By Brandon Varner
November 13, 2015
I had a friend years ago who always said, “It’s not the grades you make, it’s the hands you shake.”
In my experience, I have found this adage to be true, especially in making professional connections. That friend has since flunked out of school, but I have used his advice to secure an internship, and I couldn’t thank him enough for his words.
I currently work as the Video Intern at The David Mathews Center for Civic Life, an organization that works to solve problems plaguing many communities throughout Alabama. The workers go to each county in the state in three to four year cycles to discuss specific issues, whether it’s teen pregnancy, the high school dropout rate, or something more dangerous to the population as a whole.
I met someone going to a friend’s birthday party probably two or three years ago who would later contact me about the internship opportunity. We had a nice conversation on a couple of other occasions when I saw her at parties around town, but other than that it was a relatively brief friendship that parted on amicable terms.
There is nothing that I can attribute more than my experience on campus when it came to acquiring my internship. I was contacted by this friend earlier this year, after she had seen that I had done some video editing. She offered me the position of a video intern and I readily accepted. Always make an effort to cultivate friendships when you can because you never know what the future holds, or as my boss in student media says, “Be a Bro.”
There are several organizations on campus that can, if not get you an internship or later a job, at least give you the tools that you need to succeed. Through the Professional Writing concentration and classes that I had taken, I gained skills in the Adobe Suite that helped me gain a position on the staff of UAB’s student newspaper, Kscope, as the Features Editor. Indesign is critical in the process of laying out many modern publications, and by becoming acquainted with its ins and outs from a technical standpoint I have gained the freedom to more easily express myself from that design standpoint when it came to putting pages together. Along with Indesign, I also learned Photoshop which I use almost everyday to make pictures properly presentable for print in addition to a host of other applications.
After spending a semester on the staff, I advanced to Managing Editor and, in the quest to gain more marketable skills to put on a resumé, decided that I needed to learn how to shoot and edit videos. Our Production Manager was more than happy to sit with me and walk me through the process of lighting, shooting and editing video. After his tutelage, I was confident and capable of taking that internship that came shortly after.
Without the experience of the faculty advisors in Student Media, I would never be as capable as I am now, which has opened many doors. Before joining the staff, I would have never imagined that I would gain the ability to produce videos, lay out publications and create minimal graphic design.
There are few things that can be more helpful for one’s career development than joining an organization on campus. Not everyone will meet someone who will hand them an internship at a birthday party, and for those who do not have that luxury, you could do a lot worse than the built-in network provided by organizations on campus.
I am good friends with a former member of the Professional Writing Club who now works on the editorial staff for a local magazine.
Though I was never a member of the club, knowing her has given me an advantage in getting a pitch for the magazine approved over the people coming in cold and hoping to receive a bit of attention, in my opinion.
Networking is more than just going to boring events with a handful of business cards and hoping everyone gets to know you inorganically. It’s a process of surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals from whom you are not only looking to gain something from, but whom you can also help when the opportunity arises.
So the next time a friend asks you to go to their birthday party and you’re on the fence because your show finally hit Netflix and you really need to catch up, maybe consider putting it off for just a little while longer. You never know where the night will take you, for years and years to come.
