YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – About 120 Youngstown State University business students heard from professionals in their fields about what to expect and how to prepare for their careers.
Professionals in accounting, finance, marketing and sales, management/supply chain, human resources and business administration – many of them YSU alumni – talked to students Friday at the university’s Professional Development Summit.
The event, staged each fall and spring semester in the Williamson College of Business Administration, started in 2013 and has been an initiative of the YSU Center for Career Management since 2016. The format of the summit has evolved.
“About a year ago, we changed it so the students can hear and learn more about what they can do with their major and their career field,” said Christina O’Connell, executive director of the Center for Career Management. “So many times students choose something because it sounds interesting, but they don’t know all the opportunities.”
The summit is structured to include a variety of professionals who talk about their career paths and the options within fields of study, she said.
Friday’s event included professionals from banks, accounting firms, nonprofit organizations, manufacturing businesses, media and food service companies and many other industries.
Christina Saenger, interim dean at WCBA, said the summit provides important information for students and is one of the ways the college works to prepare them for careers.
“One of our priorities is to provide level-appropriate experiences from the time a student joins us as a freshman – as a business student – to the time they graduate and transition into becoming a business professional,” she said. “So right from freshman year, we’re doing things to get them into thinking about their professional development.”
Friday’s summit concluded with a networking session where students could continue conversations with professionals who participated in the panel sessions. An event next week at WCBA will focus more on networking.
The networking enables students to learn about potential internship or job opportunities at the companies represented, and representatives from the companies meet potential candidates.
“And we’ve heard more and more from our employer partners that they are interested in hiring a YSU grad, a WCBA grad over a big-name school,” Saenger said.
That’s because WCBA graduates exhibit a work ethic, they’re professional and “their experiences with us have shown that they get that value out of WCBA students …,” she said.
WCBA builds relationships with its alumni, and those alumni regularly participate in campus events, she said.
Abby Conrad, assistant director of the Center for Career Management, called the summit a sort of celebration of underclassmen rising to upper class levels and starting to think about finding an internship and gaining experience in developing their professional skills.
It’s tied to the college’s business professional class where sophomores and juniors are building their resumes, learning to write cover letters, practicing interview skills and learning to network.
“But the main part of today is going to be sitting in on sessions with professionals in their field of interest, and they get a chance to ask them questions, learn more about their major and what they can do with it,” Conrad said.
In a session about finance/business analytics and economics moderated by Peter Chen from YSU’s Lariccia School of Accounting and Finance, students asked panelists about their experiences and strategies for career success.
One of the panelists, Brandon Enos, chief financial officer and interim executive vice president at Gasser Chair, urged students to foster professional relationships.
“You’re going to find that some of what we call a network, or people that you can kind of call on, are going to come from the most unlikely place,” he said.
Olu Omodunbi, chief economist at Huntington Private Bank, encouraged students to be persistent in pursuing opportunities and to follow up.
“I think that pays off, particularly in getting your foot in the door,” he said.
Pictured at top: Panelists from companies, financial institutions and nonprofit organizations talk to Youngstown State University students Friday.