Hi Everyone,
I’m an ICAEW Campus Ambassador currently studying English and Drama at the University of Kent. I’m doing a series of weekly blogs for 6 weeks about the skills I learned studying Business Administration and Mandarin at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas Business School. These blogs cover what skills employees look for and how you can foster these in yourself to ensure you get the graduate job you want.
In this blog I will talk about how my experiences in my year abroad helped me improve my personal organisation skills, the importance of effective organisation to ensure you are successful in applying for graduate jobs and its benefits in your on-going career.
As students we are constantly busy, and with late nights and early mornings it makes staying organised one of the hardest things to achieve. For many of us, our first year at university means we are suddenly becoming completely independent for the first time. But organisation is an essential skill to securing a graduate job. You need to demonstrate to employers that you are able to keep up an active social life in societies and clubs, positions of leadership, work experience and obviously exams. It’s safe to say that during my year abroad, juggling learning a language, classes, sport, societies, non-profit work and launching a tech start-up, was a challenging learning experience.
With so much to do I would arrive at the campus at 9 in the morning and leave at 10 at night. At that rate, I started to get behind.
A fantastic book, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen R. Covey taught me to re-evaluate my position. I considered my priorities and dropped some activities to get me back on track. The basic principles were simple. One, you identify your different roles, for example student, society president, bar employee etc. Two, you identify your goals associated with these roles, such as achieving a 2.1, getting 30 new members, earning £40 a week. Finally, you work out on a weekly basis what you need to do, to eventually achieve those aims, such as writing a draft essay, organising a stand at a society fair, applying for a new promotion. These kinds of techniques are a real help when our lives our so busy.
Employers need to see that you can hold multiple roles at once, so this kind of personal organisation is really essential to getting the job you desire. Moreover, having this skill is beneficial for your entire career where you will most likely have to multitask with multiple deadlines to meet.
I hope these 6 blogs have been useful and if you have any comments or questions at all please go ahead and I’ll help you any way I can.
Good luck with your applications and your future careers!
If you’ve been inspired by reading this blog, it may surprise you that all of these skills are used in a graduate career as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant.
Discover how you can become an ICAEW Chartered Accountant at http://www.icaew.com/careers
See when the ICAEW Student Recruitment Team (UK) will be on your campus this autumn and message them at http://www.facebook.com/icaewcareers
Hi Everyone,
I’m an ICAEW Campus Ambassador currently studying English and Drama at the University of Kent. I’m doing a series of weekly blogs for 6 weeks about the skills I learned studying Business Administration and Mandarin at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas Business School. These blogs cover what skills employees look for and how you can foster these in yourself to ensure you get the graduate job you want.
In this blog I will talk about how my experiences in my year abroad improved my leadership and management skills in the workplace and how you can demonstrate them when applying for your graduate role.
Graduate employers always stress one thing when searching for employees - the need for graduates to distinguish themselves. A great way to do this is show evidence of leadership. These can be leadership positions in university sports teams and societies or positions of responsibility at work. Hopefully, by sharing my leadership experiences during my year abroad, you can get an idea of your unique leadership qualities and experiences so that you can sell them to potential employers.
One of my most enjoyable leadership roles was Delta Chi Fraternity Public Relations Chair where I lead promotional activities and managed the social media of the fraternity. Especially interesting was the creation of a new image that we marketed. I did however learn the hard way about the importance of staying on top of things. When being a leader it is important to keep on pushing and trying new ideas.
Perhaps the most beneficial leadership lesson I learnt was while launching a tech start up with two other co-founders: It is essential to have a strong vision of what you want to achieve from the start and get people around you who are able to make that vision possible. For instance one of my co-founders was a computer scientist, so was easily able to create a prototype, whereas I would have been hopeless.
Working for a non-profit at, or near, your university is another useful way of improving your leadership skills. My work at the non-profit events company Innovative Entertainment, as an events manager, was a huge step in learning how to manage people. What made the experience of working within a non-profit so unique was that people were motivated by their enthusiasm in creating huge student events and parties, rather than being motivated by money. This meant that fostering a communal spirit between all the employees was integral.
