Takeaways from The Hoeft Technology and Management Seminar at UIUC

This past fall semester has been full of opportunities and events that have helped me to network and grow as a professional. Many of these opportunities are thanks to being part of the Hoeft Technology and Management Seminar   (T and M) fall 2022. 

It is apparent to me that my professional development has been drastically accelerated thanks to the T and M seminar. My parents' advice and insight is invaluable in my eyes but they can only propel me forward professionally to a certain extent. Which is why I needed to seek out help from elsewhere. Below I have listed a couple things where I have felt behind on but the T and M seminar has motivated me to catch back up on.

1) This Website Portfolio and Domain
      ~ Creating my very own website has totally been a game changer for me when it comes to advertising myself to anyone who might be interested. Not only that, but I now have a designated location to record all of my accomplishments and easily look back on them. Which has been something that I have always wanted to do anyways but didn't know how to go about it.

2) My LinkedIn Account 
         ~ Coming into college most people seemed to already have a LinkedIn account. I was not one of those people and I knew that I needed to get on it. Primarily so I could put it on my resume and give myself a greater opportunity of being hired. T and M gave me the guidance to go forward with creating a LinkedIn account that will hopefully be boosting me to the top of potential hires lists. I now have an account that I am proud of and feel as though it represents me well.

      Another important aspect of this seminar is the invaluable insights into the complex and ever evolving world of CEO's, project managers, finance gurus, and other company elites. Just about every week of the fall semester, our T and M class has had the privilege of attending a brief seminar on the topic of the week given by high ranking employees from companies across all fields. The topics of the week are geared towards preparing us for our future careers in our respective fields which means that they will typically be related to engineering or business. Seeing as most of our class is made up of students from those majors, the speakers tend to be from either engineering or business related companies as well.  Just because the topic of the week is a business related subject, does not mean that us engineering majors are any less interested in learning about it. This is because the T and M seminar has been preaching the correlation between business and engineering. Thereby teaching us how a prospective employee who is proficient in both will provide higher value to any company. Now I better understand how it is ideal for an employee not to be so one sided in either field.

Taking the teachings of this seminar to practice, I would like to highlight a few recent key accomplishments in my life that I can attribute in some way or another to the T and M program: 

• Summer internship with Alberici Constructors
• Professional Connections
• Confidence in my value as an Employee

      Going into the T and M seminar I knew that I had a little interest in understanding the business side of engineering. Now having been through the class I have no doubts that I would like to further invest my time into learning about the business aspects that will accompany my future Civil Engineering career. Overall, this has been a fantastic class that has given me so much more than a couple credit hours and a GPA boost. Without a doubt, I will be holding on to the insights that I have gained through my active involvement in this class!