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| Credit to Chester Zoo |
Early last fall, I “met” a 2013 alum from Digitas when I saw her speak at a career panel at Tufts. Digitas is a huge marketing company in Boston that I’d been eying ever since I applied to their summer internship program during spring of my junior year. Then, in November, I met her properly and actually talked to her for a bit at Diversity Networking Night.
Tufts organizes many great speakers and networking events, but not many students take full advantage of these opportunities. Some students avoid networking events like the plague because it makes them nervous (if you’re one of those people, check out our earlier blog post here). But trust me, these connections can make a big difference. You never know who you're going to meet or how they'll be able to help you. Here’s my story of how everything comes together if you put in the effort of going to events, reaching out to people, and building relationships.
The day after the networking night, I went to Digitas' Open House recruiting event for seniors (we have blogged about it before), and I happened to see her again because we were riding down in the elevator together as the event ended. At the Diversity Networking Night she had mentioned that she’s part of a Digitas social club called Perspectives, supporting diversity at the company. (Digitas has 700 employees in the Boston HQ, and there are social clubs for everything from running to LGBTQ issues, so that people can meet employees outside their own team.) Well, the other person in the elevator happened to be the founder of the Perspectives club she’d told me about, so I asked more about that. I ended up standing in the lobby talking to the two of them for twenty minutes. And it was a real conversation, not a stiff "And what do you like most about your job?" career conversation like I'd had with other alumni that night. I think we really connected - we were even making fun of each other. Months later, in February or March, she friended me on Facebook out of the blue, but we hadn't spoken.
Flash forward to March, I saw her speak on a panel of recent grads who work in digital media hosted by the Communications and Media Studies Program. The panelists talked about their career paths, and it turns out her first job out of college was in Account Management at Digitas - the EXACT position I had an interview for the next day. So I got her email from the staff assistant who set up the panel, and messaged her to ask if we could discuss her first job. It was a shot in the dark, because I wanted to talk to her the very next day and I assumed her schedule would already be filled. But she replied right away, and we set up a call just one hour before my interview. She is very involved in career events at Tufts so she might have agreed to a last-minute informational interview with any Tufts student, but I definitely think it helped that I had already built a bond with her through other events.
BUT WAIT - THERE'S MORE! The day after my call with the alum and my interview, I attended my Senior Dinner. (About 130 seniors at a time go to the President's house for dinner. Alumni are there to speak and network, and you get to meet President Monaco and take a picture with him.) One of the alumni gave a speech about how much informational interviews helped him - he went from 40 applications and 1 interview, to 20 applications and 15 interviews. During this speech, I was thinking about how I needed to email the Digitas alum and thank her. Then President Monaco introduced an alum who hadn’t spoken yet, and guess who it was? What’s funny is that when we were saying goodbye on the phone, I joked “I’ll probably see you around, we seem to go to the same events!” Little did I know it would literally be the next day.
Right after alumni speeches comes an open mic where seniors speak about their Tufts experience. During this time, I approached the podium and said that I wanted to second what the first alum had said about the value of informational interviews. I told my fellow students how I had been at the CMS panel on Monday, and talking to my alum gave me an advantage over other candidates because I knew how to pitch myself for that exact position. Then I brought it back to "So, definitely reach out to alumni for informational interviews. They want to help you, and it can really make a difference in your job search." When I stepped away from the podium, I made eye contact with the Digitas alum and she nodded and smiled. I followed up the next day (“It’s so funny that we ran into each other, again, so soon”) and thanked her, again. We kept in touch via email leading up to my second interview, and I learned some things that I could not have gotten anywhere else - such as the pay range for the position (so that I could give an appropriate range when asked.)
Long story short, if you go to a lot of professional events, you can slowly build relationships that will pay off later. That last-minute call was really valuable for me. Regardless of whether I end up getting this job, I now have a solid contact in the industry and in a company I aspire to work for, and the advice that she shared will help me if I apply for jobs in account management or at Digitas in the future. I already knew what Account Management was, in general, but I had the additional opportunity to ask about specifics: what entry level workers typically handle, what she liked about the position, what skills you use, what the challenges are, etc. Armed with this knowledge of entry-level Account Management, I could pitch myself to fill that role at Digitas.
As a result of my efforts, one of the interviewers asked how I knew so much about the role, and another interviewer noted that she had to provide the other candidates with an intro to Digitas, while I seemed to be very familiar with the company already. After my interview, I sent the Digitas alum an email telling her about those interviewers' comments to illustrate how her advice had made a difference for me, (and thanking her again.) I think knowing the company and the position really well made me stand out from the other candidates. I’ll hear back from Digitas in mid-April, but even if I don’t get the job, the whole process has been a great experience that has taught me so much about the importance of building relationships in the job search.
UPDATE: I recently learned that I didn’t get an offer. While I’m really disappointed, I’m proud that I took the right steps to get to an interview with a company that receives thousands of applications, even for internships. I’m writing a new blog post about dealing with rejection in the job search and about what I’ve gained from this journey even though the end result wasn’t what I’d hoped.
