Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

The Light Bulb That Is Networking

Throughout my life I have always been told time and time again how important it is to network. When I was in high school it was to network to get me into a good college and help me with recruiting for college sports. When I finally entered my first year at Babson it was FME driving the importance of networking for all aspects of your life. Throughout my sophomore and junior year at Babson it was CCD sending us email after email about networking and attending events and conferences for the sole purpose of just networking for opportunities later. I have to be honest though, even though all this networking talk has been engrained in my head for years now, it wasn’t until this past month where I really started to see its true importance and what you can get out of it. In the past for me it has always been an opportunity to get someone’s business card during a random event or in a random conversation and connect on LinkedIn after sending a nice thank you note for the “advice” you had only received for the 4th time during that event. I never felt like the people I came across were truly invested in showing me to opportunities they had or teaching me about what they’ve learned that I need to know. Working for the Red Sox this summer has completely changed this outlook on networking that I’ve had for so long.

In the past month it was honestly like a networking light bulb finally went off for me. I finally started to understand what networking can do for me and my future. I have met an incredible amount of people in the sports and music industry over the summer that are seriously willing to give me advice and connect me with the right people when it comes to applying for jobs. I definitely think part of it is I’m much more motivated now to networking, now knowing that I will need to start applying for full-time jobs soon. But it’s not just that – I truly love what I’m doing and I’m so passionate about it I want to learn more and I want to learn from people who are already living my dream. It’s becoming very clear to me how important networking is to not only helping me get a full-time offer but also helping me grow and improve in this industry.