work or career. Research has shown that 70-80% of all professional jobs are not gotten through classified advertisements; rather they are obtained through effective and consistent networking.

Precisely, networking has helped me to develop interpersonal relationships. This is evident during my days as an undergraduate student. In one of my units (Business Enterprise), my group members and I were charged with the responsibility to offer professional help as consultants to a company (Music Fusion). This was a real life situation where we had to put theory into practice and not just the usual assessment essays. In my group I had people of different cultural backgrounds (i.e Asia, China, Europe and UK). The task was challenging because we had to undergo the project management process but we were successful eventually as we were able to acknowledge our strength and weaknesses and embracing our cultural differences. We never allowed this to deter us from achieving our goal and delivering the client's project at the stipulated time. Summarily, the unit helped me to establish a long lasting relationship beyond the classroom with my tutor, the CEO of Music Fusion and my colleagues.

Secondly, I was among the successful students that were sponsored by the University of Portsmouth for the National Apprentice Challenge (NAC) in Birmingham. NAC is the largest residential competition for creative and ambitious students in The UK. In teams of four, students with a wide-range of backgrounds will go through an all-expenses-paid residential programme filled with exciting practical challenges. The reality-based tasks tested my creativity & my entrepreneurial mind-set and it helped me to be more aware of my strengths and better prepared for my future career. During the competition, I had a chance to network with like-minded entrepreneurial students nation-wide and some students were able secure internships based on their performance. I secured an internship but I was in my final year as the time so I declined the offer. The experience was fantastic and enriching as I was able to establish a more diverse network of friends with young undergraduates/graduates and as an extension of my reach into different social circles.

Since networking is not about making contacts but friends. This implies that one value quality over quantity. As a prospective Chevening scholar, I believe, I'll be able to form genuine friendship with people. I mentioned friendship because friends play a significant role to our personal development and future careers. Friends can make or mar us! If I mix with the right people I'll possibly have a good network of friends that will help me whenever the need arise.

I am very positive that I'll use my networking experiences to connect to a bigger platform of like-minded people through the Chevening scholarship. This will help to improve my intellectual horizon and I'll be able to transfer my knowledge to my community and the society.

Increas, you may have a full circle of friends and consider yourself well networked when actually, you are not. The number of good friends that you have do not automatically translate into an effective and useful network for yourself. The friends that you create in one circle today, may not be useful to you in the future if you decide to change jobs. Don't say that will not happen to you. Career changes happen every minute across the world. There are no exceptions to that rule. So make sure that you can present your network in terms of overall need and use. That means indicating not only your friendship network, but also your professional circle who may be composed of both friends and business associates (not necessarily friends) alike.

Since you did not accept the interneship that was offered to you, there is no need to discuss it in this essay. What is the point of discussing a possible network avenue that you did not pursue? That doesn't help the reviewer learn anything useful about you. The networking that you did with the music company might be a better example of an almost professional network undertaking. However, it would be better for your interests if you had real world, truly non-academic experience to speak of because that will show how you have grown your network from being an academic person, to a professional person who has contacts that are ready to be shared with the other members of the scholarship when it becomes necessary for you to do that.