CI PROGRAM EVENTS: A NEW YORK REVIEW

As a member of a CI Global Explorer Program you’ll have the opportunity to attend a number of career-focused, employability enhancing seminars alongside your internship. This series of blog posts aims to give you an insight into those workshops.

Seminars are the same across all host locations although the order of events and guest speakers may vary.

You’re likely to be enrolled on a CI program for several reasons. These may include enhancing your resume, making new friends, building your business network or exploring a new city. Almost all of you will agree that you’re here to further your careers.

To enhance this experience and ensure you leave us a more well-rounded, intelligent, employable individual, we have created a curriculum aimed at supplementing your internship and guiding you through your eight week-program. The syllabus is split into two categories:

1. The Career Navigator Series (CNS), whose purpose is to empower you take your first few career steps, and those that follow, with agility and confidence.

2. The Future Leaders Series, which provides a platform for you to distinguish yourself from the inexperienced and unproven graduate masses, take your education from the classroom to the boardroom and add compelling evidence to your resume.

In the following eight weeks, I will summarize CI’s program events in New York for you and will outline what you can take away from them. Below, you can find a table of contents with a short description of each event. Click on the link to jump to the relevant blog post.

FLS Unit 1: People & Productivity: Apply motivational theory, to find out what drives you
FLS Unit 2: Company Analysis: Describe your company’s mission
FLS Unit 3: Market Analysis: Calculate the size of your company’s market
FLS Unit 4: Money Matters I: Create a balance sheet of your personal income and expenses
FLS Unit 5: Money Matters II: Discuss bonds and equities to get an insight into financial markets
FLS Unit 6: Career Planning: Taking what you’ve learnt about yourself, define your career goals
FLS Unit 7: Final Project Drop-in: Bring all of your work together for an end-of-program presentation

CNS Unit 1: Business Psychology I: Sports Psychologist Jen Croneberger inspires us to desire more
CNS Unit 2: Business Psychology II: Jen Croneberger explains her take on Courage and Confidence
CNS Unit 3: Acing the Interview: In pairs, we conduct mock interviews to practice for real life
CNS Unit 4: Graduate Panel Q&A: Former CI interns share their stories with you
CNS Unit 5: Executive Panel Q&A: Experienced professionals give an insight into the corporate world
CNS Unit 6: CV Surgery: We take you through the basics of what makes a great CV and see where yours can be improved
CNS Unit 7: CV Drop-in: A one-on-one session designed to make your resume the best it can be
CNS Unit 8: Host Company Mixer: Invite your supervisors to say thank you for the last eight weeks

According to Mckinsey & Company, as many as 50% of employers think that young jobseekers don’t have the required skills to succeed in the workplace. As a matter of fact, we are witnessing a situation that McKinsey & Company calls the twin crises of the millennial generation: a shortage of jobs alongside a shortage of skills, a conundrum that results, among other things, in high youth unemployment.

MCCLELLAND’S MOTIVATIONAL THEORY

The first Future Leaders Series event is simply called ‘People and Productivity’. If I had to summarize the event in one phrase, I would pose a question: What drives you? To answer this, we applied David McClelland’s Motivational Theory, also known as the Three Needs Theory. McClelland came up with it in 1961 and published the theory in his book “The Achieving Society”. His standpoint is that every person has one dominant need that defines your behavior in the workplace. Here are the three possible needs explained:

A HIGH NEED FOR ACHIEVEMENT

People with achievement as their dominant need are uncomfortable until a task is finished. They set high goals to challenge themselves and work hard to achieve them. For this, they will need regular feedback. They can either work by themselves or in a team.

A HIGH NEED FOR AFFILIATION

People driven by affiliation are very focused on the social side of business. They will prioritize good relationships over their own appraisal and they prefer consensus over contention. People who have a high need for affiliation love to work in teams and prefer to be praised in private rather than in public.

