No time to network, you say? What if you could connect with other Penn Staters in your field or geographic area without leaving the comfort of your couch? Alumni Career Services can help make it happen.
Since earlier this year, the Alumni Association's career networking team has offered alumni "virtual networking" sessions, employing high-tech options with a personal touch.
Alumni Career Services has held several successful virtual networking sessions through its partner, Brazen Careerist, which was co-founded by Penn State’s own Ryan Healy, a 2006 graduate and the company’s chief operating officer.
Virtual networking is a little like speed dating, in format. And because participants are all Penn Staters, there’s already a friendly bond and a positive virtual environment. It takes three easy steps to get started:
-- Visit the event's link, register for the event and set up an account;-- Log in at the appointed time and read over the instructions on the page; and-- Hit “enter.”
Then, you’re paired up with someone for eight minutes and can type up a conversation in a “chat” format. You’re free to exchange information during that time, and when the time is up, you say farewell to each other. A few seconds later, the system pairs you with another connection.
Once the session has closed, you can access a “dashboard” within the tool that allows you to review the chat history with each person you talked to — and to connect with each via LinkedIn if you so choose.
Renee Petrina, a 2004 graduate, who works in Washington, D.C., but lives in and commutes from Louisville, Ky., attended a lunch-hour Penn State virtual networking session on March 18, the second one held. She teaches adult learners and expressed that she’d like to try multiple discipline chat rooms at the same time. Alumni Career Services has been working to fine-tune the networking experience to meet such requests.