Perfecting Professionalism

Last week, I had the unique opportunity of attending various educational Microsoft training seminars on organizing my LinkedIn page and creating an engaging PowerPoint presentation. Although on a surface-level these skills seem rudimentary, I found them incredibly beneficial as I learned some valuable new techniques to enhance my professional capabilities. In the LinkedIn training seminar, I first learned about the importance of tangible connections with professionals rather than accepting everyone who seeks to engage with my professional network. Before the seminar, I was accepting almost all invitations from those who requested to be my connection with the skewed emphasis on the quantity of connections rather than their quality. Through this experience, I learned that connections are not simply achievements to display on your profile but genuine stepping stones to lead you to valuable internship or career opportunities. From that seminar, I have been successful in only accepting connections from my fellow ISM peers or students who possess multiple related connections to me. I have also been successful in broadening my professional network by connecting to greater healthcare professionals that I am excited to request an interview with. My efforts are truly shown in the results, as at the beginning of last week, I only had 250 connections while now I have nearly 410 connections with most of them being connections with my ISM peers. This network has allowed me to be able to get inspired by other students' projects and ask questions about related fields of healthcare. The PowerPoint seminar was also incredibly useful, and although I am more proficient in Google Slides, the unique features and customizable tools that were presented have incentivized me to look into Microsoft PowerPoint for my future presentations.