HACU’s Emerging Leaders Summit
This past Friday, President Matos along with Zavi Gunn, Director, Center for Career Engagement and Internships, Cecilia Britez, Manager, CUNY Service Corp, Queens College, Ying Zhou, Program Director, Tech Incubator at Queens College and students Angel Ortega and Margarita Zias were invited to attend the annual HACU Emerging Leaders Summit at York College. The event was an opportunity to highlight not only the achievements of the every growing CUNY family of students and faculty members but also a chance to expose those chosen to attend to a variety of workshops revolved around succeeding in the business world and learning proper networking skills.
Queens College’s Zavi Gunn first came upon the idea for creating such a workshop after the career fair that was held at Queens College this past semester. She decided to expand this to a larger reach of students at the HACU conference that was the perfect place to do so. The workshop, titled, ‘Highly Effective Habits for Networking’ focused on teaching students how to pitch themselves to recruiters or potential connections without coming off as rude or too straight forward, “Over 80% of jobs are achieved through networking”, said Cecilia Britez as she delved the students into her tips of self-marketing and exposure. She and Ms. Gunn also stressed the the importance of prior research by candidates to build up a meaningful connection with individuals beforehand. “It’s not who you know but who knows you.” Cecilia also talked about the importance of building a portifolio and making oneself searchable.
Another guest on the panel was Ben Drepaul, the Career Development Specialist for York College. He shared with students his personal background of coming to the USA from Guyana as a young man and starting out as a construction worker knocking down sheet rock “I started from nothing really but networking and meeting new people that allowed me to move up and build a better life for myself”. Mr. Drepaul wasn’t the only one with a story to share, Cecilia Britez also shared her story of coming to the US and being a teen mom, “It was very hard for me but I knew that I came here to build a life for me and my child and that’s exactly what I was going to do. Networking is very important for your life and if it wasn’t for me taking chances and talking to people I would be where I am today”.
Ying Zhou also had some advice to share with the 30+ students in attendance. Two simple tips she shared are: “Be curious, and be helpful”. “You can build networking relationships with people through anything and everything as simple as asking for directions. If the person can’t help you, that’s ok, you just ask if they know someone else who can”. The workshop then proceeded to have students Angel Ortega and Margarita Zias demonstrate good and bad networking habits in a both comedic and informative manner. “You need to always be ready and willing to pitch yourself. Even if you don’t feel or look the part. Keep it simple, but speak passionately about what you want, your goals and how everything you’ve done up to this point has benefited you in this”, said Ortega as he addressed the students by telling the story of how a small, casual meeting with a man at a conference led to him currently doing his masters degree for free.
