Early Networking. Feedback Please.
I apologize for the length of this post.
I recently joined WSO and have spent the last couple of days reading article after article. From what I can tell networking is incredibly important. So I decided hit the ground running and start trying to make connections. I need some feedback on my efforts.
First some background.
I graduated from a prestigious high school in May. I will be attending a target school where I will major in economics and play football. I was a mediocre student until I realized I wanted to be in finance. 3.0 GPA first 5 semesters, 4.0 last 3. I leveraged my athletic ability, being an URM, and family connections to get into the target school. I also have a good story about how I became interested in finance, that I can share.
This summer I have been working with my father, who has a Masters in finance from HWS. I also created a list of banks with programs for underclassmen, and URMs.
I started networking yesterday. The high school I attended was founded over 100 years and is all-male. Their is an incredibly strong sense of brotherhood and camaraderie. So I decided to contact alumni who are involved in finance. I got their names and jobs from LinkedIn then used firstname.lastname@company,com to send them a short e-mail. To test the waters, I only sent about 5 e-mails. I asked if I could have a short chat with them over the phone about their industry.
I got a response about 30 mins later from an IB associate at a MM bank. We talked for half an hour. The conversation consisted of us sharing backgrounds then he answered my questions. He was a student athlete at a semi-target, so he was able to give me a lot of tips and advice. I asked for referrals and he gave me the contact info for an associate at a BB bank in the same city as my university.
Today I am going to make a spreadsheet that tracks networking contacts, send emails to recent graduates from the college I will be attending who are in banking, send more emails to high school alums, and contact a family member who is a VP at a boutique bank in the same city as my college.
I realize that my efforts are pre-mature. Especially considering that I have not even stepped on campus yet or taken a class. But, is there anything else that I should or could be doing.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Thank You.
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