IA04

I went to the Accounting Club Meeting and ultimately ended up joining the club. The meeting began by introducing the President who is Elayna Burdelski. Elayna is a junior from Fox Chapel, PA who has been at Chatham since she graduated from high school. Her LinkedIn page is: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elayna-burdelski-4378b5168. Then, introduced the Vice President who is Matt Zanella. Matt is a senior from Butler, PA. who transferred from University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg after two years. His LinkedIn page is: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-zanella-126639122. The President and Vice President then asked everyone if we had any ideas for fundraising events/events to get the clubs name out. We concluded with four events, these events included a kickball tournament, a panel of accounting professors to talk with B&E students, Chipotle fundraiser, and volunteering at a local Tax Day. After figuring out what events we could do, we talked about things people wanted to get out of the club. Main topics included: networking, increasing communication skills, experience within the general field of accounting, and volunteering. I knew these were viable and very important skills, but not to the extent that I now know. 

The main thing I took away from this accounting meeting is that marketing yourself and networking are going to be key for success not only in college, but after college as well. In the book, marketing is defined as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” (Collins 10.2). Not only can you market a product, but you can also market yourself. The people you connect with, and the people you meet, is also marketing. It is also networking, which is “the use of dedicated websites and applications to interact with other users, or to find people with similar interests to oneself” (Collins 11.5). This doesn’t have to be solely online, whenever you meet with people, this also counts as networking. Another thing I took away is that accounting is really important in a business. Accounting is referred to as the language of business which shows how important it really is. 

This lecture related to what I’ve recently seen in the news. There has been a lot of talk in the news about how there is a lot of competition for college graduates getting a job and securing internships. Within this segment in the news there was talk about marketing yourself/your brand and the networking that you do within your college experience. The reason I believe this is because whenever you network and market yourself during your college experience, you have many options by the time you graduate rather than waiting until you do graduate whenever everyone is trying to get jobs. I also read an article (Link: https://www.ft.com/content/50e39fe8-1634-11e8-9e9c-25c814761640) that stated that you needed to “differentiate yourself from your competition” (Work Tribes). I think this is really important because without differentiating yourself from your competition you can be overlooked easily. The article also said that “you can’t be seen until you learn to see” (Work Tribe). This means that until you see what the competition is giving, you can’t make a name for yourself.