Dear Respected Reviewers, I would really appreciate your inputs/criticism of the below essay.  
  
**Chevening is looking for individuals with strong networking skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession.**  
  
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Social network is an invaluable resource nowadays, and a strong aptitude in networking is one of the most important criteria to succeed in today's professional world. It is easy to get most of the things done when one has a dependable and reliable network of people. It empowers the person in manifolds.  
  
I consider myself a socially strong and extrovert person with empathy towards people irrespective of culture, gender and race. Thus, my strength in networking is rooted in my leadership ability of connecting with people-formally and informally. I confidently believe that I have an inherent reliability in my character which helps me get closer to others, and eventually establish a strong interpersonal connection. When I was working in Hamid Fabrics as Planning & Operations Manager, networking was probably the most important asset for me. It was a central position that required me to work in harmony with people ranging from top management, procurement, marketing, production, inventory, delivery and quality. Each of these functional groups had conflicting interest and agenda, and it was a monumental task to manage all of them and still getting the best out of them. In the early days, when the going was tough, I decided to establish close relationships with people who were proving to be difficult to work with. I invested time and effort to do that, and eventually I made it harder for them to say no to me. In parallel to getting closer to difficult people, I was also working on my close allies as a more reliable supporting network to fall back whenever required.  
  
When I moved to New Zealand in 2012, I felt the importance of networking more than ever before. It was an alien land for me, with no meaningful support network to rely on. Slowly but steadily, I connected with people in government employment agencies, charity organizations such as Red Cross, the Bangladeshi community in New Zealand, and Banks. This process helped me landing the part time job with Auckland Health Board. Besides job hunting, this network also helped me settle in a country with different culture and social structure.  
  
After coming back from New Zealand, I joined H&M-the 2nd largest apparel retailer in the world. After joining such a big company, establishing a solid and working network became all the more critical once more. Therefore, I stepped out of my comfort zone, and got involved in numerous cross functional activities, such as different supply chain projects, projects undertaken by country organization, and numerous events that take place here every year. It helped me become one of those common faces everyone knows in such a big organization.  
  
In future, I want to take this skill to the next level, so that I can effectively persuade the policymakers, influential people in the government and other large organizations to bring about change in the field of sustainability-where my country has a lot of opportunity to create better lives, and most importantly, a better world for future generations.