The Siena alumni family looks out for its own. Siblings tend to do that as well.
Maeve Canty '24, G'25 graduated last May, gave herself the summer to decompress after completing her MBA in strategic management, and then began the job search in earnest in the fall. She scanned LinkedIn almost daily, identified interesting job listings, and sent her resume - at least 100 times - out into the universe. And it all led to... crickets.
"I definitely thought it would happen a lot quicker. It was frustrating at times."
In a very challenging job market, Canty figured she had two options. She could wallow in the frustration, or she could harness the Siena alumni network to work on her behalf. She chose the latter. Later this month, Canty will settle into her new office at 1221 Avenue of the Americas in New York City. How did she pivot from no leads to a career at NBCUniversal as an account services representative?
"I started reaching out to Siena alumni and I set up Zoom calls. Overall, people were eager to make time after work or on their lunch break to connect. They all gave me pointers and were just excited to give me a hand."
No surprise, it was a Siena alumna at NBCUniversal who got Canty's resume in the right hands. It also didn't hurt that the alumna is also Canty's sister, Margaret Canty '20, a sales planner at NBC.
"When my sister applied to NBCUniversal, there was a different Siena graduate at the company that helped her out. So I'm just the next one in the Siena pipeline."
The Canty family, originally from Skaneateles, had its own pipeline to Siena. Margaret attended first, then their brother, Jack Canty '23, followed. Maeve decided to carve her own path, until it came down to decision time.
"Ultimately, Siena was the best fit. I was a little anti, just because I wanted to be different. But it was the Siena feeling in general that swayed me. I looked at other schools, but Siena felt right."
There was no looking at other schools when Canty decided to pursue her MBA. After she graduated, she hoped to either follow her brother to Boston or her sister to NYC (it was no longer the unpopular thing to do), and she hoped to land a job in the media industry. At NBCUniversal, she works with clients to schedule their campaigns (commercials) across Bravo, E!, and, Oxygen.
"I'm excited to move to New York City. I'll be in the same building as my sister, but on different floors. We're really close, so it'll be fun."
Canty, who has already started the job remotely, said that persistence was important, but it was really the mindshift toward networking. Sending an application cold rarely competes with a connection on the inside. Fortunately, Siena graduates are everywhere, and they're eager to help. Having a big sister, who also went to Siena, doesn't hurt either.