A HIGH NEED FOR POWER

Power players like to control and influence others. There are two types of people driven by power: institutional and personal. Institutional-power types like to motivate others in order to further the interests of everyone, power-personal types like to control others for their own interests. What both groups have in common is their enjoyment of competition and winning, plus upholding a high status and being publicly recognized.

ACHIEVEMENT, POWER OR AFFILIATION?

As you might have noticed, these types differ greatly from each other and many people have a few traits that could fit into several categories. However, after taking our survey, all of our interns were able to draw a graph that clearly showed them which type they belong to. There was one group bigger than the rest: Achievement. “That’s perfectly normal. Most graduates start out as an achievement type and the longer they are part of the workforce, their score may gradually start shifting to either affiliation or power”, says Misha, our local seminar coach and part of the CI Student Experience Team.

APPLICATION IN THE WORKPLACE

In 2002, Adrian M. Harrell published a paper correlating McClelland’s Motivational Theory with work performance of CPA professionals. His findings help us understand why some people are very satisfied in a position that others dislike. For example, Harrell found that for partners and managers at the firm, a high need for affiliation had a negative effect on their job satisfaction. Junior-level audit specialists who participated tended to have a high need for achievement in context with long hours devoted to work. This suggests that people in positions of power are more satisfied with their position if they leave their need for affiliation at the door. Entry-level employees are focused on achievement and haven’t found themselves in either the power group or the affiliation group yet.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM ‘PEOPLE & PRODUCTIVITY’

Once you have found your dominant need, you can start applying it in the business world. Look around you and see what drives your colleagues and how you can influence their needs for the good of the business.

For example, you might want to praise a colleague with a high need for Achievement in front of everybody else to let them know what a great job they’re doing. If they are an Affiliation type, however, aim at doing this in private or they might be embarrassed.

“Character means picking up trash even if it’s not yours”, says Jen Croneberger, Business Coach, Tedx speaker and President of JLynne Consulting Group, LLC. We invited Jen to speak at our first Career Navigator Series event here in New York, also known as Business Psychology I. Jen’s insights into business psychology are simple, yet effective and she has been imparting wisdom on our interns for several years.

Jen Croneberger has been interviewed by Channel 6 Action News several times and published her first book in 2012, “These five words are mine”. She has a Master’s degree in Sports Psychology and has consulted professional athletes. Furthermore, she appeared as a speaker at Tedx talks in 2013 and 2014 on several occasions. Jen has been an inspirational speaker for years. Besides having been recruited to speak for major companies like Macy’s and Century21, Jen also served as a coach for MTV’s show ‘MADE’ in 2007. She spoke at both Business Psychology sessions for CI in New York.

JENS’S 5 C’S OF LEADERSHIP

Jen Croneberger developed a concept called the ‘5 C’s of Leadership: Effectiveness from the inside out’. The title says it all: You need to get to know yourself from the inside, before you can become an effective leader. In the first of her two-part series, Jen focused on Character, Communication and Choice.

DEFINE YOUR CHARACTER

The first C is character. “Character is who you are when nobody’s watching you and when everybody’s watching you”, says Croneberger. She also invites our interns to ask themselves: Who am I? And more importantly, what am I? The most important lesson of this question: Don’t answer with your name or your occupation. Truly think about what you really are and find a clear answer. This will help you with finding your identity in a business world.

FOCUS ON GOOD COMMUNICATION

Jen’s second C is communication. The way we communicate with each other vastly defines the result of our work. The Tedx speaker demonstrated this by letting one of our interns sit at a table, facing the wall, paper and pencil in front of her. Another one was given the task of telling her what to draw. However, she was only allowed to let her know which direction she could take with the pencil, there was no other information given. In the end, we found out what should have been drawn: a simple heart. The drawing on the paper didn’t resemble this in the tiniest bit. “What do we learn from this?”, Jen asked. We all started listing the elements of communication that had been missing during this encounter, such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures and obviously the connotation of a heart shape that is in everybody’s mind. But since we have all these elements when talking in person, we take them for granted. This is one of the reasons why so many text messages, e-mails and memos come across in a different way than anticipated by the sender.

