Let’s Take Networking off the Back Burner: SMU Café

Written by Hannah Birru

Thumbnail and Header Photo by Saint Mary’s University

Students often forget about the importance of networking amidst a never-ending stream of quizzes, assignments, exams, work commitments, and extracurriculars. For most students, it just seems to end up on the back burner. With more immediate tasks taking over, networking becomes an abandoned bullet on a revolving to-do list.

However, networking with the right resources can be easy. Networking is not like a three thousand-word term paper to be completed within a day; it can be a passive activity where five minutes a few times a week can go a long way.

As a Saint Mary’s student, there is a multitude of relatively easy ways students can network. But first, let's talk about why networking is so important. Five minutes a couple of times a week could be arguably much more enjoyable if spent watching a heart-warming video of a cat with separation anxiety. It’s essential to establish how with only five minutes every few days, networking can truly become a benefit to most.

For most students, securing a job after graduation is an all too real concern, and networking can be an effective method to capitalize and maximize opportunities in the ever-so-competitive job market. Nowadays, job listings have gone beyond the conventional job ad on Indeed or company sites. According to The Wall Street Journal article, “Take Your Search for a Job Offline”, a whopping 80% of jobs are never advertised with an official public ad. Surfing through the internet scouring for jobs ads has become neither a sufficient nor an effective method in today’s job market. The Jobvite's 2019 Job Seeker Nation Survey reported, “that even though most applicants apply for jobs on a job board or career site, 35% found job postings on social media, 50% of respondents heard about jobs from friends, and 37% learned about jobs from professional networks”.  Ignoring this “hidden job market” that can be capitalized by growing your personal and professional network can be a detriment to a future student’s career.

Here is one easy way to start networking today:

As a Saint Mary’s student, you have access to SMU Café. Powered by the platform Ten Thousand Coffees, SMU Café allows you to network with Saint Mary’s alumni and peers. There are currently over 1000 students and alumni members participating in the SMU Café. SMU Café through Ten Thousand Coffees aims to “match students with alumni for inspiring career conversations.”

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

First, you create your account based on your interests, wants, and expectations. So, for example, let’s say you are currently a science student interested in a future career in the pharmaceutical industry. Your profile will have key interest tags that it will then use to match you with alumni. There are introductions every four weeks, where you are matched with alumni aligning with your career interests. Students could potentially be matched with a pharmacist, chemist, or alumni in another profession in the pharmaceutical industry. Once matched, it is then encouraged to both students and alumni to reach out to each other to connect, whether it be over a coffee (hence the name Ten Thousand Coffees) or the pandemic version, online. And just like that, you are networking!

SMU Café with Ten Thousand Coffees is a relatively easy way to grow your network and connect with inspiring individuals. All communications and messages you receive via SMU Café are sent directly to your preferred email. This can be hugely beneficial as seeing a regular reminder in an email can help you prioritize networking, keeping it off the bottom of your to-do list. This helps networking stay off the back burner. Beyond the convenience of getting communications emailed to you, having the software initiate a match can help facilitate networking. It can sometimes be intimidating to reach out to professionals, and some students might struggle to make an introduction thinking it might be awkward. However, the automatic monthly introductions can eliminate these concerns.

SMU Café is just one easy way to network. With over 50,000 SMU alumni worldwide, if programs like SMU Café are used, there can be an endless array of opportunities to grow and strengthen your network.