🧇 Continental Breakfasts & Business Cards
Business conferences can be a beast for new hires to navigate. Don’t be fooled by their vacation-like facade — it’s an on-the-clock bender designed to test your limits of small talk.
Bust through those event center doors with a fool-proof strategy to satisfy your team initiatives, and also personal goals. Spend about 60% of energy on your company’s efforts, and 40% on your own.
Here’s how:
🎙️ Ask Your Work Wife is a new podcast for ambitious professionals in Corporate America. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
60% Company Time
👭 Lean on your Manager
This isn’t their first rodeo. Make your 1:1’s all about what sessions or demos they think would be most beneficial, or what other booths require introductions. They might even have the inside C-Suite scoop on the company’s intentions for the event.
🤡 Buy Into the Circus
Skip the margin doodling and actually take some juicy notes. Be the zealot in the front seat with eyes wide open, notebook out, locked in. You’re the boots on the ground investigative journalist sniffing out the lede.
👩🏫 Homecoming Presentation
Sharing is caring and also the end goal of conferences. Present your key learnings back to HQ, how they solve X problems, and even your suggested applications. Consider sprinkling in a colorful conference anecdote.
🫡 Assistant to the manager? Hang in there. Work on making yourself indispensable and share this newsletter with everyone you know who's a Junior Something, a Senior Something, an Associate Something, or an Assistant Something.
40% Just For You
✍️ Jot Down a Personal Wishlist
Consider what insights or skills you’d like to develop at the conference. This is a fantastic resource for sussing out industry trends and getting face time with big players, so decide beforehand how this event could help catapult your own career.
👀 Always. Be. Applying.
Even if you’re googoo/gaga for your current role, you need to be scoping out other opportunities and avenues your skills could be useful in.
😤 Network to the Max
Some of the most fruitful connections happen in unsuspecting places, like the line for the bathroom. Be open, stay curious, and be ready to network your ass off.
Follow this guide to make conferences less of a cumbersome chore and more of a symbiotic relationship. These badges often cost lots of money — none of which comes out of your pocket — so make the most of this paid field trip!
Episodes for Conference-Goers
Got a question? Ask Your Work Wife!
Email your question to help@askyourworkwife.com. Include your name, your city if you want, and whatever context might be helpful for us to know. And don’t forget to start with “Hey, Work Wives!”
Get the newsletter
Because sliding into your DMs is not the vibe.
