Interviews over dinner can pose an uncomfortable dilemma to students and recent graduates. Proper manners or conquering a difficult-toeat dish takes practice. The annual WSU Vancouver Etiquette Dinner allows students to practice interview manners over dinner with fellow students practicing as well. The dinner features a four-course meal for students and local employers like C.H. Robinson and Hewlett Packard. With a large attendance and keynote speakers, a lot goes on behind-the-scenes to plan this event.
Nolan Yaws-Gonzalez, assistant manager of the Student Resource Center supervises the eventplanning. According to Yaws-Gonzalez, WSU Vancouver Career Counselor Tina Harney has planned the dinner the past two years.
“Etiquette Dinner to me has always been a super important thing because everyone, in any field, could potentially be asked in an interview setting to go have a meal, go have a snack, go grab a drink – anything like that. So I think it’s really important to know how to handle yourself professionally in that type of situation,” Harney said.
Harney handles most of the planning and Yaws-Gonzalez supervises, but student involvement is key in the nine-month-long preparation process. Student interns for Career Services, also known as career peer educators, help market the event. The Cougar Center handles ticket payments and the Student Resource Center (SRC) front desk registers students for the event.
The first step in the event planning process starts with securing the speaker. This year Jodie Blackwood, of Etiquette Awareness, returned as the keynote speaker. “She’s phenomenal” Harney said.
“We’ve taken into consideration comments from those who have attended the event and taken our survey to make sure we have the best event for what the students are looking for,” Harney added. These considerations include the possibility of music, the layout of the event and how it can improve each year.
The second step involves campus room reservations (and making them as early as possible).
“In past years we’ve had typically about 40 to 50 students and then we have the employer sponsors,” Harney said. During the summer, Harney worked on increasing the attendance of the event. “We wanted to grow, so this year we have about 76 student spots and we’re going to use the entire Firstenburg Student Commons.”
Catering preparations also began in the summer. “We want to make sure we’re friendly for those with dietary restrictions. We typically have a vegan soup, a salad with a vegan dressing [and] some sort of entrée that is difficult for folks to manage, because you never know what you might be served in an event. Then a dessert as well,” Harney said.
The entrées are purposely made to be difficult to manage so students can master polite eating in a professional setting, as that is the entire goal of the event. Past meals have ranged from chicken on a bone, to spaghetti and even salad with cherry tomatoes.
Beyond the food selections, SRC Marketing Intern Betsy Hanrahan worked on advertising the event, making the menu and matching name tags and table numbers for all attendees.
At other universities, etiquette and networking dinners generally have a high-cost of attendance. At WSU Vancouver, Yaws-Gonzalez was able to bring the cost down to just $5 by implementing employer sponsors, an idea adopted from University of the Pacific. The sponsorship fee is $350.00 for employers (which funds the event), who can then send a representative to dine with students at the event, according to Yaws-Gonzalez.
This year there were six employer sponsors, which is one more than last year, according to Harney.
In response to picking the sponsors, Harney said “We try to make sure we have a variety of employers… We really just want them to be open to hiring our students, to really be there to provide them with some professional guidance and feedback.”
“We mainly reach out to employers and organizations who have participated in the fall and spring Career and Internship Fairs, as we know these organizations are invested in the success of our talented students and alumni,” Yaws-Gonzalez said.
Harney said that students have returned post event to express relief over understanding table etiquette during an interview.
“It’s not a career fair, but we have had students in the past who have obtained internships which led to full-time jobs from speaking with the employers [at the etiquette dinner],” Harney said.
My My Lê, a finance major at WSU Vancouver has attended the event multiple times. Lê said, “It was a really good experience, for sure. You get to do networking…you might get an internship or job after this dinner.”
Attending the dinner for the first time, digital technology and culture major Andrew Nevue said he was hoping for, “Some awesome networking and learning proper dinner etiquette.”
During the event, Harney said that behind-the-scenes is generally calm, with most of the action being focused on the catering.
After the event Harney sends handouts from the speaker to students with a feedback survey link. The feedback is carefully discussed between Harney regarding the speaker to help improve next year’s event. As the event ends, Harney will soon begin planning next year’s etiquette dinner.
Anna Nelson is the Editor in Chief for the VanCougar. She is a senior and is studying strategic communications.