On Thursday, January 15th, there was a mock "cocktail party" for my business class in which each student's goal was to obtain five business cards from business professionals. The way in which we introduced ourselves was through an "elevator speech".
My elevator speech went something like this: "Hi, my name is Lacey Volion. And your name is? ... Well, nice to meet you. I am a freshman here at Loyola University in the College of Business. My majors are Business Marketing and Management. My future plans are to open my own business particularly in that of the fashion industry. What do you do?..." And on to a conversation about the things that they have done/are doing, and the answering of questions that I had asked them throughout the course of the conversation.
At the end of the conversation, I asked if they had a business card in which I could get in touch with them. I aquired the following business cards:
Meghan Ryan Bonavita--a sales associate for the Carlisle Collection. She is in fashion merchandising.Daphne Main, Ph.D., CPA--She is the Associate Professor of Accounting. She had a very inviting personality, and was very easy to talk to.
Dr. Mike Pearson, Ph.D.--He is a Professor of Marketing. He also was very nice, and stayed a while after to talk to my mentor and I. He seemed very outgoing and expressed his love for the Loyola campus and community.
Michelle K. Johnston, Ph.D.--Mrs. Johnston is the Associate Professor of Management, and is also the Director of the Executive Mentoring Program. Mrs. Johnston also teaches my Business Communications class and I am very excited to be spending a semester with her. She seems very intelligent and has many things to offer to us as students preparing for the business world.Len J. Trevino, Ph.D.--Mr. Trevino is the Gerald N. Gaston Eminent Scholar Chair in International Business. He offered advice to me about being a Business major and that was, "If you are certain about what you want to major in, make sure you have something else to bring to the table that will surely sell yourself to the company in which you are trying to get into." Basically, he was saying make sure you have something to set yourself apart from everyone else.
Brian A. Gueniot--He works for a consulting firm to try and help businesses stay out of the courtroom. (This is basically how he described it.) He told a group of students and I that he used to be a football coach here in Louisiana, and he also enjoys the Loyola community and all that it has to offer.
Julie McDonald--Mrs. McDonald explained to me less about herself and more about one of her friends after I explained to her my future plans. She said that she has a friend with an "old-fashioned" lingerie shop down Magazine St. in New Orleans called "LiLi's". I explained to her that my future plans were to own a lingerie shop also, but naming it "LaLa's". It was quite amazing that someone else had done this, and also offered me hope for what I would like to do. I thought I was crazy about even thinking about doing something like this, turns out not. I am really excited to meet Mrs. McDonald's friend and find out some advice that I can use in the future.One thing that I am sure I did well on during the networking event was handshaking and keeping eye contact. I offered each business professional a firm handshake as well as eye contact while saying nice to meet you along with my name. In the future at Cocktail Parties, or even business events, I hope I feel a little more eager to just jump into it. I was a little stand-offish at first, but towards the end I started warming up to the idea. It was an overall great experience that will help out in the future.
For further reference on what you should do while networking, check out some of the links at:
or try http://www.businessknowhow.com/tips/networking.htm. These should point you in the right direction.
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