Career Prep 2009 Summer Blog

Chelsey Roebuck writes: Realize that your peers, are not your competition and you must work together to G.T.O. Lateral networking and teamwork will help you both achieve your goals. Ricardo Creighton says: The first thing you want to do is build a solid rapport with with fellow peers at your internship. Eat lunch with them. Jared Hamilton adds: I think sincerity is important when you are reaching out to anyone, but especially your peers. If you want to truly establish a relationship with someone in your position, you have to actually be interested in doing so. If you make it seem that you are just going through the motions in meeting them, they will think that you are being fake and they probably will not want to talk to you after the initial meeting. You can submarine your career and work relationships by the actions you take and the behaviors you exhibit at work. No matter your education, your experience, or your title, if you can't play well with others, you will never accomplish your work mission. Pichon Duplan adds: One way is to reach out to alumni from your own school. I have found that they are the most responsive to meeting with you to discuss any topic of choice. Another way is to send out emails to peers just letting them know that you would like to meet with them to learn about what they do in their department. You can also call instead of sending out emails. In my experience it has been known to work much better than sending out an email. Just be sure to be brief in your phone conversation as they are extremely busy.

Susan M. Heathfield, http://www.about.com/ wrote an article titled "Play Well With Others: Develop Effective Work Relationships" and stated that effective work relationships form the cornerstone for success and satisfaction with your job and your career. How important are effective work relationships? Effective work relationships form the basis for promotion, pay increases, goal accomplishment, and job satisfaction.