6 – Making Contacts for the Future

*Format in APA and don’t forget to cite your sources.*

Instructions
Regardless of the career that you pursue or are currently pursuing, it is likely that the action of securing the resource of friends and professional acquaintances will be as valuable as any other action you could take.

Part 1:
First, take some time to reflect on your career and/or future career. If this includes more than one career path, then focus on the one that you are most concerned with in the long term. This might include working in a specific field, starting a business, or any other pursuit you are currently working on or plan to work on in the future. The choice behind the pursuit you will focus on is a personal choice.

Write two pages on why this particular career and/or pursuit is your choice. Reflecting on the why behind your wish to achieve a goal will help to make it feel more tangible to you. This exercise of reflection should serve to remind you of your motivation and will be a good thing to refer back to if your motivation ever gets low. The “why” behind a pursuit is oftentimes more important than the “how” of a pursuit. If you have a strong enough “why,” you will find the “how.”

Part 2:
For the second part of this assignment, make a list of the types of people that could help you in your career and why those people would be good contacts to have. This list should be general in nature, meaning you should list professions or names of positions within companies rather than specific names.

You should list general fields or positions like accountants, attorneys, marketing managers, CEOs, etc., rather than any specific names. Be sure to list at least five professions or types of people.

Part 3:
Next, consider which social media platforms you could use to make personal contacts that could help you in your pursuit along with why and how you could use each. Ensure that the platform and your use of it line up with the specifics behind your chosen future goal.

Describe at least three different platforms you could use, along with why you would use it, and how you would use it for each of the three.

• Platform #
• Why?
• How?
• Platform #
• Why?
• How?
• Platform #
• Why?
• How?
• Part 4:
  Finally, put all of this together and take action. The next part of this assignment is where you can make a big difference in your grade as well as in your real life pursuit of a goal!

  Reach out through the avenue of social media and make contact with three people that you do not currently know. Describe who you contacted and why (you do not need to give their specific name). Explain how you went about contacting them. Contacting someone that works in the same field as you or the same field you intend to work in should be relatively easy as long as you take a professional approach. Speculate over how this new contact might be helpful to you in the future. If you are not currently using social media, then find someone that you know that has used social media to make connections. Ask them to describe how social media has helped them to network and write about social media has helped them to network and make connections. Use at least 2 credible sources.