Networking 101 - An Intern Event

I had the pleasure last Friday of sitting in on an event that we ran for a group of our Winter Interns in our Gaithersburg, MD office. A group of 17 Interns listened to Tony D., a Business Development Director, who gave them a number of great tips and pointers regarding the value of professional networking in one's career development. Some of his tips included:

- How to work a room at a networking event
- Making a good first impression
- The importance of an elevator speech
- Listening to understand
- How critical follow up is
- How to nurture relationships
- and who to think about that is in your network, and who can help you achieve your goals.

There was good conversation to be had as well. In particular, it was interesting, but not surprising to hear how difficult some our Interns found it to adapt to professional networking situations. They also found it interesting how Tony, who got is start as an Accountant found his way into sales/business development. Overall I got the sense that they got a lot out of the session.

We find it important to provide our interns meaningful development opportunities like this throughout the duration of their internship. It's events like these that we hope will make our Interns as they start their transition from student to professional, and ideally, a McGladrey employee.