Career Services: NYC Networking Event

One of the great features of CIPA is that our Fellows receive support from our own exclusive Office of Career Management. The Office offers career panels, one-on-one advising, professional development seminars, and so much more. In fact, CIPA was recently ranked Number One Public Affairs Program for Career Support by GraduatePrograms.com.

Two of the most popular events that CIPA’s Office of Career Management offers are the annual networking events in Washington D.C. and New York City. Jeremy Stull, a second-year Fellow who also works as a graduate assistant in the Office of Career Management, attended the NYC Networking Event just a couple of weeks ago and offered to share his experience there. Jeremy also writes a regular blog about his CIPA experiences that you can check out here.

In looking for a graduate school, the location of Ithaca was actually a plus for me. It is a beautiful area, far removed from the hustle and bustle of the city, allowing students to concentrate on their work at hand. That positive becomes a bit of a negative when looking for jobs and you want employers to come find you. Cornell Career Services does a few events per semester that bring employers to campus, leveraging the large and impressive student body to convince employers to make their way here. CIPA, with a student population of fewer than 300, does not have as much leverage. As such, the CIPA Office of Career Management (OCM) organizes at least one event per semester in large metropolitan areas.

The Spring 2014 New York City Career Networking Event took place during Cornell’s newly introduced February Break. This new break, which takes place on President’s Day and the day after, gave students the chance to wrap up a long weekend in New York City with a networking event followed by a CIPA Alumni and Friends Reception. This was the fourth such event that I have attended during my nearly two years at CIPA – two fall events in Washington, DC and two spring events in New York City – and it proved its worth yet again.

CIPA arranges same-day, round-trip transportation for those interested for a modest fee. It is a long day, but well worth it. The event was comprised of two round-table sessions in which a group of professionals – many of whom are CIPA alumni or have a history of hiring CIPA graduates – rotate between tables of eight to ten students for a predetermined time period. Conversations range from organization-specific to broad career goals. Students are given a list of attendees and are well prepared to ask probing questions that go beyond what one may find on an organization’s website. There is a good mix of both first and second years CIPAs, which is representative of the fact that organizations are looking for interns and full-time staff.

The event concluded with a “mix-and-mingle” session with roughly fifteen professions in an unstructured environment, allowing students to spend as much or as little time as they wanted with a particular organization. This session was an addition to the model OCM had previously used, and was well received by professionals and participants since it gave all involved an individually tailored experience.

While events like these do not always lead directly to jobs or internships, they foster deeper connections between CIPA alumni and current students. They give everybody involved, even the professionals, a chance to expand their professional network and learn about new organizations and sectors.

This year’s attendees included representatives from:

Bank of America

Bank of East Asia

Cause Effective

Change for Kids

China Labor Watch

Clinton Foundation

Clinton Global Initiative

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Enterprise Community Partners

Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Foothold Technologies

Graham-Pelton Consulting

Independent Diplomat

Jones Lange LaSalle

JP Morgan Chase

Karbone, Inc.

MTA NYC Transit

NYC Campaign Finance Board

NYC Center for Economic Opportunity

NYC Department of Transportation

NYC Economic Development Corporation

NYC Mayor’s Office of Operations

NYC Office of Management and Budget

One Acre Fund

Open Society Foundation

Port Authority of New York & New Jersey

PwC Consulting

United Nations – Office of the UN Secretariat