Senior Fran Siles listens to a panel discussion about working abroad in the Hughes-Trigg Ballroom Tuesday evening. The event was sponsored by the Hegi Family Career Development Center. (Lindsey Perkins)

Tuesday evening in Hughes-Trigg Ballroom West nearly 60 students attended the annual Work Abroad Panel Discussion, sponsored by the Hegi Family Career Center, to learn more about international internships and working overseas.

The panelists included professionals specializing in international business relations and a student who had recently gone on an internship with Sabre Holdings to Poland. The professionals on the panel included Lorraine McCord, director of the International Trade Small Business Center, Fabi Howard, an alumnus of SMU who now works as an executive coach and consultant for Alcatel-Lucent Technologies, Kam Junejo, CEO of Adagio Productions in Dallas, and Blake Leslie, an employee at Nortel Technologies.

The panel began with each panelist recounting their first international experiences. They then proceeded to answer questions from students and gave their personal suggestions for finding a job abroad such as being adaptable to another country’s culture.

According to panelist Kam Junejo, in order to succeed in today’s workforce you must be willing “to think globally and get out of America because some people pass up jobs since they do not want to travel.”

For people wishing to eventually work overseas, they should research organizations and companies who do work internationally, have something that sets them apart, because competition is fierce nowadays, and lastly have a positive attitude since you could fill out numerous applications and go for tons of interviews before you get a call back.

According to the facilitator of the panel discussion, Marva McGrew, the greatest benefit of working overseas is “having a global experience since many companies are going global or are already global, and thus are looking for employees with that international experience.”