The Definitive Guide to Standing Out Before, During and After a Networking Event

I want you to think back to your first networking event. For some, it was a local Chamber of Commerce meeting or maybe an industry trade show.

But for many, myself included, it was a very congested college career fair. For the time being, I want you to focus on the experience more than the specific event.

You walk into a room full of people dressed in suits and ties, the smell of leather briefcases and under-arm portfolios filling the air. You look down at the resumes in your hand, starting to show hand prints from your nervous, sweaty palms.

You look around and see professionals shaking hands and patting each other on the back like they’ve known each other for years, and then it hits you: You know no one, and have no idea what you’re doing there. Fear starts to take over and fight-or-flight is in full swing.

You look around at the myriad of booths, wondering what to do next. Do you walk up to any one you want? Is there a sign-up list? What do you talk about? How do you impress them? Why would they want to hire you?

Doubt like this is quite common when attending networking or recruiting events. And I’m not ashamed to tell the above story knowing that I once felt that same way. Luckily, today you’re going to learn an easy way to make sure that feeling never happens again.

You may not like at first because it requires some hard work upfront. But if you use this strategy whenever you can, and never give up, you will be successful.

Where Do You Start?

The concept is simple, the strategy is easy, but the implementation is where most fail.

The way to stand out from the crowd when job hunting at networking and recruiting events is to control exactly what recruiters and potential employers see when they do their own research about you online.

The offline part is what I would consider common knowledge — dress in a suit, be well groomed, smile, stand up straight, make eye contact, etc. The list goes on and on. But in today’s job market, that will not help you stand out from the crowd.

What will is having a professional brand online that you can direct employers to while controlling 100% of what they see.

Follow this step-by-step method so you not only stand out from the crowd, but are known as an expert in your field:

Step 1: Research, Research, Research

The first step to prepare yourself for a networking event or career fair is to do your due diligence and research.

Before ever stepping foot at the event, you want to know what industries are represented, what companies are present and what people are attending. (Click here to tweet this thought.)

There are various ways to find this information. A simple search through the event website will likely yield the results you’re looking for. After all, the companies had to register beforehand to attend. Worst case scenario, they have a list of past attendees and booth exhibitors. This will give you a good idea of the industries and companies that will be present at the event.

Step 2: Narrow It Down To Your Top 5

Now that you know which companies will be present, your next step is to narrow your focus on your top five (or so) prospects for jobs. This serves two purposes.

First of all, why would you want to talk to every company in the first place? Many of them may not be in your desired industry, or may not be your ideal candidate. You’d be wasting your valuable time focusing on the masses.

Second, it allows you to allocate your time appropriately. It would be all but impossible to talk with every attendee and company anyway. That is not your goal. Your focus should be on quality, not quantity.

Step 3: Reach Out To Them

If you haven’t already found this information, you want to find out who will be attending the event — specifically, which people will be present.

The simplest way to do this is to call up the company and ask. It’s unlikely they’ll be hesitant to give this information, especially since it will be common knowledge soon. This shouldn’t take long to do since you’ve already narrowed your search down to five companies.

This opens up the opportunity to set up an appointment with the exhibitor during the event. Nothing sets you up for success like a scheduled meeting with the company.

Step 4: Prepare Your Expertise

This is where the magic happens. This is how you will really stand out from the crowd.

Now that you’ve done your research and know who will be attending the event, you’ll want to take the information you learned about them, their company and their industry to prepare a few carefully crafted documents — one for each company you’re targeting.

Take one interesting and unique topic that your research uncovered and write a short one- to two-page article about that topic. It doesn’t have to be much; 500-800 words is more than enough. In this article, you’ll highlight your expertise in the industry, as well as your thought leadership — more specifically, how it relates to that company and interesting topic you uncovered.

In case you’re wondering what to write about, there are a variety of topics you can cover that you’re likely to find in your research:

News events

Mergers and acquisitions

New products

New hires

New trends in the industry

A recent, major industry event

The most important aspect is to make your article personalized.

As a best practice, I recommend writing these article all at once and getting as much as you can “on paper.” I know when I open the floodgates, my words and ideas flow much easier. But then you want to revisit them a day or two later (if you have the time) and edit as you see appropriate. This delay will give you a new perspective on your words and help you improve the articles. Even better, have someone else read it as a second pair of eyes can catch grammar or punctuation mistakes you might have missed.

Step 5: Post to the Web

Once you’ve finished your articles, save them as PDFs and upload them to your favorite document site such as SlideShare or Scribd. If you already have a professional blog, and it’s appropriate for the industries and companies you’re targeting, you can post the articles there.

Next, and this is key, you take the URL of each article and shorten the URL using Goo.gl or your favorite URL shortener that has analytics capabilities. This is so you can track how many views that article gets. You can write this URL on the back of your business card if you have one or, better yet, send it to your new networking contacts in a follow up email or letter after the event.

Step 6: Set the Stage

The last step is done during the networking event or career fair. Without being arrogant, bring up the topic of your article for that company:

“Chris, I heard about Ron joining your organization as the new Chief Sales Officer. He was really successful over at XYZ Corp. A change like that is pretty newsworthy in your industry. I recently wrote an article about it online. Since you stay in pretty good touch with the industry pulse, I’d love to get your feedback. When I get to my computer again, I’ll send you the link. Let me know what you think and we can go from there.”

If you didn’t give it to them on a business card, email the shortened link to them when you get back to your computer.

In a day or so, check the URL analytics to see if there have been any views. If there has been, then you can “randomly” follow up and ask if your contact had a chance to check it out and what they thought.

What’s great is that this strategy can be used for any type of professional situation. You can use it at any networking event, on job interviews, at trade shows, when meeting with old colleagues and especially with clients and prospects.

A Real-World Example

A while back, I used this very same technique with a prospect I had been working on. I had called and emailed a few times without having much luck. I was finally able to get him on the phone, where we discussed his current setup.

Before we finished our conversation, I brought up the topic of his website (Research). He uses high-quality videos to showcase various properties he manages around town. It was really unique, and I complimented him on it (Set the Stage).

I mentioned that through my own site, I advocate using videos in the exact same manner he does for professional branding. And although I thought the conversation was about to end, he gladly talked longer about his video marketing campaign. In the end, he directed me to the appropriate person within his organization, I thanked him, and we ended the conversation.

What I did next was write a handwritten letter, mentioning an article I had written (which was optimize specifically for him) and including the Goo.gl URL on the back of my business card.

Guess what happened next?

When I called the person he’d referred me to a few days later, I was warmly greeted and he knew exactly who I was, even though I had never talked with him. My original prospect had obviously read my article and shared it with this new contact.

As you can imagine, that conversation went very well, and I am currently moving them down my sales funnel.

Again, this strategy works in any circumstance, whether you’re looking for a job or prospecting for new clients. And with some upfront preparation, you can exponentially increase your success rate.

How can you employ this strategy at your next networking event? Let us know in the comments!

Image: Flickr