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#92 Francesca Capellini on importance of networking:Tips and Tricks

Dr. Francesca Capellini returns for a second episode in which she will talk about the importance of networking in order to broaden your career opportunities.

Published onJan 31, 2020
#92 Francesca Capellini on importance of networking:Tips and Tricks

This is the second episode of Dr. Francesca Capellini, in which she will talk about the importance of networking in order to broaden your career opportunities. 

In her first podcast (#91) Francesca shared with us her career steps that led her to her current position at the Italian non-profit organisation Fondazione Umberto Veronesi and how she developed her passion for science writing and science communication. If you have not listened to her first podcast, don’t hesitate to do so.

“Believe in yourself and network as much as you can because these two things will open you so many doors. 

 Dr. Francesca Capellini

To learn more about Francesca’s tips, please listen to this episode. If you also have a story to be told or if you know someone, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Enjoy Listening!


Transcript

Warm welcome to a new episode of PhD Career Stories, your podcast for career opportunities after you accomplished your PhD. 

Today we meet again Francesca Capellini, who – in the previous episode no. 91 – shared with us her career steps that led her to her current position at the italian non-profit organisation Fondazione Umberto Veronesi and how she developed her passion for science writing and science communication.

In this episode no. 92, Francesca talks about the importance of networking in order to broaden your career opportunities. 

Benvenuti!

Hello everyone 

This is my small tip and trick for you.

 I think that the most important thing that you need to do for your career is networking. Networking is truly important and is the way to go for every job in every field, industry or academia or anything that you choose for yourself.

I got my first post-doc position with networking. I just ask through a colleague to speak with a professor and they speak with a professor and I offer myself for help and this is how I started. A contract of three months that ended to be one year and a half. 

Again when I decided that I wanted to start also a career in medical writing, networking is what got me there. So to learn how to network it’s important, very important. It is not easy because I know it, I am a super shy person and for me to start a phone conversation with an unknown person or to go to someone and just propose to help or even sending a message on linkedIn for me was super hard but I had to learn how to do it because you know that most of the position that you see open on the web are actually taken, already taken, they are not really available.

Do you know that 90% of the job market is hidden, just 10% is out there and of this ten percent the most part it’s already taken or is not really available. Most of the advertisements that you see, those jobs are already filled internally, many companies work with internal referral.

So how do you get the job?

How do you increase the probability of getting a job?

It is actually going in that ninety percent that is hidden. And what gets you to that ninety percent, is networking!

How to do it?

Well one platform that is very useful is LinkedIn. I didn’t believe it as well because as everyone, or most of us I had a linkedIn profile and I had all my profile completed.

I had 500+ connections but it didn’t work.

These was not leading me anywhere just because I didn’t know how to use LinkedIn.

First step, get a LinkedIn profile, know how to use it, learn how to use it and then start networking.

Networking doesn’t mean like write cold email to everyone or cold messages to anyone. It’s  start knowing people on the social network, build your network that is actually useful for you, for the job that you want to go for.

Once you create your network start to engage with the network so this means start commenting on other people post, drop likes and also of course after you did this you can also write messages but just don’t write messages to ask for stuff. Write messages to add value, to say something like: “Hey I saw this post that you posted, it is so interesting like thank you for sharing” or “Hey I saw your career on your linkedIn page, this is so amazing, would you like to talk about that”.

These kind of messages and this is just networking and you will see that this networking is just bringing you to know people and knowing people will bring you to know job possibilities or possibility that you were not aware of, so this is one way of networking.

The other way it’s real life of course. You are/were all PhD student so you already have a network that is huge, you already know many people so talk to them.

Just talk to people, ask them for tips, ask them to tell you about their story. You will get surprise or how many people are willing to help you or to share with you what they know or what they experience, so this is my advice for you.

Networking is truly the key to get wherever you want.

And another small tip is to believe in yourself but in the sense that when I started applying for jobs I thought I could just apply for positions that were very similar to my past experience but this is not true. You own your PhD, during your PhD you developed so many skills, so many transferable skills that you just need to learn how to transfer them .You just need to learn how to communicate your skills for the position that you’re targeting. Don’t get limited by the job description.

The job description is just a wish list but if you think that you can do something, if you think that you have the possibility to do something just go for it.

Learn how to transfer your skills to that job and go for it but every time be honest. Honesty  always pays if you truly think that you have the skills to nail the job then go for it.

But don’t lie on your CV otherwise you might land in a job that you are not able to handle and these might end up bad so be confident but also be honest!

These are my tips, like believe in yourself and network as much as you can because these two things will open you so many doors.

That’s it! I hope that these tips were somehow inspiring for you and that they were useful and if you need any other tips please or if you need anything or if you just want to ask me for other things just contact me on LinkedIn, I am always there and I reply to everyone!

Good bye everyone I hope I was useful!

We hope you enjoyed this second episode with Francesca Capellini. You can leave your feedback in the comments on our website, on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram and tell us about your own experiences with networking and how it helped your career. Would you like to share your own story with PhD students around the world or know someone who should? Email us at [email protected] and we will get back to you to explain the details. Until next time in two weeks!

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