As the recession progresses, leveraging your professional network is a key to achieve success. Here are a few ideas to help.

LinkedIn’s discussion groups that include Internal Audit Professionals, Risk Management Executives & Professionals, The Institute of Internal Auditors, DataShaping Advanced Analytics and industry specific groups, such as Retail Management, for example, are new resources. The upside is connecting with a broad range of professionals and gaining access to a lot of information. The downside is sometimes the information’s quality is lacking (i.e. job requests) or the amount of information is too much to digest. Facebook and Twitter have joined the fray, but in my humble opinion, are less professional and sometimes don’t yield results from the time spent socializing.

Many auditors are aware of the two main Internal Audit professional organizations, the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), and the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA). However, there are some added resources like the IIA’s Member Exchange, industry discussion groups, and research products that are free and expand your reach to the 150,000 IIA members.

Local IIA and ISACA chapters host monthly events attended by all department levels, including Chief Audit Executives. In addition to receiving cheap CPEs (typical cost is less than $35 for two CPEs), exchanging business cards can help you find the answer to your CFO’s most popular question,” what are other people doing?”

It’s ironic that the most valuable resources like being able to discuss an idea, locate an example or share an experience are also the cheapest.

Resources:
SF IIA Chapter: http://www.theiia.org/chapters/index.cfm/home.page/cid/9
SJ IIA Chapter: http://www.theiia.org/chapters/index.cfm?cid=79
East Bay IIA Chapter: http://www.theiia.org/chapters/index.cfm?cid=216
SF ISACA: http://www.sfisaca.org/
LinkedIn (PAIN): http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?gid=44252&sharedKey=7B41D7082F9A
CISA on Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2248350440
Auditnet: http://twitter.com/auditnet