The three categories you must have in your network

Networking is vitally important to your career, so make sure you know what to look for and how to go about it

I first met ESPN Radio’s Ian Fitzsimmons (right) when I was his intern on a morning radio show in Columbus, Ohio. You never know where the people you interact with are headed, so that’s just one reason (of many) to always give people your best.

Let's dive into networking today because networking is going to be important regardless of the industry that you end up spending the majority of your career in, whether it's broadcasting or something else. You need to be able to know how to network. It's going to be important for wherever you end up going in life.

The reason that I think networking is kind of hard is because there's this “carrot” hanging out there for you and it's very distracting from the actual purpose of networking. The carrot is the idea that if I network with somebody in the right position, they might be able to do something for me. If you're focusing on that rather than building the actual personal relationship that is going to create a bond between you and the other person, then it's going to be transactional. It's not going to be authentic. The other person is probably going to sense it and you are going to decrease the likelihood that your attempt at networking with someone is going to actually work.