Career Center Revamps Connections Conference
Evidence shows that relationships are critical to getting hired, so the event was designed with networking at the forefront.
By:
Meghan Kita
Thursday, October 16, 2025 01:32 PM
Participants in the 2025 Connections Conference attend the networking roundtable portion of the event. Photos by Marco Calderon.
On September 19, Muhlenberg’s Career Center hosted 47 recruiters, hiring managers, and working alumni for a networking-focused Connections Conference. Director of Employer and Alumni Engagement Jen Sarnitsky ’93 used student feedback from previous events — specifically, that they enjoyed the panel discussions but wanted more opportunities to talk to the panelists — to rework the event.
Those students were on to something: “If you talk to recruiters these days, they will tell you that they are finding talent through relationships built over time and through connections,” says Career Center Executive Director Sue McNeilly P’28. “The mindset for this event was to lean into the true way that jobs are acquired, and that’s through connections.”
“If you talk to recruiters these days, they will tell you that they are finding talent through relationships built over time and through connections. The mindset for this event was to lean into the true way that jobs are acquired, and that’s through connections.”
—Career Center Executive Director Sue McNeilly P’28
One of the Career Center’s primary focuses year-round is to educate students on how to network, a process that begins long before they’re looking for a job. All students, including first-years and undecided students, were encouraged to attend the Connections Conference and take advantage of the opportunity to ask a variety of people about their career paths.
“Recognizing that students are at different stages in their career development and have varying levels of access to professional networks, we prioritized representing a broad range of industries and offering multiple avenues for connection,” Sarnitsky says. “This approach ensured that students still exploring their options could discover diverse career paths, those with more defined paths had opportunities to build relevant connections that could lead to employment, and all students were able to continue to hone their networking skills.”
The event kicked off with two alumni panels and then a recruiter panel, with representatives on hand from four major Lehigh Valley employers: St. Luke’s University Health Network, Olympus Corporation of America, Lutron, and Lehigh County.
“We’re lucky with our positioning here in Lehigh Valley,” McNeilly says. “We are part of an economy that has been flourishing the last five years. While some other economies have really been struggling, the Lehigh Valley’s has been growing.”
“This conference made me more confident in my ability to find a path that will bring me joy and fulfillment.”
—Casey Goldberg ’26
Many panelists stayed for the roundtables, in which guests divided up among 13 “career communities” (nonprofit and social impact, hospitality, health professions, finance, consulting and advisory, sports business, arts and entertainment, education and academics, STEM, creative writing and journalism, law, sustainability, and marketing and communications) to speak with students interested in those areas. The Career Center’s entire ecosystem is built around these career communities, which allow students to explore broad areas of interest. The day ended with a 5 p.m. networking reception that allowed even more alumni to join panelists, students, and faculty and facilitate new connections.
Casey Goldberg ’26, a neuroscience major, attended the conference to explore potential career paths — she has a lot of ideas for what she might want to do next and was hoping to narrow those down. She was able to connect with an alum in nursing, one of the fields she’s interested in, but she also had a fruitful conversation with alumni in mental and spiritual health care, which she’s not interested in pursuing.
“Through both of their stories I was reminded of the importance of following your curiosities and saying yes to things even if it might not feel like something you love. Saying yes got both of them to jobs they found perfect for them, but weren’t what they originally intended to pursue,” Goldberg says. “This conference made me more confident in my ability to find a path that will bring me joy and fulfillment.”