BAD MOMENTS, NOT BAD DAYS

Lastly, Jen Croneberger talks about choice, her third C. There are things within our control, while some are out of our reach. But it is our choice how we handle them. When Jen went to check out at a grocery store one day, the woman in front of her dropped her bag and spilled her possessions all over the floor. As Jen kneeled down to help the woman pick up her belongings, said woman let out a deep sigh and said: “It’s a Monday.” Jen’s reply? “Yes, yesterday was Sunday, and tomorrow is Tuesday!” Moral of the story: There are no bad days, just bad moments. Don’t let the bad moments define your entire day. Another thing that relates to this is failure. Jen posed this question to us: Is failure good or bad? Her take on ‘failure’ is this: “When I walk, and I fall, I am five feet and eleven inches closer to where I want to be.”

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY I

As I watched everybody leaving the conference room, I could see the effects of Jen’s talk in many faces. She provokes thinking. Define yourself first to be able to make a mark in this competitive business world and don’t be afraid to fail once in a while. It will only take you closer to where you want to be.

We started out the night with Croneberger’s fourth C of Leadership, Courage. Jen’s interpretation of courage relates to being vulnerable. Courage means being brave enough to admit your fears and to actually tackle them on a daily basis, says Croneberger. She asks our interns to name one thing that scares them right now. One intern raises her hand: “Conflict”, she says, “I try to avoid it”. The business coach has a clear response to that. “Bring courage to every conflict”, says Jen. By shying away from confrontation, you might end up blowing a small issue out of proportion, hence turning it into a real problem. Instead, be courageous enough to address an issue in a clear, concise way. But Jen Croneberger has yet another message: Enter every room with your best self. This is Jen Croneberger’s L.I.G.H.T. principle. Love, Integrity, Gratitude, Honor, Truth.

HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOURSELF

Finally, Jen’s 5th C is Confidence. She introduces it with a saying. “If the why is strong enough, the how doesn’t matter”. This powerful statement can be applied to professional life as well as your personal life. Jen’s example regards her running career. The Sports Psychologist has a bucket list with 127 bullet points. One of them: Run a 5K. “I have no idea why I wrote that on there, I used to be a girl who couldn’t run a single mile”, she said. But she did run that 5K and proceeded to finish more than 60 more races, including a half marathon, to this day. If the WHY is strong enough, the HOW doesn’t matter. Be confident in yourself and don’t be afraid to showcase your confidence to others. Lastly, Jen gave her listeners one minute to write down their strengths on a sheet of paper, a rather simple task. However, it turned out to be harder than anticipated, because we tend to focus much more on our weaknesses than on our strengths. One of Croneberger’s clients, a professional athlete, once asked her for advice on how to motivate himself before every game. She made him do the same thing, writing down his strengths. This sheet of paper is now laminated and he looks at it before every game.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM BUSINESS PSYCHOLOGY II

Tackle your problems head-on and work on improving the situation. Confront people when you’d like to tackle an issue. Bring everything you have to the table, especially in professional settings. Be confident in yourself and make yourself truly aware of all your strengths, every single day.

According to the Federal Reserve, college students in the US spend an average of $25,000 a year on studying, $7,500 of which are discretionary. Since these numbers sound abstract, let’s break it down.

Non-discretionary spending is the money you spend first and foremost on your tuition, but also includes your rent and college books. For most students, this is a fixed number that is not under their control.

Discretionary spending is harder to determine, since it is characterized by expenses that are at your own discretion. This includes food, your car, clothing, cosmetics, your phone and your contracts for Wi-Fi or TV. Determining these numbers isn’t easy, but making yourself aware of where your money goes every month is essential.

