EDITORIAL
As graduates are leaving Amarillo College and beginning their journey elsewhere, students should have learned the importance of networking and the need for recommendation letters.
Networking plays a big role in college or job searching. Networking is interacting with others and developing professional relationships or social connections. Why is this important? If you ask a professor for a recommendation letter yet you barely attended class or were late every day, the instructor isn’t going to have very much to recommend.
By interacting with others, you can connect with the people that they know for future resources and opportunities. Networking is a way to help you get to the next chapter in your life. Leaving AC and burning bridges behind you shows
how one would act in a job setting and is also a reflection of character. This isn’t high school anymore. This is college and we’re all adults.
Students may not favor a specific professor but as an adult, there needs to be a mutual respect for one another.
That doesn’t mean you have to be best friends with each other, it means to be professional and cordial. Trash talking to your peers or other teachers isn’t the best way to receive a reference for that new job.
Today’s society is interconnected and Amarillo is not that big to begin with. Someone you know might know the right person to further your career. Leave a good impression after walking out of every room because someone is always watching.
Valuing your work ethic is going to make you stand out to your professor who has a friend who’s hiring at the local news channel or Pantex. Professors see potential and they also see laziness and won’t recommend the student who’s lazy to their friend at Google or Northwest Hospital.
Social media has become an easy way of finding out who you are. As a student you represent AC, and as a barista you represent Starbucks. Wherever you go, you serve as a representative and what you post on social media can hurt your reputation.
According to Net Nanny 70% of employers say what they find on social media and online impacts their hiring decisions and 40% of college admissions officers visit the applicants social media. Digital footprint on the trail of data someone leaves behind when browsing the internet.
So as you prepare to graduate, remember not to burn the bridges you may need to cross.
Leave a Reply