[griffinkelly]

Its all about knowing the right people and being intelligent. To say its all one or the other is naive. I will say a good majority of networking events are the 'wrong' people. They're all out looking to network and you don't get anything aside from a few business cards of people who can't help you, or ultimately don't want to; they're just looking for you to help them. Every break I've gotten in life has come from knowing the right person, particularly through my university alumni network.

I do a significant amount of business in Japan, and the Japanese perceive America to be all about networking. The reason being, in Japan most folks stay at the same company their entire life, there is no need to really network.

[chrisseaton]

> The reason being, in Japan most folks stay at the same company their entire life, there is no need to really network.

Don’t you still need to network within the company, network to find customers, network to find mentors, and so on?

[afiler]

I think that's called interacting with people over the normal course of business, and isn't something that's thought of as requiring specific targeted effort.

[ghaff]

Correctly or not, the term "networking" has come to carry a connotation of attending "networking events" and passing out business cards with great abandon. I meet and keep in touch with tons of people at conferences and otherwise in the course of my daily activities but I don't really think of that as Networking.