On the other side of the balance sheet is your income, divided by personal income, investments, and borrowing. In other words, the debt that you stack up every year by going to college.

When we calculated our final numbers, we subtracted income from expenses and multiplied the result by the number of years our interns go to college. This is the final debt you’re going to have once you graduate from university. Based on the average entry salary, we then figured out how long it’ll take our interns to see a return on investment in their education.

Thursday in week 4 brought mock interviews. Being invited to an interview means that your CV has already made a lasting impression on the recruiter or HR manager. Now it’s time to build on that with your communication skills in person. Edith Cooper, HR Chief for Goldman Sachs, calls this “bringing your resume to life”.

‘TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF’

The most commonly asked interview question in the world is ‘tell me about yourself’.

Even though it sounds rather simple, this question can be intimidating. Your answer could range anywhere from stating your college degree and aspirations to telling your interviewer about the latest concert you’ve been to and leisure activities. It is important to truly prepare yourself for this question.

“The best way to answer this question is in a past-present-future format”, said Josh, General Manager and local coach for ‘Acing the Interview’.

This means that you can prepare an elevator pitch with the following content.

Your past is your college degree and any relevant job experiences, your present is what you’re doing right now and your future are your aspirations, the goals you would like to attain within the next five years.

By sticking to this format, you’ll be able to give a clear, concise answer and avoid stuttering or rambling about irrelevant topics.

Especially with your past experience, make your message as clear as possible. According to Cooper, this will demonstrate that you have the skills, judgment and drive to the job.

WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS?

The classic questions about your greatest strengths and weaknesses have been asked and replied to so many times that it is hard to find an original answer by now.

Naturally, it is way easier to outline your strengths, since you’ve been preparing for that. Analyzing your own greatest weakness is a different story.

It would be counterproductive to reply with something along the lines of: “I’m too much of a perfectionist”, or “I work too hard”. Instead, try to really identify your own weakness, but also describe to your interviewer how you’re planning to overcome it.

For example, if your greatest weakness is avoiding attention to detail, talk about how you’ve started to double-check every task that you’ve been given and that you’re more aware of the importance of details.

Your interviewer knows that you are a human and nobody’s perfect, so it’s okay – and could maybe even work in your favor - if you have a certain weakness that you’re working to overcome.

PRACTICE TIME: MOCK INTERVIEWS

Next, we conducted mock interviews to practice for the real-life scenario.

To add an extra ounce of pressure, we put two chairs in the middle of the room and formed a circle around them with the rest of the chairs.

Our interviewer was Zakhir, intern in Banking and Finance, our interviewee Mike, both interns in Technology and Engineering here in New York City. The set-up: Mike was invited to interview for a Programmer’s position, Zakhir impersonated an HR manager at the company.

When asked about his strengths, our interviewee started to get nervous: “I’m good with computers”, was his answer.

After the interview, we evaluated. “It is always best to make your answer as specific as possible. If you’d like to work as a programmer, being good with computers is a given. State your exact programming skills and the work experience you have in this industry so far”, said Josh.

Afterwards, we called Nadia and Katie to the stage; both intern at the same marketing company here in New York. To demonstrate how different an interview can go if you’re truly prepared, Katie pretended to interview for her current host company.

When asked what she knows about the company, her answer was clear, detailed and truly showed how informed she is about her company’s goals and place in the market.

Overall, their interview had great flow and it was obvious that both have a great passion for their industry.

HOW TO ACE ANY INTERVIEW

Every interview is different. You might be asked out to lunch by your potential employer or they will conduct a group interview, where you’ll end up sitting in a conference room with 10 more interviewees, all of you trying to make a good impression.

No matter the situation, there are a few proven tips you can always stick to.

1. Make sure to print out your resume five times. You never know how many people might interview you and it can come across as unprepared if you only show up with one copy of your CV, resulting in your interviewers having to hand it around to get a glance at it.

