After numerous canceled and delayed flights, I had finally arrived at the LaGuardia airport- ready for my Madison Avenue detour to begin. Since I had missed Monday’s events, I was eager to explore the area the next day, and create a meaningful network of people working at many different companies. On Tuesday, our day started bright and early; we started off with a lecture from the Senior Vice President of MTV Networks at Viacom and his fellow Ad Sales associates. I’ve never explored the realm of Ad Sales on a venture as large as this, so it was really interesting learning the in-and-outs of how a deal is created and why it’s hard to transcend a certain message across multiple platforms.
For lunch, we broke out in predetermined breakout groups. We had the opportunity to meet with alumni working in fields that we were particularly interested in (nice touch, Heather!) and get a sense of what a day in the life looks like in their companies. My group personally met with Greg Wizman from NBC Universal; he shared advice branching from multiple experiences including completing the NBC Page Program, past summer internship hunting, interview strategies and much more.
Lastly, we toured the NYC Facebook office (cool, right?). After touring what seemed like an HOD student’s dream office layout, we had the chance to speak to a couple Facebook employees about their own personal journeys. They pretty much encompassed the most important thing that I had learned from this trip- career wise, you never know where you will end up. Networking is so important, and most jobs in workplaces like this come straight from personal relationships that one sustains over a period of time. Having a plan for success is important, but becomes almost irrelevant as more and more people are getting jobs simply based off of personal connections with people. You could have a great resume, but if someone else has a personal connection with an employer, it is more likely that the latter will be asked for an interview. It is up to you to not rely on a resume or reputation to separate yourself from a crowd, but to separate your own self by maintaining genuine connections with people that can maybe have a big impact in your life one day.
-Morgan Miller