The Networking that Lead to Pizza

June 30th, 2018

Networking, networking, networking!

No matter which sector of life you’re looking at, people are constantly drilling the importance of networking into your head. Especially in school preparing for the working world, professionals are emphasizing the power of networking and the impact it could have on your future.

Through the IES internship program, they provided a networking event for the internship students this past week. Before the networking event took place, I was very nervous to attend it and have to immerse myself into a sea of professional supervisors. I was nervous because I can be a very shy person and it is not as easy for me to go up to new people and start talking to them, but I was very surprised with myself after the networking event took place.

Before the event began and our supervisors showed up, all of the internship program students met in the auditorium and had a warm up for the networking event on proper etiquette, what we should say about ourselves, how to network our brand, and much more. One thing in particular that made me very intimidated was when Caterina made us practice our OWN elevator pitches so that we could sell ourselves to the others. Personally, I like talking about anything but myself so this was very hard and uncomfortable to focus on, but I knew that it would be very important in the end.

Soon after we were done as a group, we moved to the terrace and waited for our supervisors to arrive. I was also very nervous for my supervisor to show up because my internship with Romeing Magazine is very unique—I don’t have an office to work out of so I work remotely and only meet my supervisor once a week, if that. Compared to my roommates and other people in the program, I don’t really know my supervisor that well so this event was a great opportunity to get to know Antonio more. Once my supervisor Antonio arrived, we were talking about things for Romeing Magazine, whether it was new ideas that I could write on or Antonio telling me that one of the pictures I took in Rome will be on the cover of the July issue!

Through this networking event, I got to know Antonio so much better and he even set up pizza reservations at a DELICIOUS restaurant for my roommates and I for later that night. 

Not only did this networking event help me get to know my own supervisor, I had the opportunity to meet other supervisors and learn more about them and their business goals, including Startalia and The Roman Guy. I’m very fortunate that IES Abroad planned a networking event like they did because it’s preparing us for the future. It was best for me to get an event like that under my belt because I know we will be attending networking events more this year as I start my senior year of college. This event taught me so much about the working environments in Rome, but also taught me so much about myself and what my personal brand can work on!