Networking.
Second nature for some people, the bane of their existence for others. As a student on a premedical track with a passion for science as well as policy, I previously tended to automatically ignore anything I’d previously believed reserved for the likes of business majors, especially anything that involved their trademark “schmoozing” skills.
This afternoon, as I lay in bed post-interview for my Women’s Leadership course, rambling to my roommate as I got ready to sleep, one of our friends from down the hall, a Computer Science and English (and potentially Environmental Policy!) major, burst in frantically looking for someone with a blazer she could borrow. Within half an hour, we arrived at the career fair, freshly printed resumes perched in folders we’d scavenged, nervous for the encounters we were about to have.
This was something way out of my comfort zone, and immediately after walking into what seemed to be a maze of recruitment tables, each manned by the ever-daunting recruiter, I realized a few things. First, despite being a Biotechnology major and having a background heavily involved in the sciences, I found myself gravitating towards more people-centric companies, particularly ones that involved working one on one with children to help promote literacy, or facilitating the care of individuals with disabilities.
Though surrounded by pharmaceutical companies, I felt less of an inclination to wait in the long lines and hawk around the recruiters, in part because I’m aware that as a first-year student I was yet to acquire the sheer technical skills needed, but more so, knowing that I’d much rather interact with people on a day to day basis.
The people I talked to were not judgemental recruiters but genuine people, who elaborated on their own life-changing experiences with these companies and made me genuinely interested in working with them, not for the sake of having a job (as I already have an internship planned for this upcoming summer), but for the difference that these companies actually make in their clients’ lives. Looking around me, I did notice that the majority of people attending the fair seemed to be clustered around particular companies and firms, all of them almost indistinguishable in their black suits.
For these people, the experience of attempting, sometimes in vain, to stand out, must take almost an emotional toll, when their careers depend so much on these spontaneous interactions that could drastically change their lives. However, perhaps that’s not something limited to people looking to work in business, but rather, something that applies to all of us, with the people we meet through serendipity throughout our lives impacting it in unfathomable ways. Networking isn’t always done in formal settings in suits and ties, but at moments throughout our day to day lives.
Overall, networking is a learned skill, one that I was kind of scared and put off by up until this point, but really, it’s nothing more than about holding conversations and connecting with people. I didn’t really go into the career fair expecting much out of it, but enjoyed the experience because it taught me to view differently a practice that I otherwise previously discredited as rather pretentious. I’d honestly never intended to attend a college career fair, but I think going out of my way to take chances with something unexpected can have surprisingly positive outcomes, and taught me more than I’d ever imagined.