Develop professional relationships or networks

Little of this can be handed to software today.

This work is the relationship itself. An agent can prepare for it and write up what happened afterwards, which is real time saved, but the encounter needs a person present and answerable.

Key facts about this work activity
How automatableBarely automatable
Kind of workRelationships, negotiation and public-facing presence
Jobs that do it6 occupations
Tool categories that applyNone
O*NET activityEstablishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships (4.A.4.a.4)

What this looks like on the job

Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 6 occupations that perform it.

  • Establish and maintain relationships with individuals who are credible sources of information.
  • Maintain assigned account bases while developing new accounts.
  • Seek out new clients and develop clientele by networking to find new customers and generate lists of prospective clients.
  • Identify opportunities or develop channels for purchase or sale of securities or commodities.
  • Develop networks of attorneys, mortgage lenders, and contractors to whom clients may be referred.
  • Prepare work for sale or exhibition, and maintain relationships with retail, pottery, art, and resource networks that can facilitate sale or exhibition of work.
  • Attend sales meetings, industry trade shows, and training seminars to gather information, promote products, expand network of contacts, and increase knowledge.

What we would actually use

Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.

Our pickBuy nothing

Buy nothing. An assistant can prepare you for the encounter and write up what happened afterwards, which is real time saved, but the encounter itself is the work and it needs you in it.

Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.

Work that goes with it

O*NET groups these under “Develop professional relationships or networks”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.

Related work activities
ActivityJobs
Establish interpersonal business relationships to facilitate work activities16
Develop business relationships8
Develop working relationships with others to facilitate program activities6
Develop collaborative relationships between departments or with external organizations4

Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.