First-Gen, NextGen by Victoria Banuelos

Author:Victoria Banuelos
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63730-576-8
Publisher: Victoria F. Banuelos
Published: 2021-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

More Than a Handshake: Why Networking Matters

Gabriella Robison is a media relations specialist at Keck Medicine of USC. Born and raised in Southern California, Robison stayed true to her SoCal roots by attending Pepperdine University in Malibu for her undergrad degree. After graduating in 2018, she started a full-time role as a media relations coordinator. Within two years, she was promoted and has since taken on even more responsibility in her media department.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Robison one evening after work, when, after a few mental and technical blips, we joked about the state of our post-work, tired, 6 p.m. brains. One of the joys of working a corporate job, we agreed. I started our interview by asking her how her career’s “first five” years were panning out.

Before answering that, Robison began by telling me about how she got the USC job in the first place. She credited the people she met at Pepperdine for a mindset shift during her early college years.

“Pepperdine was super pricey,” she said. “I got a full-tuition scholarship, which was the only reason I was able to go. I still felt a little out of place, though, because even though I was attending a wealthy college, it wasn’t like my family was magically super wealthy. I was surrounded by great people, some of whom are still my best friends now, but we come from very different backgrounds. So that was kind of a challenge.”

Despite the challenge, she says it was actually beneficial to be surrounded by people different from her because they had a greater variety of opportunities at their disposal.

“Otherwise, I don’t think I would have the knowledge of what goals I’m really working toward,” she said.

“You don’t know what you don’t know. It’s hard to picture what kind of goals to go after and what kind of things you want—not necessarily just material things, like a house or a car—if you’ve never been exposed to them. The people I met exposed me to the mindset of economic and career success in a white-collar setting. My grandfather was an electrician, and my dad did air conditioning and refrigeration. Both of their jobs were more hands-on as opposed to the sort of traditional college thing.”

One is not better than the other, she affirms. You just need to know what options are available to you.

She’s right.

Networking isn’t solely about building a web of relationships with people. It’s also about accessing resources, support, and information that aren’t readily available to you. It’s about exposure to ideas outside of your immediate circle and using a combination of peoples’ ideas to help form your own.

In a longitudinal study about the effects of networking on career success, Professors Hans-Georg Wolff and Klaus Moser from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg determined that the responsibility for managing a career has shifted from a predominantly organizational responsibility to the responsibility of the individual employee. Their research also discovered a noteworthy potential for higher salary growth for employees who maintain their internal contacts.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.