EAE Business School held a Business Networking session with a very special group of participants: current and former students of the Executive MBA. The event was held at the Utopicus co-working space in Barcelona’s Plaça de Catalunya and welcomed students from fourteen different graduating classes.
The EAE lecturer and coach Paco Ramos gave the participants an overview of the importance of having a network of contacts and being consistent in your approach to networking. Therefore, he really rated events of this type highly, particularly in view of the fact that this session welcomed professionals from fourteen graduating classes of the Executive MBA.
Mr Ramos emphasized that “good network contact gives us security and enables us to grow”. To illustrate this fact, two out of every three appointments from the middle management level upwards is based on contacts. The reasons for this are basic: firstly, it is a matter of trust; secondly, the access to information; and thirdly, “at the end of the day, we like to get to know each other, know who we are calling and not simply make contact through a curriculum”.
The EAE lecturer claimed that people like to create their own network of contacts, in view of their sense of allegiance and belonging to a group. In Mr Ramos words:
“We like forming part of a group and interacting with people with whom we share similar characteristics or attractive profiles in terms of our personal development”
In his presentation, he also gave a more in-depth analysis of the mistakes that people generally make when using their network, saying that:
“We only make use of it when something is wrong, for example, when we have lost our job. However, our network of contacts is worth more than that and we have to learn to take care of it, even if it takes up a lot of our time”
In essence, the message of this session was that all the students of the Executive MBA should know that the larger their network of contacts, the more opportunities they will come across.
A member of the latest generation of the MBA, Javier del Val Honrubia, asserted that his reason for taking part in the event was to socialize with people in his own class because they have not had the chance to get to know each other yet. He acknowledged the importance of having network contacts in this sector, as it is how the majority of opportunities are found.
A graduate of the 2013 class, David Tejero, for example, was one of the organizers of this kind of event a few years ago, along with his group of friends that when they were on the program were known as the Fantastic Five. All five of them met up at this event. He has seen for himself throughout his career that the best opportunities have come about through networking. Therefore, he advocates the network of contacts as a practical and useful tool.
