About 100 business students recently got a day’s worth of face-to-face time with more than two dozen alumni, partners and university officials, including Radford’s Provost Bethany Usher and President Bret Danilowicz.
The event was the first Shadow Day, held Feb. 21 and presented by the Davis College of Business and Economics.
Between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., it offered 52 separate sessions – casual, freeform chats that touched on professional guidance, work philosophies, job searches and career planning – each lasting a half hour, largely in conference rooms at Kyle Hall, with others held at the Venture Lab or via Zoom.
“So, what do you want to know?” Danilowicz amiably asked the trio of undergraduates he met with during one of the event’s first sit-downs.
Their conversation covered selection processes for choosing a Ph.D. program; figuring out how to plan for the future and gain the skills needed to achieve one’s targeted career; the high value of networking; and Danilowicz’s own personal history – he talked the students through the educational and career avenues that led him from his hometown in upstate New York to places like Hawaii, Ontario, Ireland and Florida before he ultimately arrived in Radford.
Danilowicz also impressed upon them the value of maintaining ties through goodwill.
“One of the hidden pieces of both enjoying your job and making career advancement is supporting others,” the president told the students. “If you try to be positive and supportive … I guarantee you, while it may not be in the job description or in your annual review, per se, it will come back to you, and it will be positively viewed. It’s just a personal reward.”
That kind of straight talk played heavily into another session led by a seasoned business veteran, Josh Rowe ’81, who recently retired after 35 years in the packaging industry. He encouraged his groups to cultivate face-to-face relationships in their work, even as the world becomes more digital.
“That takes getting on the road and going to see people,” Rowe explained. “You want to have a relationship with [clients] that, if a piece of business is close, you get the edge.” Cameron Cardwell, a junior management major from Roanoke, told Rowe she hopes to go into finance but has not yet decided on a specific career.
“I wouldn’t stress out too much about not knowing exactly what you want to do,” he told her. “I was out of school for 10 years before I got my real footing in terms of my career getting off the ground.”
Rowe later added: “I’m not here to tell you how to become successful; I’m here to tell you that you can become successful. If I can do it, you can do it. This school is a good place to be, a good place to start that foundation.”
Cardwell later said she took Rowe’s advice to heart.
“I really did appreciate that, because there have been times when I thought that I was not as capable, but hearing that made me feel like I will get to a place where I’m happy,” she explained.
John Cox, chief executive officer for the Radford University Foundation, answered students’ questions about starting nonprofits and finding investors for small businesses, but he also handed out some pro tips.
“Build relationships,” he advised them. “Find a good banker. Find a good insurance agent.”
How will they recognize good businesspeople like that? one student asked.
“They don’t try and oversell you,” Cox replied. “They work with you when you have a genuine need. And when they make a commitment to you about what they’re going to do, they do it.”
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Bethany Usher structured her meetings to maximize face-to-face discussion. When her groups were seated, she went around the room, student by student, learning their names and their majors and their hometowns and discussing with them their plans for the future.
Like many of the other mentors, she also put in a healthy plug for the Career and Talent Development Center: “The truth is, even if you’re a freshman going in now to the career center, they have advisors who can help you build a LinkedIn profile, help you create a resume that you can use to apply for internships or summer jobs or anything. This is the time to have all that in hand.”
Vice President of Economic Development and Corporate Education Angela Joyner walked her students through her background with such companies as Hallmark, Sara Lee and Mattel, and she gave them suggestions to help them resonate with potential employers.
“Finding a job is a job,” Joyner explained and advised them to treat their search accordingly, but she also reminded them: “You are uniquely the only person created like you. Even if you have the same majors, interned at the same places, you are a masterpiece to yourself.”
She urged them to reflect on themselves in order to recognize their attributes and to use those specific strengths as leverage in their job searches.
“Find out what’s unique to you, what’s authentic to you, so that you can stand out,” Joyner told them.
