A professional network is vital in our industry. We were taught in college how important it was to network in order to optimise our chances of success because lets face it this industry is so competitive and if you know someone it can make your life a whole lot easier. I didn't fully understand the importance of this until my career truly began. My idea of networking is talking to people and sharing information. The information can be regarding up and coming auditions, classes or just basically if you know someone who has a 'finger in a pie' as they say, maybe they can put in a good word for you with the choreographer/director, that then increases your chances of being successful in that particular audition.
Networking these days has never been so easy. Like I said in a previous blog I used to have to go and buy 'The Stage' newspaper when I started out, that was really the only way of me hearing about auditions. I didn't live in London where most of the auditions and classes were held and those gatherings were the places that 'networking' really happened, that way you were 'in the loop'. I was not 'in the loop' I was a 3 hour drive away from where the big networking hub took place. This really left me with a huge disadvantage. I missed a lot of auditions because I simply didn't know about them and if some how the information did get relayed to the northwest it was usually 'there is an audition at pineapple tomorrow'. Trying to get a train for the next day to London was extremely expensive. I paid over a hundred pounds on one occasion to get to an audition. London, for 1 day, 1 audition and I got cut. Whilst there I got 'inside' information that they were only looking for boys, fabulous, I was there with hundreds of other girls who were never going to be successful either as they were the wrong sex, money well wasted.
It isn't like this now though. Now that web 2.0 is here anyone from anywhere can be in the loop. 'The Hustle' on Facebook is a fantastic source of collective intelligence when it comes to auditions and just any information that is slightly related to a performers life. I am quite new to 'the hustle', I only had a small professional network of people to begin with who I had met mainly through working in the industry, after joining the hustle my professional network soared up to 21380 people. That is a lot of information sharing.
Talking about sharing, some people don't share information which I find really frustrating because I will share anything with anyone. For example a girl messaged me on 'Dancers Pro', I had never met her before but she had obviously been looking at my profile and could see that I had worked for headliners Theatre Company and that is where she wanted to be. So she messaged me asking questions, I messaged her back with audition dates, what they look for and even gave her the email of the director to ask for a private audition. I don't know how she got on as she never contacted me again but the point is I shared my information to help her. A lot of people won't, even 'friends' sometimes, they keep their information close to their chest, I don't know if it is because they don't want any competition or what? who knows, everyones mind works in different ways so it is just something we have to accept.
These days there are some fantastic networking tools on the web such as linked in, Facebook, and twitter. I am a big fan of 'the hustle' on Facebook and before that 'Dancers Pro' I am now just getting more into 'Linked in'. I do want to start using 'Linked in' much more because the professional networking potential is great. Another one I would like to get to grips with is 'Twitter', I have a profile but never use it so I feel I really do need to utilise these tools at my finger tips much more effectively.
The power that web 2.0 holds for professional networking is phenomenal. Although 'The hustle' on Facebook is fantastic for finding out information I wouldn't necessarily use Facebook for professional networking. I think social networking and professional networking should be kept separate. Me as a professional and me as me with my friend and family on my down time a different as most people.
I think primarily networking as we do was more common within the performing industry but now it seems that it has spread into many other fields too. People are networking professionally from what I have seen all over in what I call 'normal' jobs. A saying come to mind at this point and I think that I shall conclude with this last thought... 'it is not what you know but who you know'.
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