My main attraction for this event was Jim Bochenek who is the Director of Event Operations at the US Airways Center which of course is the home of the Phoenix Suns. I am originally from California and of course grew up around the Lakers but now am a hard core Suns fan and tries to never miss a game. But enough about my love with the Suns, back to the topic at hand; networking. Its easy to network when its you in a room of 10-15 and you are all trying to talk to each other (ie BNI meetings) but now Im competing with 75 other college students for 1 persons attention. The odds are not stacked in my favor.
One thing they kept mentioning was how each of them started on the ground floor usually as an unpaid intern. I can understand that today we are faced with tough decisions like that. Do we stay in our current profession or do you take that risk and start a new path that you are not sure where it will lead at an unpaid position. Even though all of these people kind of have the same type of job, event planning they all do it a little different. I had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Bochenek about my experience with the Goddard for Governor and some of the events I have helped with and planned for him and to see if that would give me a leg up on my competition, and it seems that even with prior experience Im still put in the internship position.
I was never in this even when the job market with this horrible I could always jump from one job to another with no problem but now I find myself in the unknown. You can almost say between a rock and bigger rock. It seems that today you cannot only network but you must market. Market yourself but thats a discussion for another day.
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