![\"\"](\"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/giovanni-EMAIL-and-STORY.jpg\")
<\/a>Giovanni<\/p><\/div>\n
The extra time he took, starting at community college before transferring to The University of Toledo, paid off for him. It allowed him to explore careers and settle on his path to a degree in business.<\/p>\n
Next spring, Baiocco will graduate from UToledo with a bachelor\u2019s degree in professional sales. He is the top intern at the Toledo office and one of the top producing interns in the country for Northwestern Mutual, a financial advising and insurance company.<\/p>\n
\u201cGio is humble, present in the moment, a leader and persevering,\u201d said Northwestern Mutual\u2019s Chelsea Benton, director of recruitment and community outreach. \u201cHe is the role model intern at our firm, and I\u2019m very proud to have him on the team.\u201d<\/p>\n
After high school, Baiocco enrolled at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Mich., near his home in Grosse Ille.<\/p>\n
\u201cI decided to take my general education classes, save some money and transfer to a four-year college,\u201d Baiocco said.<\/p>\n
Two years later, in 2019, Baiocco started researching where he wanted to pursue his bachelor\u2019s degree. He considered Wayne State University, along with UToledo.<\/p>\n
UToledo\u2019s John B. and Lillian E. Neff College of Business and Innovation rose to the top of Baiocco\u2019s list when he found out it ranked higher than WSU\u2019s business school. He began the application process.<\/p>\n
\u201cI talked to a transfer specialist who was super helpful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While most of Baiocco\u2019s credits transferred, he still had to complete about a year\u2019s worth of general education requirements. Rather than being admitted directly to the business college, he was admitted to the Exploratory Studies program in University College.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will be here for three years instead of two, but I\u2019m glad I did it,\u201d he said. \u201cI probably wouldn\u2019t have found the sales program otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n
His time in the Exploratory Studies program allowed him to look into a variety of career options. His dad and brothers nudged him into sales.<\/p>\n
\u201c \u2018You love to talk to people all the time. You\u2019d probably be good at sales,\u2019 \u201d they told him.<\/p>\n
After completing his general education requirements, Baiocco was admitted to the business college. At a networking event for one of his classes, he met a recruiter for Northwestern Mutual. They exchanged business cards and went their separate ways.<\/p>\n
A year later, the recruiter \u2015 Benton \u2015 was back for a panel discussion in Baiocco\u2019s career development class.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end, I said, \u2018Thank you for your time. If anyone has any internships, I\u2019d love to hear more,\u2019 \u201d Baiocco said.<\/p>\n
He then reached out to Benton via LinkedIn.<\/p>\n
That polite professionalism caught Benton\u2019s attention, and she reached out to him regarding an internship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat impressed me about Gio was his drive and humility in conversation,\u201d Benton said. \u201cHe did a phenomenal job during the interview.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baiocco credits UToledo and what he learned in his business classes with his success in landing the internship and in his success at his firm.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy business classes integrate real-world experiences and gave me the skills to get my internship,\u201d Baiocco said. \u201cI have no doubt the skills I learned at UToledo contributed to my internship success. Role-playing in class helped, and so did the experiences talking with real recruiters who told us what they were looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Giovanni Baiocco met a Northwestern Mutual recruiter at a business class networking event. He is now the top intern at the financial advising and insurance company’s Toledo office and among their top producing interns nationwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":837,"featured_media":69353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,32,1,71,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/837"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69354,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69348\/revisions\/69354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>