"Networking is already essential, but it takes time, dedication and above all strategy"

10/10/2024

You did Advertising and Public Relations at the UAB. Why did you choose these studies?

I have always had two passions in life, which have been computer science and advertising. As a child I didn't drag Barbies, but keyboards. But I'm too active, I didn't see myself programming. I chose to study Advertising.

What were your first professional steps?

I liked the race a lot, but unfortunately when I arrived in the "real world" it was not what I expected. I finished my degree in June 96, now it's been 28 years, already! And as it was done in "my time", I took a list of advertising agencies and went door to door in Barcelona. As a result, I joined an agency where they were about to have maternity leave, and I made a substitution, but I was not convinced by this "side" of the profession. So I decided to move on to the client side. Until 2007, I was working in the marketing department of a medical publishing house, bringing issues online.

But in 2004 you change course.

Yes, from a very young age, I was very social, I was the typical person in the company who waited for my colleagues' birthdays to organize something. In 2004 I had the opportunity to go to Silicon Valley on a very interesting business mission, which changed my life, because I discovered that everything I liked to do to connect people had a name: Networking. When I returned, in July 2004, I continued to combine my work in the medical publishing house with the organization of my first courses and Networking dynamics, investing my personal and vacation days.

On January 1, 2008, and with the support of my partner, I decided to "take the leap": to leave my job and dedicate myself 100% to what, after 20 years, is still my profession and, I would even say, passion. Everyone is talking about Networking now and it's very easy, but when I started nobody knew about it.

What was Networking like in 2007?

Logically, it was a topic more oriented towards entrepreneurs, now we have assimilated that it is also important for people looking for work, because it is known that more than 80% of offers circulate through contacts. In addition, I think that Networking is not just for looking for a job or clients, it is for everything: to look for an apartment, to look for a person to help you with household chores... At a lunch 10 years ago I was told that there would come a day when everyone would know how to do Networking, but I still think that I have work ahead of me, because Networking is time, dedication and above all strategy. Meeting people is great, but relationships need to be kept alive. We tend to work on the network when we need something, or work, or clients, and when we get it, we stop it and the network has to be worked on every day. I always say it's a bit like a diet. It is better to start doing it with small habits, when you don't need it. We must be aware that if you have not worked on the network for 30 years, Networking does not appear by magic or luck.

What is a good Networking strategy?

There are several phases. First, focus, think, define and above all write down what you want to achieve, well, what your goal is. Start by deciding, for example, which forty companies you would like to be your customers or which forty companies you would like to work for. That doesn't mean you shut yourself down. Once you have them, detect the person you have to "seduce". And from there, use the tool that is most efficient to contact them, it does not always have to be LinkedIn.

Are there other networks that are used professionally?

I'll give you a "curious" example: a very large company in the United States had a selection process, where it had to select many candidates from a very specific area. Logically, the recruitment department would have used LinkedIn, but curiously they used Tinder. yes, I said Tinder. And why? They saw that the profile of the person they were looking for connected a lot to this network and, in addition, it allows geolocation, a function that LinkedIn although it has an interesting mobile application with even exclusive options, has not yet. They ran a campaign and when someone from the profile they were looking for connected, an ad appeared: "We are looking for you, stop a professional roll". And it worked for them. It works because you can use irony and capture a type of people. There are already startups that have also done so in Spain.

Many people understand LinkedIn simply to put their CV on it to have it online.

Yes, and LinkedIn has perhaps also positioned itself a lot as a tool that should only be used to look for a job, when it really was born as a network of professional contacts.

Just think that LinkedIn has just turned 21 years old this May and I have been part of it since 2004, that is, I have been active for 20 years, perhaps when it was practically not known or used here. In this first stage there were no options to look for work. For me, LinkedIn is the yellow pages of the twenty-first century, it is a platform to keep up to date with international trends, a tool for constant training. Without obsessing, because it's not a matter of having a lot of contacts, it's not about connecting for the sake of connecting, the first thing I say in class is: "Don't have contacts, have connections". The fact of having a card or a contact, if you don't work on it, if you don't devirtualize it, won't end up becoming a connection. LinkedIn is a very powerful tool, it is a tool that has helped to democratize Networking, but I see two mistakes in Spain, people start too late, when they no longer have clients or do not have a job, and they do it without a strategy. In this country, although we are more social than perhaps in other cultures, we were educated, at least in my generation, with the don't ask, don't say, don't stand out, and this backpack still takes a lot of toll on us.

In 2014 they called you from Vueling, what did they want?

It was incredible. Well, to organize the first Networking dynamic in one of its planes in the air on a Milan-Barcelona flight and at an altitude of 30,000 feet. They wanted to bring together one hundred entrepreneurs, fifty Italians and fifty Spaniards, who, without knowing each other, would get on one of their planes and there, through a Networking dynamic, create innovative projects to improve air travel. And my role, together with them, was to develop, create, think and energize that dynamic. We were able to put into practice this creativity and innovation that is a bit of my differential mark. And that has already allowed us to organize other innovative events such as the Business & Networking Cruise of Women Managers and the Train of Entrepreneurs in Marseille that we organized last year.

You combine your work as a trainer with services to companies. What do companies ask of you?

Among others, how to work better on LinkedIn, since fortunately more and more people are realizing that it is a very powerful tool to incorporate into the company. And not just from the HR or sales department, you know, for vacancies or clients. Incorporating current workers by favouring the actions that the company carries out on the platform is beginning to be essential. On the other hand, and because of my let's say energetic and motivating style, they ask us to be able to present business conferences, awards, etc. And on the other hand, the managerial public and at a more private level, private counselling sessions. Well, design and monitor a specific diet for both Networking and LinkedIn. And since my head "doesn't stop", I already have new and interesting services in mind, which I can't reveal yet.

Tell us about some innovative dynamics that you have done for a company.

The other day we did something very funny: a speech elevator with companies and master's students, but with a mechanic very similar to the program La Voz, because the students had to give a speech to company representatives, who had their backs turned, like a blind audition.

Throughout the world of relationships, there is the theory of the six degrees. Do you believe it?

Yes, it is the foundation of the world of Networking; He explains that among any person in the world there are six intermediaries. To reach anyone in the world, even Obama, you are separated by six people. You know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone and in a maximum of six intermediaries you reach the person. And, in fact, what LinkedIn has done is to reduce this theory to three.

What is digital personal branding?

It's the way you present yourself, all your characteristics, but above all it's what differentiates you from another person who does the same thing as you. In our time you started looking for a job when you finished your degree, I always tell my current students to start looking for a job as soon as they do their degree (or before), because everything they publish on the networks can be taken into account.

It is the digital footprint that they will see before deciding whether a candidate is valid. Knowledge is presupposed, and increasingly, it is attitude that companies are looking for, now they tell me: "Look for people who want to work for me". I am a professor in different business schools and I train law students in personal branding and the first thing I do on the first day of class, when I arrive, is to 'google' them thoroughly, but not only on Google, but with many more tools that they do not know, because it will be the first thing that a company may do.

Do you have any challenges for the future?

I always. I believe that you have to get up every day with the desire to do new things. Maybe make a dynamic of the BCN cable car. My challenge is always to innovate, we have had to live in a world of innovation. One of the great advantages of being an entrepreneur is that, if you come up with what may seem crazy, you don't have anyone to question it. You start from the no. The limit is set by you.