2. Dress to impress. Even though it depends on the kind of position you’re interviewing for, you’ll almost never be overdressed. Even if your interviewer is dressed super casual, dressing in business attire will show the effort you’ve made for this interview.

3. Don’t let tough questions throw you off. Unfortunately, not all interviews are a walk in the park. Sometimes, you’ll be asked tough questions for the sole purpose of testing your reaction to a stressful situation. This is the time to shine. If you need a moment to think about it, say so, but try not to show that you’re a nervous wreck by now.

4. Actively ask questions. An interview is never a one-way street, it is always a way for you to get to know the company and the people you might be working with in the future. Furthermore, asking targeted questions proves that you’ve done your research beforehand and you’ve been listening to every word your interviewer said. Hence, you’re truly passionate about landing a position with them.

5. After the interview, make sure to follow-up with a thank-you e-mail. If your interviewer is on LinkedIn, connect with them there as well. By reaching out to your interviewer after meeting with them, you are already setting yourself apart from a number of people who haven’t done so. These little things might determine if you’ll get the position or not.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM ‘ACING THE INTERVIEW’

Be prepared, be confident and show your passion for the company. Prepare an elevator pitch that you can use to answer open-end questions. Dress accordingly, bring several copies of your resume and ask targeted questions. Do show that you aren’t perfect, but demonstrate your willingness to work on any weaknesses you might have. Bring your SWOT analysis for extra bonus points. Follow up after the interview to say thank you. Happy Interviewing!

Veronika Kelemen is an Account Executive at Wunderman and works mainly on the USTA account. However, her experience also includes the accounts of JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Starbucks and Vodafone. She liaises between clients and creative teams to deliver TV, print and digital advertising strategies.

Jessica McBride is a Digital Media Coordinator at The Durst Organization. She manages social media profiles and SEO campaigns, using comparative analytics to refine our digital practices over time.

Mihir Deshpande is an Analyst for a Venture Capital and Private Equity firm. His company specializes in assessing startups, evaluating their worth and recommending investments.

Sebastian Tanner is an Event Director at TechDay HQ, a company specializing in events for start-ups. Until today, TechDay HQ has hosted over 50,000 people at their events in New York, Los Angeles and London. Sebastian heads up strategic partnerships with universities, consulates, investors and influencers.

HOW TO TURN AN INTERNSHIP INTO A JOB

Right out of the gate, Joanna, currently interning at a Marketing Company here in New York, asked one of the most burning questions of anyone who is trying to enter the job market: “How did you make the jump from being an intern to securing a full-time position?” Jessica answered the question simply, with one of her most important tips: “Make sure everybody knows your face and your name. When I interned, I started talking to people in all different departments to see where my career could take me. Networking is key.”

What she meant by that: Don’t let your current status as an intern fool you into thinking you won’t be noticed. Instead, put yourself out there, introduce yourself to influential people inside and outside your company and make a good impression with all of them.

However, Jessica also remembers the daily struggle of being an intern: “When I first started, it was me and three other interns, of course I was intimidated”, she said.

The lesson to learn from this is not to be thrown off by competition. Instead, make use of it by demonstrating your skills as a team player or standing out with your continued effort.

THE ART OF DOING SOMETHING YOU DON’T LOVE

Next, our panelists described their struggles when they started dipping their toes into the water on the job market. All of them had to work their way through menial tasks before. Jessica is very familiar with that situation: “During my internship, I remember how some of us were doing really exciting stuff, while others were sitting in front of a computer all day, punching in boring data. And I could slowly observe the second group of interns throwing in the towel one by one”.

Her lesson: Don’t give up! Just because you aren’t being given the most exciting assignments right now, doesn’t mean you won’t be in the future. Work your way through them and prepare to shine when more exciting tasks are thrown your way.

