Networking - a students perspective.

Networking is an integral part of our daily business activity, it is also very important to maintain our presence in the business community. It was, therefore, very interesting to get a different view of what we do...one of our students who carried out her placement with Alison Benney of Enlighten HR agreed to write a short comparison of English and German business meetings. 

So here in her own words, is a different view of Networking by Lara Loeschmann

Business meeting England – Germany

My first business meeting in England was in Cockington. At first everybody went in a room, ate breakfast and had some small talk. In my opinion it was a nice beginning, but the small talk was at first curious. Because the people wanted to know many background information of my life. I thought why do they want to know so many things about my life? I asked one women why and she said: “To build business networks I have to know the person, I don’t like smokers or drunkard people.”  In Germany nobody in case of business networks is interested in your private life. The main things are your abilities. After the breakfast we went in the presentation room. The presentation was about trademarks. Sometimes it was hard for me to follow but I think I understood the main content.

Furthermore I went to a network meeting. At first I thought it has something to do with computers, but it’s a meeting for building some business relationships. We met in a nice hotel and had some small talk with coffee and tea. I think we were about 10 people. In case of small talk the people in England are open-minded, polite and friendly.  I don’t know something like that from Germany, but in my mind it’s good to build new business relationships, stay in contact with people, present yourself and get to know some other companies. The people will think about you and your business and maybe they’ll recommend your company to someone else.

So...it seems to me that the main difference is the 'small-talk', which is very interesting. The ability to indulge in information gathering chitchat prior to establishing a business relationship is the way we do stuff here. We all try to find common ground and then build on that - we do the best business with the people we like - what a great way to do business!