Many people think networking just means building a trail for learning the latest office gossip, or to socialize with people who share their interests or with head hunters who can help them in a future job search. The truth is that successful people, in our case engineers engage in a more important type of network building process. 
The faster you realize that the information overload of today's society means that fewer people know all you need to know to get your jobs done. A successful engineer should know that it is vital to develop quickly as many dependable paths to the experts, who will help you complete the tasks critical to the bottom line. The goal should always be to minimize the Skill or knowledge deficit that every engineer discovers as he or she meets up with a new job. The networks of these kind of people most frequently have the right experts in them, and they are faster. These experts will provide the right answer the first time. In contrast an average performer get wrong answers more frequently either because they ask the wrong people or because the experts with the right answers are not in their networks. So they spin their wheels or go down blind alleys or just end up making costly assumptions that leads them to failures. Successful networking is often accomplished in one-to-one interactions with the people you meet and entails building, maintaining, and operating within a group of experts who share knowledge for mutual benefit.
Additional resources:
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Network-Your-Way-to-Success&id=12498
http://www.jobscareers.com/articles/networkingyourwaytosuccess.html
Additional resources:
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Network-Your-Way-to-Success&id=12498
http://www.jobscareers.com/articles/networkingyourwaytosuccess.html