Networking goes beyond attending a meeting and passing out business cards. It often requires creative ways to reach decision makers within competitive industries and fields such as pharmaceutical sales, biotechnology, healthcare and others. In this article, MedZilla asks experts to offer their ideas on creative, grassroots ways to network to job success.

If you're looking for a career in a highly competitive profession like pharmaceutical sales, you need to be creative to stand out from the crowd of aggressive, sometimes accomplished, professionals gunning for similar positions.

“We’ve all handed out business cards at a networking function,” says Frank Heasley, PhD, president and CEO of MedZilla.com, a leading Internet recruitment and professional community that serves biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and science. “But how many have visited physicians and clinics to build relationships with pharmaceutical sales reps? How many people take the time to devise creative, fresh ways of making introductions to decision-makers? Not as many, I would venture to say, as there are handing out their cards at business meetings.”

“Creative or “grassroots” networking can be less expensive and more effective than joining associations or attending functions,” says Michele Groutage, MedZilla’s director of marketing. “We hear great stories about how people have used creative networking. With all the competition today, many people are finding it difficult to be recognized. But what we’ve found is that where there is a will, there’s a way.”

Frances E. Altman, a public relations specialist in the school of business at Virginia Commonwealth University, wanted to network at a professional meeting. “But registration was expensive,” she says. “So I asked if I could volunteer to help out at the conference. I helped in registration for a week ahead of the conference and was given a pass. This enabled me to network.”

A strategy that worked for Diane K. Danielson, executive director, Downtown Women's Clubs and author of Table Talk: The Savvy Girl's Alternative to Networking, was to join organizations that appealed to her target market. But rather than just join, she signed up for the membership or event committees. Like Altman, Danielson thinks the registration table is the ideal place to volunteer. “That way, when one of your targets checks in, you can offer assistance, introduce yourself and when you try to contact them in the future, it's a ‘warm call’ as opposed to a ‘cold call.’”

Experts say you should build relationships every chance you get, wherever you are. First, you need a memorable, self-promotional message. The short promo about why you’re the person someone should hire has to be memorable, according to Peggy Klaus, a Berkeley, Calif.-based Fortune 500 communication consultant and author of BRAG! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It (Warner Books). Klaus suggests that the message be short and that you deliver it with enthusiasm and in a manner that encourages interaction.

Once you’ve memorized and practiced your message, try it out wherever you happen to be. Andrea Nierenberg, networking expert and author of "Nonstop Networking: How to Improve you Life, Luck and Career," gives personal examples of while she was waiting in line for the ladies' room, touring on top of the Tokyo Tower in Japan, in an elevator stuck between floors, or a visit to her dentist.

Sunny Bates, founder of executive search firm Sunny Bates Associates and author of How to Earn What You're Worth, suggests looking up the backgrounds of speakers at upcoming conferences in your field of interest. Conference websites often have detailed bios on speakers. Those are the people, she says, who are looking for more of a public presence and might be more approachable. Contact them by email or phone and try to engage them in a back-and-forth conversation about their topic or lecture. Once you establish the connection, you can ask that person to help you network. “Make sure not to ask them to do something outrageous, like: ‘Find me a person, who is looking to hire someone like me,’” Bates says.

Beverly Kaye, EdD, coauthor of Love it Don’t Leave It: 26 ways to get what you want at work, takes Bates’ suggestion a step further and attends lectures at which notable people in specific fields of interest are speaking. Do some research on the topic before attending the lecture; then, attend not necessarily to hear what the speaker has to say; but rather, to talk with the people sitting next to you. By having done the research, you can strike up conversations with the people around you and exchange business cards or phone numbers.

Another networking idea, according to Kaye, would be to offer to write an article for an industry publication or website about a topic that would require you to interview company decision-makers who, coincidentally, could help you network for jobs at a company.

Sometimes it’s difficult to get through to a potential contact person in a company. This can be especially true with pharmaceutical companies, according to Larry St. Pierre, a recruiter and owner of Customized Career Consulting. St. Pierre suggests that there are creative ways to reach your target contact person at a company by avoiding the switchboard and going, rather, to the company’s directory option. In most cases, Even if you don’t have a specific name, you can put in any letter after the prompt, followed by the pound sign, and come up with names and extensions of company employees. Once you reach a live person who is not an operator, ask for the name of the head of the specific division in which you want to work and ask to be connected.

If you just want to find out information about a company or about decision makers for a specific area, try calling customer service or public relations. Customer service representatives and PR professionals tend to be more “chatty,” St. Pierre says, and might be more willing to give you information or point you in the right direction.

Remember, when networking, that time is an element and to be sensitive to the other person’s work obligations. “We live in a society where people are so busy. Time is just running away with us. When someone calls with a traditional, ‘Can I have an informational interview with you,’ I just want to throw up,” Kaye says.