Also try looking at it from your supervisor’s eyes: They might want to test you with a simple task, to see how well you’re doing on it. If you succeed, you’ll be given more responsibility at a later date. If you slack and don’t give 100%, your supervisor might think you don’t have what it takes to complete more demanding projects.

Sebastian gave our interns hope: “It’s about being engaged. If you’re not doing something you love right now, try reaching out to other departments. There might be someone in marketing who can assign more meaningful tasks to you”, he told our interns.

ENTERING THE JOB MARKET STRAIGHT OUT OF COLLEGE

Lexi, also interning in New York, came forward with this question: “Has one of you ever considered taking time off to go travelling?” Veronika, who is American, but attended a university in the UK, sees it this way: “I feel like here in America, there is a lot of pressure to start working right after college, but not everybody works on that timeline and that’s fine.”

Her message is to listen to yourself and not putting too much pressure on yourself. On the other hand, Veronika advised our interns not to turn down a great job opportunity just because it might not feel like the right timing.

After a 60-minute panel, we wrapped things up and moved to the networking section of the evening, enabling interns get to know panelists better in a more relaxed environment. Joanna’s networking led to four connections in marketing from the Graduate Panel; three in London, one in New York.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

If you feel like you’re not engaged enough at your internship, don’t hesitate to reach out to other departments to see if they have more tasks for you.

Make connections with as many people as possible. Realize that you sometimes have to work your way through menial tasks to be able to climb the career ladder.

Alex, Head of Marketing at CI and local coach for this seminar, made interns aware of the current situation on the graduate market. A quick run through the statistics:

According to the National Post-Secondary Education Cooperative, roughly 2.7 million students graduate with a Bachelors or Master’s degree in the US each year; 370,000 in the UK.

These numbers are high, when you consider that all will be looking for a job, sooner rather than later. Numbers are soaring annually. Competition is out there and like horses at a race, they’re ready to break out of their boxes and enter the job market. Race with them!

GRADUATES ARE HUNGRY FOR JOBS

Even though graduate hiring appetite is increasing in both the US and the UK, the graduate market remains saturated. Also keep in mind that many job roles won’t even be posted online for you to see, they are rather filled internally or by people who have already worked for the organization.

These are just a few of the reasons why it’s crucial for you to have a perfectly polished CV that highlights your education, work experience and most importantly, your skills.

CI GIVES YOU A HEADSTART

If you’re already on the program or you’re considering joining it, you are in a better position than many of your peers. You will have relevant work experience on your resume after finishing this program, next to elevated skills due to our bi-weekly career seminars.

More than 50% of recruiters warn that graduates with no work experience have little or even no chance of receiving a job offer for their organizations’ graduate programs.

This number has been confirmed by the Iowa State University’ Engineering Career Services. They conducted a survey on their Bachelor graduates and found that 80 percent of their students who had done at least one internship had received a job offer after graduation, compared to only 50% of those who hadn’t.

The real-world experience you’ll have in your pocket as a CI alum gives you a head start when entering the job market alongside millions of other graduates. Let’s get to it and create a CV that is so good it can’t be ignored, as Steve Martin would say.

HOW TO BUILD THE PERFECT CV

Alex put two CVs up on the screen and interns rated them on a scale of 1 to 5, taking style, format and content into consideration. It’s always interesting to be in the other seat. Next, he presented tips to really make your CV stand out. Here is what your CV should do:

1. Your CV should present all your relevant skills and accomplishments.

2. You should tell a concise story of your educational and corporate background.

3. Show a little bit of character: List a few of your hobbies, especially if they are relevant to your field. If you’re a Software Engineer and you enjoy writing code in your spare time, mention it briefly.

4. Tailor your CV to your chosen field: You might end up with a few different versions of a CV, depending on where you’d like to apply.

5. List all dates in reverse chronological order, meaning that your most recent work experience should be on top.

6. Include an objective in your CV, stating what kind of position you’re looking for and what your background is in one clear and concise sentence.

