This photo was taken at Facebook, the last site visit of the trip. It is the view of New York City from a window in Facebook’s cafeteria. It was one of my favorite site visits because the office was so modern and open, clearly promoting a creative, comfortable place to think and work. I also really liked the Facebook site visit because the alum and other employees who spoke to us about their careers and provided their advice were extremely helpful and really understood what we were going through in our current own job searches.
Overall, I really enjoyed this trip. I gained valuable insight into the entertainment industry and different career paths or job responsibilities that I would not have gotten otherwise. For example, many of the employees informed us that working in this industry was different from others—often times, a entertainment or media company will not give you a job offer until you are graduated and fully able to work. It was also extremely interesting to hear about how some people entered the industry or started with their career. It taught me that it does not matter what you study in school or how much you know about the industry. What matters is that you are passionate about the work and have a genuine interest.
The most helpful part of the trip was getting to network with the alumni or employees. This kind of networking is absolutely invaluable and can do nothing but help open doors for you or at the very least, give you some necessary experience talking to professional people. I made a lot of connections and received many emails which I will be following up with later. This networking gives us a leg up on a lot of other people so I really appreciated that Vandy on Madison Avenue provided this for us.
-Katherine Huang