The Power of Networking: How I landed my job in an airport!
2016 was probably the hardest and busiest year of my life at that point! In 2016, I was working full time at a large medical group in Columbus and a full time MBA student, scheduled to graduate that December. I had limited PTO, but I was bound to use all of it to explore the U.S. I wanted to make sure that Columbus was a city that I wanted to live in when I was done with school, but hadn’t been very many places outside of Florida for family vacations.
I decided the best way to stay fit and explore was to sign up for the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon Series. I had my eye on some of their bling and decided I would run 10 throughout the year to earn the Platinum Album Heavy Medal. I ran a total of 11 that year, but only 10 were Rock ‘n Roll. The eleventh was the Glass City half marathon in Toledo, OH.
For the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon Series I ran in:
New Orleans
Dallas
Raleigh
Nashville
San Diego
Chicago
Philadelphia
Denver
Las Vegas
San Antonio
This is where I learned the power of airports. People have the most down time in airports because everyone is standing around waiting for the same flights. People are so open to talking about themselves and their work which I love. I always asked people 3 questions:
What do you do?
How did you get there?
Why do you stay?
San Diego proved to be a very influential city for me because it is where I met a manager in my company now. I ran the half marathon that morning and was waiting for my flight to LAX, writing a paper for school and reading a book about health care delivery in the U.S. I asked the man sitting next to me if I could plug my laptop in and he said, “that’s an odd book for light reading” leading me to tell him it was for school. He asked me all sorts of things next about my current job, what I was looking for in my next one, what type of work environment I wanted to work in and then I told him about the half marathons which then he told me he was in the Navy. I couldn’t believe it, I had just seen a friend who took me to Coronado Island and I loved it! It has an awesome view of downtown San Diego across the water and lots of good restaurants to eat at. I definitely recommend checking it out. We connected right away and he gave me a business card at the end which at this point was pretty normal.
I sent him my resume and there weren’t many openings for my level so I was just being patient. Honestly, I wasn’t in a big hurry because I still had six months of school to get through and I liked my daily job enough to continue with that. In August I was looking at the race schedule trying to make sure I hit 10 by year end and realized that I needed to pick one more city and Philadelphia was next up. I hadn’t been there and flights were cheap so I booked a flight for two weeks later to run. When I got to my corral the morning of the run I looked up and the gentleman in front of me had a neon green t-shirt on with the name of the same company as the other man in the airport and I thought what a sign from the universe. So I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him my same three questions, got to chatting and he gave me his email in my phone jogging to the starting line. The next day when I got home I went to email him and I had an email from a recruiter saying they wanted to interview me!
One thing you will learn about me is I am extremely optimistic and willing to give anything a chance. I loved everything I had heard about this company and thought I don’t have anything to lose by interviewing. Four rounds of interviews and a month later I got a call with a job offer. I couldn’t believe it. I was going to finish my MBA with a job offer lined up. This was such a different feeling than when I received my bachelors and was unsure about my next steps. I had direction.
On December 4, 2016 I turned in my last assignment to complete my MBA, ran my 10th half marathon in San Antonio, TX and signed my job offer from Accenture. This was a great day! I had hit all the goals I had set out to do and was onto the next step in my career. All my hard work had truly paid off all because I wasn’t afraid to have a conversation with a stranger sitting next to me in the airport.