7. Proof-read! Sometimes we get so caught up in the writing part that we forget to double-check our CV before printing it. Especially with autocorrect on laptops, mistakes happen ever so easily. Print out your CV, leave it for an hour and then come back to it. Typos and spelling errors will pop out immediately.

WHAT NOT TO DO

Since it is always good to know what NOT to do, here are a few don’ts to keep in mind when (re)writing your CV:

1. Don’t just create a wordy list of every single achievement of yours, get rid of fluff.
2. Don’t exceed one page in length. Believe me, it is possible to fit everything onto one page.
3. Don’t list work experience without explaining what you actually achieved there.
4. Don’t play around with fonts or colors (unless you’re a designer). Instead, keep it clean and simple, with fonts like Arial or Cambria, making headers stand out in bold.

MARKET YOUR CV

Finally, Alex called on interns to market their CV wherever possible. After spending a reasonable amount of time on your resume, make sure that the world gets to see it.

I like to differentiate between two types of CV marketing: active and passive. Active Marketing involves directly reaching out to recruiters and potentially valuable contacts. Don’t be afraid to contact people you don’t know via LinkedIn and pick up the phone. Try to offer value where you can.

Passive Marketing is easier (but generally less effective). Focus on the usual suspects like Xing, Glassdoor, Monster and LinkedIn and post your CV there for people to find it. LinkedIn is generally a great way to avoid having your CV disappear in a black hole of hundreds of other submitted resumes.

Keep a few copies of your CV in your bag or at least have it backed up in several clouds and on your phone. This ensures that you can pull it up at any given moment; you never know when you might accidentally bump into a recruiter at a networking event.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Step 1: Create a rock-solid CV. Step 2: Put your CV to work for you. Step 3: Never give up.

Stay on top of the job search by reaching out to potential employers everywhere you go, attend networking events on the regular and most importantly: Be yourself and stay positive!

Job offers are just around the corner if you follow our tips for a well-rounded CV.

Robert C Pozen, senior lecturer at MIT Sloane School of Management and former executive chairman of MFS Investment Management, strongly emphasizes the importance of transferable knowledge.

This entails what you learned during your education, which you can now take to the real world. Nevertheless, university education may provide you with relevant knowledge to take to your first job, but you will go through a life-long learning process regardless.

Work on constantly improving your skills and taking as much relevant experience from each job you take on as possible. An internship can turn into an entry-level position, and then you can go from there.

FACTORS BEYOND YOUR CONTROL

However, Pozen also warns that it isn’t always possible to plan your career.

Factors beyond your control shape your job options. For example; global economic trends, technological changes or political elections.

Look at this as an opportunity. Especially technological change provides us with an ever-evolving range of industries that we can’t even think of today. Your job might not exist yet, but it will in five to ten years.

SET SMART GOALS

To stay on top of the job search and avoid getting side-tracked, try following the SMART scheme:

Specific: Make your goal as clear and specific as possible.
Measurable: Come up with clear criteria to measure your success
Attainable: Your goal shouldn’t be impossible to achieve.
Relevant: The goal should be relevant to you, so that you stay motivated to achieve it.
Time-bound: Set a specific timeframe by which you’d like to achieve your goal.

As an example: “I’m looking for an entry-level position (attainable) with a marketing company (relevant) within the first six months after graduation (time-bound), to be able to enter the workforce and improve my skillset (measurable).”

This scheme will help you stay on track when you’re defining your career goals. Finding these boundaries and specifying your goals as much as possible is crucial in order for you to be able to focus on them.

Having dreams is great, but if your goals are impossible to reach or you didn’t set a deadline for them, it’s going to be very hard to keep up with the fight for them.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

To be able to plan your career, you first need to know your strengths and weaknesses. Appraise yourself. Focus on transferable knowledge, keep on working on your skillset and set SMART goals.

Do realize that some factors are beyond your control and your job might not even exist, but give it your best shot.