Network news

Networking is the most effective job search strategy,” says Donna Marino in Skidmore’s Career Services Office. No wonder students and alumni are taking advantage of Skidmore’s Career Network—2,600 alumni, parents, and friends who volunteer to answer questions and share advice about their professions. Skidmore’s network is searchable online (at www.skidmore.edu/administration/career), and Career Services has plenty of suggestions for how to make contact. Below are just three examples of recent networking successes:
     When she began a job search in the summer of 2000, Bayard Heussler ’89 drew on Career Services’ advice and contacted Sandra Lipson ’71, vice president for executive staffing at Fidelity Investments in Boston. “What a stroke of luck for me!” Heussler says of her connection with the longtime human-resources pro. Lipson not only offered information, but actually helped “fast-track” Heussler’s application, and by fall she was hired as a service integration manager for Fidelity’s Investments Retirement Services Company. The duo became good friends, and the mentoring continued as Heussler’s career unfolded within the company. In 2002, internal networking led to her position as relationship manager in Fidelity’s national charitable services, and this year she took on a new role in tax-exempt services, heading up retirement counselors for the western half of the U.S. “Sandy exemplified the best of Skidmore career networking,” says Heussler, “and I hope that I can be as helpful to an alum in the future.”
     When the dot-com he was working for flamed out, New Yorker Justin Model ’91 turned to Donna Marino in Skidmore’s Career Services. Marino gave him a list of Skidmore alumni who volunteer as career advisors, and Model connected with fifteen of them. “The majority gave me advice, via e-mail and phone, on where I should look and how to tailor my résumé,” he reports. “And five met with me in person,” offering their time as well as their valuable connections. “Many opened their Rolodex,” he says, “and passed along my résumé to their friends. Two of these meetings led to actual interviews.” Ultimately Model landed a job as marketing manager for the international law firm Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison. And when that firm closed its doors in early 2003, Model worked his growing net to land on his feet at Orrick, Herrington, and Sutcliffe.
     Amy O’Leary ’92 began her job search with an alumni connection that endured and deepened and eleven years later led to a new job. O’Leary was interested in work with children and children’s issues, so Skidmore’s Career Services connected her with Margaret Blood ’81, who worked then at Massachusetts Children’s Caucus in Boston. No job came from their first meeting—“the economy was horrible,” O’Leary remembers—but she kept track of Blood’s career. “I would hear Margaret’s name, I would attend workshops where she was presenting, and we managed to reconnect at least once a year.” Later their paths crossed as community volunteers as well. O’Leary was a teacher when she learned about Blood’s involvement in a project to provide for universal preschool in Massachusetts, the Early Education for All campaign. Last summer, when Blood needed to hire an early-childhood field director for the campaign, “she called me in,” says O’Leary. “So ten years later I had another interview with Margaret—and I was offered the job.”
     To get information from the Skidmore network, or to join the list of willing advisors, call 518-580-5790 or visit www.skidmore.edu/administration/career/network.htm.—KG