Career advice for conference attendees
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If you’re heading off to attend your industry’s annual conference, gear up and get ready to take advantage of a terrific career opportunity. Check out some tips of how to make the most of this annual event:

Don’t Wing It. Walk into your conference with a focused plan. Exhibitors are terrific at this – but conference attendees tend to wander around, play it by ear, and make selections about what sessions to attend by how the mood strikes them. Big mistake. Instead, set clear, specific goals for yourself – for instance, you might need to better understand how to use social media to grow your business. Choose educational sessions that support specific business, strategic, personal goals, and review handouts, have questions prepared, reach out to presenters ahead of time if you’re unclear about the goals or objectives of the program.

Have a networking plan. Here’s another mistake conference attendees tend to make – they hang out with the people they already know from their organizations. Force yourself if you must, but make the effort to connect with new people. Depending on whether you’re a job seeker, looking to make a career transition, or simply want to reach out and learn from people who have been around the block a few times – here is your opportunity to get serious about meeting others who can help you reach those goals. Use social media tools set up by your conference organizers to find out who will be attending, and reach out ahead of time to meet for a drink, attend a session together. Ask your boss who s/he would recommend you meet. Seek out thought leaders, industry contributors, and buy them a drink. Take it to the next level and be an organizer – arrange a happy hour, coffee, or ‘reserve’ a table for a group lunch and ‘host’ your industry bigwig.

This is only the beginning. What’s your follow up plan once the conference is over? It’s easy to leave big events fired up – and get sucked back into your day to day responsibilities without implementing anything you’ve learned. Resolve put one new idea from your conference into action, and continue the conversation with people you’ve connected with. Reinforce what you learned by teaching your newfound knowledge to your coworkers who weren’t able to attend the conference. And, remember – the conference is only the beginning – it’s what you do afterwards that really counts.