Networking Scenario from Gino et al 2020 - Study 3A

In this next task, you will read a story and be asked to imagine yourself in the situation described. 

As you are reading the story, please try your best to think about the feelings you'd experience in the situation..
 It is very important that you imagine the situation exactly as described.

You received an invitation from your mentor last week to attend the Company's annual party. 
This isn't just your average Christmas party run by a Company's branch. It's actually the annual 
New Year's Party at the Company's headquarters. Your supervisor said that everyone from corporate will be
 there. You are pretty sure the event is exclusive. 
   
You recently graduated from college and you currently have a two-year contract with this Company.
 Working here has been your dream job, and you are definitely hoping to remain with the Company for your entire career. 
 You really want to make a good impression on the people at corporate, and this event will definitely help you do that.
   
At the annual party, you used the time very wisely: interacting with as many people from corporate as you could. 
The party started out with a cocktail hour at 6pm, followed by a dinner. You headed to the cocktail hour with George Richdale, 
the head of marketing for the Mid-Atlantic region. You ran into him at the hotel and you knew who he was, so you took the
 opportunity to make a connection. As soon as you two arrived at the cocktail hour, he introduced you to his friends, 
 Mike, Tommy, and Kate. They are all executives at the Company and were accompanied by their spouses who worked at 
 competing firms. You made sure to get their emails so that you could keep in touch. 
After the cocktail hour, you and George had dinner. You were sitting next to Alex Hayward, the director of sales, and 
Jennifer Aramovich, the head of the R&D division. You definitely made a good impression when you talked about your 
accomplishments so far at the Company. Because you just started, having these people get to know you is as important 
as performing well at your job. 
As the dinner transitioned into the New Year's Party, you walked around so that you could talk to as many people as
 possible. You met a lot of other executives and added a lot of new contacts at the company to your LinkedIn profile.
 In addition, you really hit it off with Chris Lee, the CEO at the company, who you met through George. Like you, 
 Chris Lee grew up in the same town and attended the same college, so you had plenty to talk about from the start. 

Making this connection was really the highlight of the party. Everyone knows that in this industry being good at your 
job is not enough, so it's really important that you made this contact.