When I encounter Chloe Caan at the Phi Gamma Nu Internship Fair, she is less than thrilled. While waiting in line to introduce herself to recruiters, the Wharton junior wonders what her effort is worth.
“It’s highly unlikely that they’ll actually remember me from this little bit of networking,” Caan laments. “At least they’re taking resumes.”
I can understand her frustration. I, an English major, am going undercover at the fair to make sense of this drive to network. A sheep in wolf’s clothing, I don my best business-casual attire and prowl the Baker Forum in Huntsman Hall. Recruiters from 16 firms are holding court at their own tables, each inundated with eager, resume-clutching students. They jostle each other to get closest to the tables and, perhaps, their next summer internships.
Wharton junior and Wharton Women president Lauren Fleischer is equally skeptical of such a large-scale event.
“The [recruiter] is probably going to talk to 400 people in those few hours,” she said. “It’s not worth it to push some other kid aside.”
Wharton senior and Phi Gamma Nu President Jerrod Engelberg doesn’t see it that way. He told me a bit about the annual fair, which was first held in December 2004. He wrote in an e-mail that the event is “just filling a niche by connecting the firms to students” looking solely for summer internships, since those students “can kind of get brushed aside by recruiters” at career fairs.
Engelberg believes that the connections fostered at the event “can feed into [a candidate’s] positive exposure to companies and eventually increase the likelihood of landing that internship.”
But are the companies looking to connect with individual candidates, or seeking increased awareness of their programs? I asked Hannah Lee, the associate human resources manager at Macy’s, one of the companies that attended the fair.
She explained in an e-mail that the event is geared toward providing prospective interns with information about the company.
However, Lee also told me that Macy’s “will always want to continue to meet students and strengthen those relationships.” Enter the so-called “art form” of networking, which she said is the ability to make a “potentially awkward situation seem natural.”
For all their pretenses of getting information about companies, the vast majority of students around me at the fair are there for one reason: to get the job.
Well-dressed undergrads are asking carefully crafted questions I can’t help but overhear, showing that they are well-versed in the facts about firms in attendance. They are telling funny anecdotes, little stories to get themselves remembered. They are name-dropping, citing Penn alumni and friends to forge the necessary connections.
They are networking, and I am fascinated.
It seems that networking — and the competitive air surrounding it — is a product of necessity and the inevitable result of so many students seeking jobs. Lee agreed: “With the high volume of people we meet with, we will inevitably not remember everyone we’ve met,” adding that even a strong handshake could make all the difference.
Fleischer also believes in the power of networking to secure a job. “If there’s a limited number of jobs,” she said, “the kids who are going to get them are going to be the ones with the connections. The networking you’re able to do — but also the more personal networking you’re able to do — really matters.”
Fleischer’s distinction is an interesting one. Though the definition of networking is somewhat amorphous, it is clear that those who excel at it — and get their desired internships — go beyond the basics.
“To be a great networker, you don’t have to be a smooth-talking Aaron Eckhart-esque character from Thank You for Smoking,” Engelberg wrote. “You really just need to be yourself and a little bit outgoing.”
Entertainment value aside, these interesting conversations hold added weight for recruiters — they make candidates more memorable and desirable.
Lee offered a number of suggestions: “Make a connection over a shared interest, over the delicious food, or even the weather if you’re desperate! Just follow up with the recruiter in an e-mail thanking them for the event and remind them of the connection you made.”
Networking, evidently, doesn’t end when a conversation does; a follow-up e-mail is key to being remembered. Engelberg gave a strategy to these e-mails: “You need to remember who you talked to and details about them … It could be as simple as jotting down a couple notes on the back of a business card as soon as you get home.”
Above all, however, Fleischer lauded the importance of avoiding information sessions and large events as primary sites of networking. “If you want to find out about a firm,” she told me, “go to an info session. If you want to meet people at the firm, you have to take advantage of cool, smaller networking events.”
She explained to me that many Wharton clubs, like Wharton Women, hold “many private networking events” with recruiters, at which there will often be no more than 20 students.
Perhaps, then, huge events such as the PGN Internship Fair are merely first steps for students — opportunities for them to refine their lists of potential employers — and networking is a tool to help that process along.
Having learned this, I wonder if I’ve been too harsh on my networking peers. But then I asked Lee for networking advice: “Do not curse in your interview, do not text message your recruiter, do not get drunk in front of your recruiter and most importantly, do not ask your recruiter out on a date. This stuff is too good to make up, believe us.”
