Happy Tuesday everyone! We here at Sci Chic are still recovering from the awesome time we had this past week at the Society of Women Engineers national conference in Nashville, TN. This is an annual gathering of over 8,000 female engineers focused on professional development, networking, and job recruiting. We had an absolutely amazing time meeting all the new people who stopped by our booth or sat next to us at a session.
These were our second and third years at this conference respectively, but our first time as business owners. Personally, this gave me an entirely different perspective on the experience. For once, my main priority was not getting a job or internship. Instead, my foremost concern was creating meaningful connections, growing my network, and spreading the word about the things I care about. The change in experience was incredible. Because I approached the conference with different objectives, I found the event itself had also seemed to change. I gathered and passed out more business cards than ever before. I met leaders within the Society of Women Engineers. I had people come to my booth offering me interviews. Overall the entire conference was framed in a new light.
This change truly showed me how much people appreciate genuine interactions as opposed to the standard career fair elevator speech conversation. At these conferences recruiters have to stand for hours, or even days, on end having resumes shoved in their face as people try to lump their entire life's experiences and dreams into a thirty second spiel. Many times during this students pretend to have more interest in a company just to get an interview or grab a free t-shirt off the table behind the recruiter. As one can imagine, this leaves some recruiters understandably cynical.
My advice to every student out there attending one of these conferences is to be honest and sincerely shift your focus to forming connections without ulterior motives. I might not have received as many interviews this year, but the ones I did were a much closer fit to my personality and aspirations. Additionally, this stack of business cards gained from real conversations is a lot more valuable to me than a stack of flyers with links to apply online. Networks are an incredibly useful resource, but in order to properly utilize them, they must be built on a solid foundation. The stronger the bonds, the longer they’ll last, and the more everyone involved will gain.
Thanks again to all of our awesome supporters from this weekend! Your interest and ideas were greatly appreciated and we look forward to implementing them in the coming weeks.
