By Erin L. Pipkin, APR, senior account director

College students may keep in touch with their friends and family via Facebook and Twitter, but when it comes to networking for jobs, there’s nothing like an old-fashioned meet and greet.

While the theme of my presentation at the University of Indianapolis’ guest lecture series on Tuesday, Feb. 9 was “Careers in PR,” students really wanted to learn about networking. After all, while the 40 or so students were there to learn more about my career, the majority just wanted to know how to land their first job in our down economy.

Ron Dow, assistant director for the university’s Institute for Emerging Careers and the driving force behind the guest lecture series, said he can lecture all day about face-to-face networking, but an 11-year working professional holding out business cards poses an opportunity too good to pass up.

The impressive collection of students listened attentively, and many waited afterward to talk to me. My advice? Ask for help if you need it; every working professional had to land his/her first job. We really will take a few minutes to talk with you. (But also understand that we receive a lot of requests for informational interviews and unfortunately can’t honor every one.)

My networking connections so far from students at UIndy?

• Zero old-fashioned phone calls
• One business card (yes, for a student!)
• Two very well-written e-mails
• One resume

Now I’m just waiting for my new [Twitter] followers and [Facebook] friend requests!

Tags: advertising, borshoff, marketing, networking

This entry was posted by Borshoff on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 2:25 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Comment Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.