Networking Tips for Residents of FIU Apartments
Nov 08, 2017
Everyone living in our community of FIU apartments should have a go-to elevator pitch when attending a networking event. That’s the first of many tips that we’ll be providing to our residents in this week’s blog post. Your elevator speech is your introduction — it’s the two to three sentence synopsis of your experience, your skills, and your goals as a professional. You should also include this speech at the top of your resume. See, we’re already at two tips and we haven’t even gotten to the list!
Networking isn’t just about shaking hands and passing out your resume. Networking is about learning the ins and outs of your potential career that your classes didn’t prepare you for. Like it or not, most college classes leave gaps in knowledge that can only be filled in by professionals with experience. Go find those professionals!
Check out the list of networking tips below, residents. We think you’ll find it to be useful, especially as spring semester approaches and you start trying to find summer internships. If you like this post, feel free to share this link with your friends and neighbors at your community of apartments by FIU.
Sit in the front row of your classes
If you want to be a better networker, but don’t really want to talk to anyone you don’t know, this is an easy solution. Sitting in the front row of class lets everyone know — including your professor — that you’re serious about college and your career. Plus, it puts your face right in front of the professor, so they’ll recognize you, learn your name and hopefully call on you in class. Once you’ve established a mini-friendship with your professor by sitting in the front row, it will be a lot easier to ask them for career advice and possibly a letter of recommendation down the road.
Keep in contact with people who graduate before you
One of the best ways to meet people who are older than you is to join student organizations. Most people in your classes are in the same year of college as you are, so you have to kind of expand your horizons if you want to meet people who will graduate before you. It’s 100% worth it to get to know people who will graduate before you do, because they’ll have jobs when you’re still searching for post-grad work. If you do make some upperclassmen friends, try to remain in contact with whem after you graduate. They’ll be an important part of your professional network.
Don’t dress like you’re told — dress for the job you want.
You don’t have to wear a suit to every networking event or interview. If you’re going into a creative field, you’ll likely never be asked to wear a suit at work. Here’s what you can do if you’re wondering how you should dress for your next networking event. Go on LinkedIn and search for people who have the job title that you want. Look at their pictures and see how they’re dressing — that’s what you should go for.
That concludes our list of professional networking tips, residents! As always, we appreciate those of you who’ve taken some time out of your day to read the latest edition of the 4th Street Commons blog. If you enjoyed reading this week’s post, please be sure to check this page again in a couple weeks when our next blog post goes live. Also, please be sure to follow 4th Street Commons on social media, as that’s the best way to stay up to date and informed about everything happening at your community of FIU apartments.
