Business Card Etiquette

So I've been to my fair share of business networking socials.....
I don't think people are ever taught business card etiquette. Why not? You could have something great to offer someone...then you destroy the chance to work with them by inappropriately promoting yourself? Yikes.

The worst EVER situation happened was back in the university days. I was at a business conference and there were about 10 people in a group chatting casually. One of the students pulls out his resume and hands it to one of the conference sponsor representatives that we (and I stress WE...because it was a GROUP discussion) and says "If anything comes up, I would love to work with you" We ALL paused in dead silence and in mid sentence. How awkward.

Anyways a few years later...and I go to an event where the age of the attendees ranged anywhere between 25 all the way up to 60. A man came up to me and introduced himself. He asked me what I did and I told him I was in marketing. He responded by saying "ok...cool, I'm a financial adviser....can we exchange cards? We can work together one day" I thought "hold on a sec...did I completely BLANK OUT for a chunk of the conversation? Did I miss out on when we chatted about what exactly we do and established how we could use both of our skills to leverage our businesses??" How awkward....again...YEARS later and with someone that was not 17.