Lunching and Learning

For my networking event, I attended one of the Griff Center sponsored “Lunch and Learn” sessions; the guest was Jill Bond from Rich Products. Jill is a Canisius graduate who has worked for Rich for decades in various capacities. She has a background in human resources, which I thought would be interesting, and now works in the company’s legal department. Between 10 and 15 students showed up for the luncheon, which was rather informal. Jill spoke for just a few minutes before spending the next hour answering our questions as we ate lunch. The sandwiches that were given out came with mayo, which was upsetting, but the conversation was great. Most of the students there were in business related fields, so a lot of the questions pertained to the corporate culture at Rich’s. I figured, with her HR background, that Jill would be a good person to ask about how to best market my very journalism-specific resume to non-journalism job opportunities. Her answer was thoughtful and helpful; she even offered to connect me with the publishing company her daughter works for. All in all, I enjoyed the event and I’m glad that I went. At best, I established a contact that I can utilize moving forward. At worst, it was certainly a learning experience with productive dialogue. And the cookies were phenomenal.