Friday, October 17, 2014

Our Choices Define Us

I am in the process of job searching/interviewing, and it’s a job in itself.  As I enter countless interviews, I am beginning to realize that I will have to make some big decisions in the coming months.  I think I want to go into some sort of consulting, but as of now, everything is up in the air. 

As I’ve become more familiar with the job market and what companies “look for” in a candidate, I’ve come to a few realizations.  An ideal candidate is “well-rounded” and has a good school-extracurrircular-social life balance. I had a hunch that this would be something companies would be interested in, so I became very good at managing my time early on in my college career.  I spread myself across various activities, whether it be through my sorority, the Society of Women in Business, volunteering at the food pantry or various honor societies, in order to insure that companies know that I am driven and can juggle many things at once.  Not only is it important to have extracurricular activities, but it is also important to have meaningful activities that can be somewhat applicable to your future.  Almost every organization that I’ve partaken in throughout my college career has helped me be successful in attaining internships and other work opportunities, and in times such as during behavioral interviews, it is crucial that you have experiences to pull from outside of the classroom. 

Besides outside involvement, I’ve self-insured myself through my academic performance.  I think that applying for jobs is very similar to applying to college; both evaluate not only extracurricular involvement, but also your grades.  Keeping a relatively high GPA throughout college has definitely been a reason why I have been swamped with interviews this fall.  I think that if my GPA had been lower, I would not have been as desirable of a candidate.

Choosing a college major was also an important decision that will impact my future.  Before applying to the University of Illinois, I was torn between applying as a political science major or an economics major.  Luckily, I realized that an economics would be a better investment (at that time I wanted to go to law school, which looking back upon, was ridiculous), and I decided to major in econ.  I added an additional major my sophomore year, Spanish, and I also believe that this was a good decision.  Majoring in Spanish has allowed me to be more qualitative, and in effect, balance out the quantitative qualities of my economics degree.  I think that the two degrees combined relay a “well-rounded” impression to employers.

Overall, I think my ability to be versatile and adapt has gotten me far in life.  This isn’t always a learned characteristic, but it is important when taking on the job market and figuring out what you want in life.  Versatility in addition to goal setting has allowed me to gain some sense of direction when it comes to my future.  I ultimately want to end up doing something that I actually enjoy, and I think that my choices in terms of majors and outside activities accurately reflect my interests and who I am as a person.  Thus far, I believe I've managed future risks well through various decisions that I've made in college, but only time will tell.  Then again if all else fails, I’m lucky to have an amazing family that will support me no matter what I decide to do with my life. 



3 comments:

  1. Before turning to the content in your post let me focus on this particular bit, which I believe characterizes your writing on occasion:

    (at that time I wanted to go to law school, which looking back upon, was ridiculous)

    The above is in reference to your decision to major in economics rather than political science. That it is ridiculous to have wanted to go to law school may be obvious to you, but it is not to me, so when you put a line out like that without explaining why it is true, it reads like you are having a conversation with yourself only and not with me or some other hypothetical reader who might stumble onto your piece. (For example, one of your classmates might choose to read it.)

    Now I will turn to the content in this piece. I do have the impression from what you've said here as well as what you've written elsewhere that you are a good time manager and are quite organized about how you go about things. That is a plus, for sure. I do not have a sense, however, whether there are non-course things you would do nonetheless even if they didn't add a line to your resume. At the other extreme, I wonder if there are non-course things you've done only for the credential they provide. You talked about attaining balance in your activities, which is good, but I wasn't able to tell if, when focusing only on the non-course stuff in what you do, whether there is balance between what those things provide in immediate satisfaction and how those things serve you for your career moving forward.

    Also you didn't mention prior summer work in this piece and in that you are different from your classmates. Did that not matter in getting the interviews you are getting?

    Now I want to tie the very first point, about whom you are writing for, to your comment about what companies are looking for. My question as a reader is, how do you know that? Might it be that what is needed to get an interview is one thing, but what is need to get a job offer is another? Or do you think those are one and the same? In either case, as a reader I'd like to know on what you base your claim. If you do already have some offers in hand your opinion seems more based on evidence than if you don't yet have such offers, in which case the evidence you have is that you've gotten the interviews. But many students get interviews. Fewer get offers.

    My goal here with these comments is not to pry into your circumstance. My goal is to get you to support your claims with evidence that a reader like me can understand. Readers tend to be skeptical (and interviewers probably are too but they may not show that in the interview). The best way to offset the skepticism is to provide evidence to support your positions. And, by the way, skepticism is good and healthy, much better than taking things on faith. So in asking for this I'm trying to raise the bar in your writing performance.

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  2. I understand where you're coming from, and I will try to be more thorough in the future. As for your last point, I believe that skills needed to be selected for an interview are very different than skills needed to be selected for an offer. I am in the process of interviewing, but have yet to receive an offer. I believe that a paper portrayal of oneself can be very different than how she portrays herself in person, and hopefully this isn't the reason for my lack of offers thus far!

    As for the lack of explanation in my comments, I think I have to adjust my writing style in order to better explain myself. I am used to blogging for friends and family, who all know me fairly well, so I will have to alter my writing style in the next posts in order to cater to people who I am not so familiar with.

    At the this time, I'm not getting much immediate satisfaction out of activities because I lack time to enjoy them. I am so busy with school, traveling for interviews, and other things that I sometimes don't enjoy these activities as much as I used to. As job traveling and school calm down, I think I will reap more benefits from my activities, because I chose them for a reason, and I normally do feel good after engaging in them. In the long run, I believe that my involvement has helped me. Not only has it given me countless topics to connect over with interviewers, it has also landed me a few of said interviews.

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    Replies
    1. It sounds like you need to let go of some of your obligations to free up time for the rest. Figuring out which to drop can be stressful itself, but maintaining an unrealistic pose that you can do everything and do it all well is almost certainly worse. And if you can relax a little bit you should find that you enjoy things more.

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