Perhaps the most challenging (and often comical) parts of being an events manager was dealing with drunken misbehaving students at our largest venues in San Francisco and resolving conflicts between staff members and the customers. Being partly accountable for thousands of pounds worth of equipment and 2000 students was an interesting experience. The most enjoyable part of my work was negotiating a deal with another venue in San Francisco when I personally organised and managed the annual date night event at my fraternity.
Most importantly, however I learnt that to be a leader in anything, you have to love what you’re doing, as it gives you the drive to make it a success.
I hope these experiences have shed some light on the kind of leadership activities that you can undertake in order to increase your employability. As ever, if you have any comments or questions at all please go ahead and I’ll help any way I can.
Next week I will be finishing by sharing with you how to combine all the elements of the past five blogs to ensure you get the graduate job you want. So make sure you join me next week!
If you’ve been inspired by reading this blog, it may surprise you that all of these skills are used in a graduate career as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant.
Discover how you can become an ICAEW Chartered Accountant at http://www.icaew.com/careers
See when the ICAEW Student Recruitment Team (UK) will be on your campus this autumn and message them at http://www.facebook.com/icaewcareers
Hi Everyone,
I’m an ICAEW Campus Ambassador currently studying English and Drama at the University of Kent. I’m doing a series of weekly blogs for 6 weeks about the skills I learned studying Business Administration and Mandarin at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas Business School. These blogs cover what skills employees look for and how you can foster these in yourself to ensure you get the graduate job you want.
In this blog I will talk about the career advantages of learning a second language. I wanted to mention the importance of this skill for both your application to great jobs and your future career path.
Last week we talked about presenting. Although being able to present effectively in your own language is impressive enough, having the ability to present in another one, will put you head and shoulders above the competition. One of the greatest challenges of my year abroad was presenting weekly in Mandarin Chinese as part of the assessment for my Mandarin language course. If you’re looking to go the extra mile to enhance your employability it is definitely worth considering.
If you have never seriously studied another language, don’t worry. You don’t need to change university courses to impress graduate employers. But perhaps doing an additional language module at your university or even self-study is worth taking into consideration; enough to show employers that you are serious about learning the language. Before undertaking my year abroad, I undertook a short additional course in Mandarin at the University of Kent, and then within my year abroad at Berkeley I undertook two intensive classes for the whole year. Finally, I am planning on doing another short course at the University of Kent this year.
As globalization continues, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to understand and embrace emerging markets and foreign economies. As a result, bi-lingual employees are in demand. If you can understand another language in terms of business, you can help a company make use of emerging markets, aid in overseas business negotiations, remain competitive on the global stage, understand foreign consumers and much more. As a result, it may prove a very exciting career path, where you have opportunities for worldwide travel.
It is worth being selective about what language you choose. The widely spoken languages such as Spanish are always useful. But it is the native languages of countries that are emerging as global business leaders, including more unique languages such as Arabic and Mandarin, which are increasingly in demand. However, The Economist suggests that French may be the most useful: ‘if you want another truly global language, there are surprisingly few candidates, and for me French is unquestionably top of the list’.
In reality, a grasp of any major language is a plus. If you can show that in a few years of employment you will have developed fluency you will be seen as a real long term asset to any company.
As ever, if you have any comments or questions at all please go ahead and I’ll help any way I can. Good luck!
Next week I will be discussing how you can enhance your leadership skills and seriously impress employers as a result. So make sure you join me next week!
Check out the links below if you want more advise about what language would be best for you:
The Economist - http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/robert-lane-greene/which-best-language-learn
Most widely spoken languages - http://listverse.com/2008/06/26/top-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world/
If you’ve been inspired by reading this blog, it may surprise you that all of these skills are used in a graduate career as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant.
Discover how you can become an ICAEW Chartered Accountant at http://www.icaew.com/careers
See when the ICAEW Student Recruitment Team (UK) will be on your campus this autumn and message them at http://www.facebook.com/icaewcareers
