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The above examples may sound unethical but they are a fact. And only those who fail to network pass such comments. Key to a successful career is networking!

The people whom you know and help will be the people who can help you in your time of need. Many of us ignore this critical area and fail to build a network starting early in our career. Of course you may be busy performing your day to day job? You may already know hundreds of persons? But note that knowing is not networking. Networking is creating relationships who can be of your help. Here are few tests to check your networking status:

Breadth of Network: How many diverse types of people are in your network? Do you have people from all professions in your network? Do you have connections in diverse geography?

Depth of Network: How deep are your relationships in network. How supportive the network connection will be in your time of need?

Networking is not a day’s job or a project which you do in a day or month. Networking is a continuous process. Networking is not only knowing someone – it is nurturing your relationships with whim you already know.

Tools to network: Here are some tools I use regularly to network:

• Gmail Contacts: A great place to sture your contacts categorize them in groups and have as much details about your contacts. Will be a great source to keep your contact innformation online.
• Plaxo: Online business cards – beauty is that they can be updated as people move and you always have updated information.
• Linkedin and Xing: Great place to network with people across Geography. Geographical networking was always a constraint earlier and with online networking tools like Linkedin it has solved all problems.

Networking will be even more critical in the bad econimic times that we see now and in near future. With layoffs becoming common everyday – your network will come handy in securing new jobs.