Approximately 60 Boston University sophomores, juniors and seniors spent the evening getting to know BU alumni professionals at Tuesday’s Career Networking Night, asking them questions and exchanging email addresses.
“In any field, it’s all about who you know,” College of Communication alumna Michele Carletti said.
Director of the Office of Career Services Richard Ledger, who introduced the evening with a speech in which he outlined important steps in the process of career development, said networking skills were imperative for anyone searching for a job.
He encouraged students to research potential careers on the Internet, in books and, most importantly, by talking to people.
“Take the information and strategize,” he said. “The way we get jobs is to pursue them assertively, getting all the information to help us focus so that we can get what we’re after.”
After Ledger’s speech, students mingled in the George Sherman Union’s Metcalf Hall with alumni who currently work in various fields such as communication, business, health services, hospitality and education. Some alumni were recent graduates, while others had been out of school for years.
Tom Curran, who works as the director of fundraising for the United Way of Massachusetts, graduated from Metropolitan College in 1974 and COM in 1981. Regardless of how long professionals have been out of school, he said, they still remember the stressful process of trying to find a job.
“Whether someone is one year out of school or 30 years out of college, they can still say, ‘I’ve been where you are; this is what happened to me; these are the steps you can take,'” Curran said.
College of Arts and Sciences junior Carla Silva said she attended the evening to hear such personal stories of individual career paths.
“We already know the objective things,” she said. “I came to hear the personal things about finding the right career, the step-by-step process, what they like and don’t like about their jobs.”
In order to fall into the right niche, Ledger said, students must keep an open mind. According to Ledger, many students enter the job search with a rigid idea of what they want to do. However, he said, it is more beneficial to be flexible.
“You have to do away with assumptions about the world of work,” he said. “They might hold you back from seeing things in a new and different light. Stretch your vision. Skills can be performed in almost any situation.”
Alumni Ross Levanto, COM ’97, acknowledged that this open-mindedness is especially beneficial in today’s unstable job market.
“Lots of skills apply for a lot of different jobs — but the underlying part of that message is that the job market isn’t that good right now,” he said. “You have to be prepared to not get your dream job.”
COM junior Sarah Menesale found the evening helpful. Though she was expecting a different atmosphere, talking to people in her prospective field of communication gave her new ideas about what steps to take in her job search.
“I thought it would be an evening of handing out resumés,” she explained. “It’s more gabbing with people, but it’s actually a lot of fun. I’m learning about who I should be talking to and places I can go for internship. Where else can you talk to people like this about their jobs?”
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