Andrew Hennigan's Blog

Many of these blog posts are inspired by questions that people ask me in lectures and workshops, some by questions sent to me by email and some from questions people ask on the popular Q&A site Quora. Most of the time if one person asks a question thousands more have the same problem so I put an answer here, too, where everyone can read it. Just this week an anonymous user on Quora asked " Long term job seekers are advised to build a network but who would want to network with them? " .  This is a very interesting question because it highlights two misunderstandings about networking and there is actually a fairly straightforward way to solve this problem. First of all, you are not supposed to wait until you are long-term unemployed to start building a network. It can take years to build a solid network -- though much less to get started -- so you should be doing it long before you are unemployed. Network while you have a job, and even network while you are still...

When you are preparing replies to questions from journalists your media training person will teach you to reply in complete statements. So if the question is "Do you think that social media is just a fad?" an answer like "No" might be technically accurate but is unusable for the journalist. You will get much better results if you reply "I do not think that social media is a fad". This is easier to quote in video and much easier to use in a written piece. This same technique can also be used in email threads to make communication more effective. When someone sends a message like "Will you be able to help with the pitch coaching at the next startup event?" you could just reply "Yes". This has two disadvantages. First, the sender has to re-read their message to see what you replied to. Second, restating it as a complete statement means that the other person can see if you understood correctly. For this to work it is best to use your o...

Every day millions of twitter users share links to articles. Probably about as many bots do the same    But many of the humans do it so clumsily that they barely outperform the bots. What I see way too often are tweets that just give the title and the link. Even worse is when people post a clickbait tweet like "you won't believe this!"  This might have worked in 2010 but today most people are smart enough to see through that. So how should you share an article to be respectful to your audience and actually add value to the Twitter community? Here are three best practices. Summarize key points . Rather than  just writing "awesome article" you should try to extract some useful learning. Describing a recent article in Fast Company I could have written "Interesting article in Fast Company", which isn't terribly helpful. I could have written "Article about phones in Fast Company", which again is very uninformative. In the end I ...

Writing in the Guardian, Athene Donald describes Eight Common Conference Disasters . Some of these, like the time a swimming pool leaked into the auditorium below, are hard to guard against. But for most of the others careful speakers can at least mitigate the impacts, and sometimes avoid the consequences altogether. Here are five ways that speakers can and should prepare to minimize the risk of catastrophe. Check Your Own Laptop.  If you plan to use your own laptop at an event make sure that you test it at least the day before. Don't wait until you are on stage to discover there is a problem. Run through the entire presentation to make sure that everything works as you expected. Make sure, too, that you also know how to connect your laptop to the projector. Practice this operation with a projector at least once and stick a note on your laptop to remind you which key you need to press to send the video to the projector. Be especially careful to test that animations and video...

When you are invited to speak at an event you can prepare and memorize a suitable talk. Panel discussions and round tables are more difficult because they are not scripted, but this doesn't mean that cannot prepare in advance. You can and you should. Here are five practical ways you can do this: 1. RESEARCH THE EVENT . First of  all read the invitation carefully and make sure that you understand the brief. Ask the organizers to clarify any details that are missing or ambiguous. Then check out all the other speakers; see who they are and the kind of messages they usually give. A few minutes googling will usually give you all the information you need because the kind of person invited to participate in a panel discussion tends to have a clear online footprint. 2. LISTEN TO THE UNDERTALK . Listen to the social media "undertalk", the general discussion of this topic on social sites.What are the current issues? What are people talking about? What questions are they aski...

Is it better to develop your skills or your network? I've heard arguments from some people that only skills count today, while others believe that only your connections count. The truth is somewhere in the middle. You need both skills and connections to succeed in your career. But the best news is that at the start of your career when your skills are less developed you can compensate by working very hard on your networking. So why are connections so important? In theory everyone always chooses the best person for the job. Except that they don't. They can't. It's impossible because of our imperfect knowledge -- somewhere out there is the person we need but we don't know who it is. It's also impossible because if everyone went to the best person that person would be very busy and unavailable. In reality when people say that they are choosing the best they often mean that they are choosing the best person from the pool of people that they know, or that the...

One question that often comes up in networking workshops is "How do I network myself into a new career?". This question is mostly asked by people who would like to move to a new field where the prospect of finding work seems better, or simply people who are tired of what they are doing and want to move into something different. The problem they face is that they have no experience and no contacts in the new field. At least the contacts part is actually straightforward to fix once you have decided to do it. There are many ways to approach the problem and here are just six: TELL PEOPLE ABOUT YOUR PLANS . You are much more likely to get helpful advice, hear about opportunities and make new connections if you are open about your plan. Keeping your goal secret just means that you will not be in the loop and not taken seriously. Tell your network, tell your friends, tell your family, tell the people you meet. Sooner or later you will meet someone who is either in the busine...