Thinking beyond grades: What I’ve learnt from organizing Professional Development and Networking events in college and why you should try to do it too

In university, have you ever found yourself chasing after GPA - that magic number apparently sought after by top employers to "filter" out candidates for those lucrative internships?    

You are not alone in this rat race. I also succumbed to this GPA mania where our minds were programmed with this thought:

"Get a good GPA then you will be in demand by the best who will come to you"

I always wondered on the long term usefulness of this number as it dosen't define you as a person. Then, this question might arise:

"What if you don't have a great GPA due to unforeseen circumstances?"   

In such situations, it would be imperative to find the "X" factor in ourselves and craft it into an interesting personal growth story requiring good soft and storytelling skills. This helps to answer the most common interview question: "Tell me about yourself" which could be a dealmaker for your dream job.

I’ve discovered that by organizing Professional Development and Networking Events is a great platform for you to grow your soft skills and achieve tangible results for your CV by developing these skillsets:

• Leadership through Team Management  
• Organizational Skills - Project Management
• Interpersonal Communication through EQ and Collaboration
• Growth mindset building through character

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1. Leadership through Team Management

I strongly believe that nobody is born a leader, but can be trained to be good leader and the above initiative is a good platform to start honing this skill.

As an student leader exposed to the strategy and operations scene of various student societies ranging from the engineering student chapter to the undergraduate student council and the entrepreneurship society, I got amazing opportunities to develop essential soft skills, primarily leadership, organizational skills and interpersonal communication and let me share with you on my growth journey ??

College events tend to be large scale involving multiple stakeholders where you're accountable to:

• Club main executive committee members 
• Club members 
• Sub-committee/Division members 
• Liaising parties which may include district officers, MNC events representative or heads of other university clubs

A team is necessary in such taxing situations where you can benefit from the possible synergy of ideas. It would be vital to assess their strengths and weaknesses first to promote effective delegation and accomplish the task. This is a really important aspect of leadership as you would lean how to communicate your objectives to your men.

For instance, when I was the Project Director for the Institute Of Engineers-NUS student chapter, I hosted and supervised the execution of career development workshops for our student body of 200 with the following objectives in mind:

• Liaise with engineering companies to find suitable industry professionals  
• Plan for the workshop’s general outline and event flow
• Promote the event to the undergraduate student body
• Conduct event budgeting and ensure club finances are healthy

I realized that to achieve the first three objectives, my team would need people with:

??Good communication skills for the first point

??Organizational and marketing skills for the second and third to ensure a strong participation rate.

This “big-picture” thinking really helped me become a better leader while adding value to the community around me as:

“Leadership is essentially, the art of team management, EQ and people skills"

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2. Organizational Skills - Project Management  

When you actively participate in student societies, you not only get networking opportunities with fellow students, but also get your hands “dirty” in club operations work which gives you networking opportunities with top employers. Even if you are a committee member or a director, you get to hone your organizational skills through the following activities:

• Strategy planning - Creating the project plan and budget proposal
• Team communication - Ensure alignment with their own personal development goals 
• Marketing - Promotion of your event through marketing channels such as social media
• External Communication - Liaise with industry professionals, companies or other university clubs
• Management Skills - Supervise and monitor event execution

When I organize professional development events, I usually draw up a Gantt Chart and a Project Plan which helps to simplify the planning process. This keeps me on the loop regarding the current project status where I can fill in any gaps in execution accordingly. This skill would come in handy when you want to pursue a project management related career.

I used this tool when I self initiated to organize a Careers In Management Consulting session with Mr Triston Francis, an ex-Harvard alumni and BCG consultant which would help our student body gain better insights into the management consulting sector. I took these points into consideration while crafting the Project Plan:

• Event Objective
• Time and date
• Expected turnout rate 
• Promotional strategy 
• Budget analysis 
• Collaboration process: external parties 

Such initiatives not only hone your project management skills, but also leadership, teamwork and logical thinking which are essential 21st century skills for tomorrow's workplace. In this process, you can hone your soft skills and quantify those results in your CV in the following format:

??Spearheaded a career development event X for Y and managed to attract Z participants in total from different faculties

??Managed a team of A people to organize professional development related projects which boosted club membership rate by X% and grew our professional network by Y% with industry partners

??Liaised and communicated with X industry professionals for possible industry-academia collaboration

In the future, you might be better equipped to tackle important projects for your company which could range from engineering to business to solve the needs of particular clients. In the case of university, your clients are participants whom you attract, and to satisfy these “clients” would be to check if your event genuinely adds value to their lives so that they can imagine themselves applying the theoretical knowledge from university to excel in their careers, so:

“You can take this experience to “simulate” the project management process in the corporate world” 

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3. Interpersonal Communication through EQ and Collaboration 

When I organized networking sessions for my student body, I quickly realized the importance of teamwork and your club members in your success because your team is your asset. Ultimately, no man is an island. Hence, how do you ensure that your ship does not sink in the deep ocean?

It is interpersonal communication. 

I realized this time and again when I worked as the Professional Development Director for the Rotaract Club Of NUS, where I had to work with a small knitted team of 5 to foster effective partnerships between Rotary clubs to organize professional development events for NUS, NTU and SMU undergraduates. Most of the people I work with hail from different backgrounds and managing these different expectations as well as our own is a challenging but rewarding task which would be vital for your career journey in a multinational with diverse work environments.

At this point, you might be thinking:

"How can we improve our interpersonal communication skills to manage different people with different backgrounds? "

Here would be my answers:

• Understand your team members first and ask critical questions such as: Why did they sign up for our club? What are their personal goals?
• Respect the differences in opinions between the other party 
• Communicate with external parties in a professional manner
• Try to understand the goals of the external party as well so that they also can “gain” after joining the event
• Involve your team in meetings and value their inputs to foster greater relationships

Do all the above points converge to something familiar?

This is nothing but Emotional Quotient (EQ) which you will develop here. No matter how smart you are, if you do not understand and communicate well with your team members, you will fail.

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4. Growth mindset building through character

After reading through my article, you might be wondering:

“Why should I invest time to organize professional development/networking events when I can just use other means such as reading personal development books and attend networking sessions?

In my opinion, books can be your best friends as they never lie. However, reading is a passive activity - you might absorb information one day but forget it the next day in the race of daily life. Organizing such events is a good platform for you to start applying the principles that you read in such books to a proper “hands-on” activity.

In addition, you develop strong character by managing failure which becomes more common during uncertain times, especially in a Covid-19 world where physical events are called off with disengaged members arise due to communication lapses. Learning to cope up with such setbacks help build your resilience as you learn to think out of the box and push on!

Lastly and the most important point, you create opportunities for your fellow students who are as hungry and driven as you - which adds up to the concept of “Karma” which states that the more you do to help add value to people’s lives, your life would add value as well!

This is probably the difference between attending personal development sessions and organizing them. Instead of a passive listener, you are an active listener now where you can see the fruits of your own efforts. I have gained insights into the fields of consulting, entrepreneurship, community service and engineering through these simple steps.

After all, which opportunity is better than this when you can gain a vast amount of knowledge yourself about various industries and hone your soft skills while maximizing the power of “Karma” at the same time?