Role of Networking Skill to Career Success

Abstract

All human beings want to be successful in their personal and professional life. Success makes people happy and happy people are usually more productive. It is true that success means many things to many people depending on our values, faiths, beliefs, religions, culture, experiences, and stages of life. Thus, the indicators of success are not identical for all. Individuals define career success from their own perspective. Career success can be explained mainly from two perspectives- objective and subjective (Nabi, 2003; Judge, 1999). Objective success is measured by financial and material accumulation. It is measurable, visible, and tangible attainment. Examples are position, power, promotion, and compensation. Subjective success is intrinsic, and it is personal satisfaction that an individual receives from his job. Examples of intrinsic success include the employee’s job, interesting and meaningful work, doing good for the society, autonomy, life satisfaction and recognition. There is a positive association between subjective and objective career success (Gu, Q and Su, Y, 2016). Researchers identified many factors that are likely to contribute to career success of an individual (Akkas,2021; Tracy ,2019’ Grimland,2012; Greenhaus,1990; Judge,1994), The main factors, among others, are education, connectivity/networking, performance, exposure, knowledge in organizational politics, proactive personality, organizational sponsorship, and luck. These factors are interrelated. This paper deals with only the role of networking/connectivity in promoting and building the career success of an individual. Success in both personal and professional life depends mainly on a person’s ability to build a strong and meaningful relationship. The objective of networking is to build, maintain and strengthen real and authentic relationships to access information, resources and support that individual can use to make personal and professional progress. It is a process that is required throughout all stages of a person’s professional journey. Networking is viewed as a critical competency when employees are pursuing protean or boundaryless careers as………..