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Jenkins MBA Students, Professionals Pair Up for Networking Olympics

We all know that exercise builds muscles. The same applies to exercising networking skills. In both cases, proper technique – perfected through guided practice – produces the best results.

That was the message behind the half-day Networking Olympics that brought 45 first year MBA students in the NC State Poole College of Management’s Jenkins MBA program together with eight professionals, including four alumni of the program. The professionals represented the business community and served as targets as the students practiced their ‘working the room’ and informational interviews skills.

MBA students typically have several years of work experience, so networking is not new to them. But continuing to improve their networking skills is essential for success when seeking internships or full-time career positions, said Belinda Dowdy, assistant director in the MBA program’s career resources office.

“Building relationships is the basis of success in business,” she said. “One way that you build relationships as a business professional is through informational interviews. That also is how you learn how companies and industries differ.”

One of those differences becomes apparent in the variation of performance expectations assigned to position titles, she said. “A position title in one company may have totally different responsibilities in another organization. Knowing how to ask for clarification of the actual expectations of a position is vital for finding the right fit in the job market,” she said.

Students learned the mechanics of relationship building in a class session the week prior, and applied what they learned in the October 12 practice session. “The intent of the practice session was to get more comfortable with the process and to receive feedback from the visiting professionals,” Dowdy said.

One of the students, Alysia Baker, said she already had a strong professional network that she developed over six years while advancing in marketing and sales positions with a leading educational publishing company prior to entering the Jenkins MBA program. She also noted that MBA students are naturally gregarious and well-connected as a group. “Anything we might want to do, I think there’s someone in this class who has done it,” she said.

That said, she found value in the Networking Olympics experience and the college’s career development program. “These activities are helping us to network appropriately, to practice our skills and get feedback.” Tips for improving peer-to-peer sharing of career information and better use of LinkedIn were “the kinds of things that Career Development has been helping us to prepare for our futures,” Frazier said.

Jenkins MBA alumni participating in the Networking Olympics were Greg Bibee, product manager at Cree; Tom Butler, product marketing manager at Lenovo; and Christina Clark, marketing coordinator at Novozymes. Other professionals participating in the event were: Danielle Campbell, Sinclair Broadcasting Group; Margaret Chadwick, Cree, Inc.; Brent Coles, Vaco; Kimberly Mayer, Ph.D., Small Business & Technology Development Center; and Richard Rees, Bayer CropScience

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Alysia Baker and Mark Frazier chat following the morning’s Networking Olympics