To the big investment firm where he wanted an internship, Chris Kanaley was nothing but another rsum. He didn’t even get a response to his online application. Then he called his parents, who talked to their mechanic, who caught up with an old friend whose wife just so happened to be the vice president of human resources at Goldman Sachs.

This time, he got an interview. And the same rsum – with a new connection – got a much better result.

Now, the junior finance and marketing major is hooked up. And he has learned, like many other students, that the search for a summer internship is as much about networking as it is about a brilliant rsum, new suit and sparkling smile.

‘I have done things to make myself look better,’ Kanaley said, including an internship with a public relations firm and a slew of activities at Syracuse University. ‘But you walk in and the first thing they say is, ‘Oh, you know this person? How do you know them?”

That’s the question – and from family to alumni to university advisers, there are countless ways to find the right answer.

At the Center for Career Services, the Schine Student Center office that helps students from all academic departments hunt for jobs and internships, Director Mike Cahill admits networking is the name of the game. He and his colleagues coach students to search for connections and build their relationships with potential employers, whether it’s through the alumni database or an informal meeting with a friend of a friend.

‘That’s the way the world works,’ Cahill said. ‘I mean, how you do find a mechanic? Ask somebody.’

Cahill and Ronnie Jones, the adviser at the SU Internship Program, agree that employers are more comfortable hiring an applicant based on a referral than a rsum alone. When internship coordinators sift through hundreds of applications, sometimes with a computer screening them first, it’s easy to pass over a good one. That’s when the influence of an insider makes a big difference.

‘I used to be very uncomfortable with the whole idea,’ Jones said of the networking process. Her office, which is located on Euclid Avenue near the corner of College Place, works with students on the ‘non-network channel.’ But she’s seen how much a connection can do to get her students the jobs they need.

‘It’s just a case of maximizing your chances,’ she said, ‘and for the employer it minimizes risk.’

Just ask Jack Worth, who is maximizing his chances this summer with an internship at NBC in New York City. He’s a freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences who is still working on the 3.5 GPA he needs to transfer into the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Lucky for him, his dad is a lawyer who ‘knows people in media,’ and he has a job that’s a distant dream for many students three years his elder.

And the only hard part, he said, was getting SU to give him college credit for it.

‘On the off chance I don’t get into Newhouse, at least I have this,’ he said.

That’s not bad for a backup plan.

Then there are the less fortunate students, the unconnected. When they head into the job market all alone, do they stand a chance against the guy who knows a guy?

Laura Parquette, a sophomore newspaper and political science major, hopes she does. She sent out her applications – thick packets of news clips with a cover letter and rsum – to a handful of local daily newspapers north of Boston. No takers yet, but she has an interview next week.

‘It’s unfair,’ said freshman international relations major Sara Covino, echoing the popular sentiment about networking for internships. ‘It keeps the whole business world very hard to break into.’

Even the students who benefited from their connection lamented the struggles of their friends and classmates. But they all seem to acknowledge that it’s the status quo, and the university offices have embraced networking and sought to help unconnected students find a friend in the business.

Parquette says she feels well prepared for the internship hunt, even without the help of the Newhouse Career Development Center. She knows it’s there, of course, but she ventured out on her own.

‘I actually do read those crazy e-mails they send us every day,’ she said. After her interview, she’ll find out if it paid off to fly solo.

The Career Development Center, like its counterparts in SU’s other schools and colleges, strives to help students find an internship in the field they’re studying. On Monday night, Newhouse kicked off the three-day CNY Communications Consortium with an information fair featuring dozens of big-name companies in media and communications.

The Center for Career Services lists almost 900 internship opportunities on Syracuse.ERecruiting.com, Cahill said. And the office is building an ever-growing network of alumni who are often happy to push a current student toward a good job.

Another initiative, led by the Center for Career Services and a local group aiming to keep students in Central New York, lists more than 200 local internship opportunities at EssentialNY.com/internship. And the SU Internship Program offers a catalog of leads on internships that can be taken for university credit.

So whether it’s hard work or a quick fix, and wherever the connection comes from, getting the right internship makes it all worthwhile.

To Chris Kanaley’s mom, who led him to the connection that got him the job at Goldman Sachs, opening the door for her son means relief for her and success for him.

‘As a parent, you do anything you can to help them,’ Karla Kanaley said. ‘And when it does work, it’s such a wonderful feeling.’

Published on April 18, 2005 at 12:00 pm