Networking with Cono Fusco

On Thursday, November 16, 2017, we welcomed back Cono Fusco as a guest speaker who gave us some insight on successful networking. In additional to the great networking advice, he shared crucial tips on career planning, communicating and taking control of your life and future.

Cono began by talking about his impressive background in accounting; sharing how he started in Grant Thornton when he graduated college and quickly became a partner, excelling in everything he did and moving him down different paths. From the start of his presentation, Cono emphasized the importance of taking risks for future opportunities, a recurring theme throughout his speech.

As far as networking, we learned how to describe ourselves through our aspiration, how to stand out by being interesting, and that we should go into a networking situation with a primary and secondary objective, and always leave with something. The key to success in Cono’s perspective, is in your own hands, you should be knowledgeable and prepared going into any situations and have a plan and to practice before hand; using what you have access to, to your advantage.

Communication was something Cono stressed, he said it is important to “be a quick listener and a slow talker,” that we need to hear people when they talk, listen, understand and respond appropriately. It gives you time to think about your answers and follow up questions while making you look engaged and interested.

Probably the most important and helpful part of Cono’s presentation were his lessons that not only applied to networking, but life and career advancement in general. He started by telling us about his recent trip to Croatia and how he started planning that trip 7 years ago. Cono explained the best way to get things accomplished is to write down our goals, dreams and aspirations on paper, and to cross them off as we achieve them. Plan on what you want to be doing 5 or 10 years from now and then ask yourself what you need to do today and tomorrow to get there.

Overall, it was an insightful and interesting presentation informing us of successful tips for our futures.

By Stephanie Roberts, edited by John Chen