Student: My name is Justin Cecil and my question really involves the job market and how much emphasis do you feel should be placed on networking?

Dr Reimann: Who’s up?

Marie Williams: You’re on first.

Joe Daylor: Well, I think, certainly with things as difficult as they are the importance of networking is significant. What we’re faced with, which is apparent and obvious as economic conditions get more difficult we’re really limited. What we’re going to look to do is we’re going to look to protect our own employees and do what we can with the folks internally. With that said, even in the most difficult times we always have a strategy to bring new people into the organization. We have goals around how many MBAs we bring in. We have goals around how many new grads we bring in. We try and maintain that even in the most difficult times. And often times, as someone who hires people, I’m always very interested in someone who knows somebody. Even though they might not have a lot of job experience, if someone can come to me and say this is a person I’m really impressed with. I know them personally. I’ve been involved with them in some volunteer activity or athletics or school or whatever it is. I find it to be usually important. And useful not only to get the job but also maintain your vitality. The relationships we have with folks across the industry are incredibly important.

Marie Williams: I’m going to put on my former management recruiter’s hat in response to this. I would say that networking is key and critical to that success because, most issues like the hidden job market he talks about, there’s always a place for a talented human being. So the issue is you find out about those through; well, I worked with you on the United Way and he really did a good job there and I can just recommend what I’ve seen from that standpoint. Or, he was on the Board of Examiners for a while and demonstrated leadership. So that’s how you make your connections for someone that’s independently willing to say, because of the relationship you’ve developed, ‘I’ll stand behind him.’

Bill Nussbaum: I think networking is really important and certainly for the same reasons that Marie and Joe have. Throughout my life, you meet all sorts of people and you never know where those meetings or relationships will take you. So, I’ve always kind of just developed and tried to develop the relationships and connections to people because I’ve felt like that was just something important. In many, many cases those are the small connections that this person knows that person through that organization and somehow you find another connection somewhere and it leads to the next thing. So you never know where those connections are going to lead and that’s why they’re so important. The networking thing is something you can do all the time. And if you think of it as, ‘you know this person might be leading me to somewhere 5 years from now that I had no idea, I’d never even think of.

Dr Reimann: Sometimes when some people talk about networking it almost sounds artificial. You’ve got to touch a lot of bases in order to get ahead and so on. And that’s important. I certainly don’t want to minimize that but I think the message I heard here was the networking for purpose brings people together and then later that spills over into all sorts of other benefits. So, I think if you’re part of a network and you’re committed to getting done what that network finds important to do others will recognize that and think of you. So it isn’t just that if I have friends they’ll find me a job kind of thing. It’s much more built around a sense of purpose. So whatever jobs or communities that you work there’s an opportunity through mutual commitment because it’s mutual commitment that leads to the success of organizations of the type that our three guests here today have emphasized. Are there other questions?