Oct. 23, 2021
Last Friday was the ISM Business Symposium. This event is a shop where ISM students are able to connect and gain knowledge from professionals as well as ISM alumni. The event was very helpful in terms of expanding my network and gaining new knowledge on how to better manage and lead my yearbook staff, however, I felt as though I could have networked better with the professionals who attended the symposium. Though I did manage to reach out to a couple of new professionals, I am still faced with one predominant issue: Not one professional is responding to my interview requests.
One of the primary issues I have had lately is the lack of people responding to my messages and emails for interviews. Though this issue is very common among students entering the business world, let alone high school students, I'm wondering if my approach to contacting individuals is the reason why others are choosing to not respond. Or perhaps I just need to contact double of the amount I am now to increase my chances of receiving a response. Either way, this stress is the thing I am giving the most attention to at the moment for my UX career can progress only so far without the guidance of another.
For these next few weeks in ISM, I will vary my approaches to contacting new people as well as contact more individuals than I previously have, therefore increasing my chances of receiving a response. I will also make it a point to keep networking in the back of my mind in nearly everything I do. I am planning for this new way of thinking to allow for me to notice new networking opportunities that I may not have previously seen before. Though this challenge is giving me some recent stress, I am taking this situation as an opportunity to learn how to expand my network better and figure out how I can improve on my own without the guidance of a professional. In regards to my current pacing on finding a professional to interview, I have decided that my goal is to have at least two interviews done by the end of the month.s I will now test these methods over the next couple of weeks and will provide updates on my progress in the next blogs.
