Q2: the sequel to Q-camp

The E. Claiborne Robins School of Business Center for Professional Skills and Development hosted about 30 juniors at Q2, the sequel program to Q-camp, the annual professional development event held in January for sophomore business students.

Shelley Burns, director of the Center for Professional Skills and Development and Q-Camp, built on a 2008 Q-camp pilot when she came to Richmond in 2009 and has overseen the addition of Q2 for juniors and Q3 for seniors.

“We’ve now defined it as the ‘Q process,’” Burns said. "In Q-camp they learned, ‘What is networking?’ in Q2, ‘How do you manage that network before, during and after your internship?’ and we also talk about branding and social media.”

Q2 was piloted last year to help juniors prepare for summer internships and decide whether a company is a good fit.

“Part of what we tell juniors is that during the internship they’re assessing you, but you’re also assessing them,” Burns said. “People often confuse aptitude with interest, so we tell students that aptitude is part of it, but interest supersedes job satisfaction over your ability to do something, and the third piece of that is values. Aptitude and interest may be a fit, but if you are full of integrity and value respect and you don’t see that in your culture, that may be one reason that you don’t accept [a job offer].”

Junior John Kim attended Q2 – held in Queally Hall from 8:45 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday – because he wanted to build on his Q-camp experience, which he said had emphasized networking and applying classroom skills in the professional world.

“[Q2] gave me more practical ways to differentiate myself,” Kim said. “That’s always kind of been the reason why Q-Camp has been going on: to help Richmond students differentiate themselves from the millions of other students out there.”

Q-Camp and now the Q process are named for Paul Queally, Richmond College alumnus and co-president of a New York private equity firm. Queally developed the program to help Richmond business students hone their professional networking and interpersonal skills.

“[Queally] was seeing college graduates from all over the country coming up to New York,” Burns said. “They were smart, they were capable, they had high GPAs, they came from great institutions – nationally ranked ones, but they lacked the soft skills. They lacked the ability to talk to clients, navigate a business meal, understand the role – that etiquette is less about rules and more about relationship-building and conversation.”

Q-Camp is scheduled in January after sophomores who intend to major or minor in business have fulfilled the pre-requisites for admission to the business school.

“We intentionally put Q-camp right after that, to be able to say, ‘These are fundamental things that we think you can and should know… to help you be successful, to make an informed career decision [and] manage relationships,’” Burns said. “So for example, one of the first sessions we do on Friday is Networking 101, and we know that relationships are the strongest predictor of our success.”

This year, 152 students attended Q-Camp at the Westin Hotel on Jan. 30-31. The Center for Professional Skills and Development collaborates with the Office of Alumni and Career services in recruiting alumni, faculty and corporate professionals to facilitate the event along with older business students, who serve as Q-Ambassadors. Burns estimated that 150 volunteers attended Q-Camp.

Senior Peter McNitt attended Q-camp as a sophomore and has served as a Q-Ambassador for the past two years.

“Coming in at Q-Camp, it’s your first professional interaction and it kind of gets you motivated to keep thinking about your professional path and what you want to do,” McNitt said. “Q-Camp kind of gave me the tools to figure out how to approach that, and so I figured why not come back and help a few other kids get the same opportunity that I got?”

This year, Q-Camp planners compressed some content and removed the group picture so that students could attend Ring Dance later Saturday evening. Though Burns hoped to avoid the scheduling conflict, she said it had provided an opportunity to look at the program critically.

Lauren Gill, sophomore and member of Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity, attended both Q-camp and Ring Dance.

“[In AKPsi], we work a lot on resumes and interviewing,” Gill said. “But Q-Camp went beyond that because we got to hear from people who had been working and even some who attended Q-Camp themselves.”

Though Q-Camp was conceived as a program for juniors, Burns wanted to facilitate early contact between students and employers.

“Originally Q-Camp was for juniors, and I felt like we needed to bring it a little bit earlier in the process,” Burns said. “That companies wanted earlier access and that students would benefit from earlier training, exposure to what the world of work was expecting.”

Q3 was held at Independence Golf Club in September to help seniors who had not yet received or accepted job offers reflect on their career goals and create a strategy to reach them.

“Part of Q3 is designed to help students create a senior plan,” Burns said. “And we take that notion of networking and we wanted to add the piece that corporate events such as golf and community days are really invaluable in terms of networking.”

McNitt participated in Q3 as a Q-Ambassador.

“Q3 was about evaluating what you’ve done over the last few years at Richmond,” McNitt said. “You want to figure out where your strengths are and approach accordingly, so it’s really just a lot of reflection and making an action plan early on in the year.”

The time that alumni, professionals and student volunteers commit to students throughout the Q-process is a critical resource, Burns said.

“We all have talent and skills and money, but we’re asking for time and talent,” Burns said. “And [they’re] equally important, and at different times in our lives we can give different things, so I think we’re creating a really strong legacy."

Contact reporter Jesse Siebentritt at jesse.siebentritt@richmond.edu