Speed Dating – Networking Event

On November 16th, I attended the “Speed Dating” networking event held on campus in Old Main by the organization AWMC. This particular networking event was very interesting, as it was set up like a speed dating session where the student participants had to move from table to table and talk to the professionals for an allotted amount of time. The beginning of the event began with mingling amongst those in attendance, but it seemed as though the students and the professionals each stuck with their own group and intermingling did not start to happen until the actual networking event itself. However, once the event began, it ran very smoothly and I enjoyed talking to the various professionals. Once the speed dating networking portion began, students were put into pairs and each pair got three minutes with each professional. Although I was initially intimidated, having a friend as my partner in the event was very helpful to relieve that stress. Also, the professionals brought in were very kind, helpful, and interesting to talk to. There were professionals from the fields of Communication, Marketing, Public Relations, Alumni Engagement, Human Resources, and more. I really enjoyed talking to Tim Graham, Sports Writer for The Buffalo News, as I took his Sports Journalism class last semester and was happy to be able to talk to him once again. In addition, I loved talking to Ken from the Boy Scouts of America. He was very funny and seemed like quite an interesting guy to work for. I was able to meet so many different types of professionals and it was great to see a lot of young professionals, like Kate Anticoli who just graduated from Canisius in May. I definitely think I benefited from the experience and really enjoyed it. It taught me how to talk to a professional given a limited amount of time. Although that time seemed like enough at first, I definitely realized that it went by very fast. I liked how the networking event was set up and it seemed to run very smoothly. I look to attend more networking events in the future.