Student Strategies for Successful Career

If you are in college or university and want to build a successful career, start now. Don’t put it off. A successful career is a big and long-term project, and it starts long before you graduate. So where do you start? Try to imagine that you are an employer. Think about what kind of employee he or she wants.

A graduate with a degree who can do nothing but writing assignments, attending seminars and lectures, writing term papers, and taking exams? Obviously not. An employer wants an employee who brings practical benefit to the business.

Even if he is yesterday’s graduate, but has something more in his background than a diploma. And that is what he needs to see on your CV and hear at the interview.

The employer will evaluate three parameters in a young professional: knowledge, skills, motivation. Therefore, if you want to succeed at the upcoming interview in a few years, it is desirable to structure your preparation for future work now, based on the logic of the potential employer.

KNOWLEDGE

Most students believe that there is no direct correlation between the quality of their studies and further successful work. And there are examples and life stories of C’s becoming a very successful and prosperous people. But this is the exception rather than the rule. So it is better to be guided by the rules. Good knowledge, even if it’s theoretical, will be very useful to you. An employer inviting a finance graduate to an interview is entitled to expect that he knows excel, can calculate the break-even point, and make a budget. Don’t disappoint your future supervisors by telling them that you, unfortunately, missed a certain lecture.

Certainly, no one demands one hundred percent attendance and top grades on all tests and term papers, but a high academic rating is not only an indicator of intellectual ability but also of organization, discipline, diligence, and ambition. High grades open the door to internships at major domestic and foreign companies. When representatives of multinational corporations contact universities with inquiries for ” prospective students,” they are usually interested in the top 20 students on the level of performance of the total list of students. So if you dream of a successful career, high academic performance is important.

SKILLS

Your skills are crucial to your employer. He may forgive you for your lack of theoretical knowledge since it can be compensated by self or corporate training. But the lack of the right skills is a problem because it takes months and years to develop them. And the responsibility for this completely lies on the employee.

So, what skills do you need to develop to make a successful career?

Well firstly, these are skills-indicators of your readiness to interact with the working adult community: self-organization, responsibility, discipline, punctuality. Not being late, always being in touch, answering business emails on time – at first glance, it seems so natural and simple that there is nothing to discuss. But practice shows that getting used to these rules of the business community is particularly difficult for young professionals. There is even the so-called “student syndrome” – a phone off or absence from the network due to an unfulfilled work task.

Secondly, it is communication skills: the ability to establish, develop and maintain contacts with people, communicate on the phone and Skype, conduct business correspondence. Presentation skills will also be important, as well as your ability to ask questions and answer them correctly and accurately, to lead a discussion, and to speak publicly.

Third, it is information skills: researching sources, collecting relevant figures and facts, processing and organizing everything you find, analyzing, drawing conclusions, archiving, and storing data. When your employer assigns you to find the information you need, it will be a big mistake to ask him, “How should I do it? Where do I find what I need?”. A person with a college degree is supposed to be able to find these answers on his own. As a last resort, you can bring options to the supervisor and clarify which one is best. But never with a white paper.

MOTIVATION

Your motivation is very important to the future employer, those “burning eyes”, the willingness to work hard and enthusiastically. Moreover, it is not a demonstration of this at the interview, but some real confirmation of your activity and purposefulness. For example, internships during students’ vacations, participation in volunteer projects, part-time work in the evening, or at weekends. Preferably, it should be “in line” with your future profession.

How do you convince an employer that you are a good candidate for an internship and will benefit the company, rather than taking up the time and energy of the permanent staff for your training and education?

Put yourself in the shoes of a company executive. Answer the question of why you need a student or as an employee. What’s the use of him or her? Possible answers:

• He can be assigned assistant work: gathering information, processing data, distributing materials, and other routine work.
• He can be hired for temporary work: a trade show, promotion, or another business event.
• A student is a handy substitute because he or she can flexibly plan his or her schedule.
• Students can come up with something new, pitch an idea.
• He or she can be paid less than a regular employee.

Choose a persuasion strategy depending on the industry, the specifics of the company’s business, and the vacant position, and go for it.

Of course, you will not become a specialist in a couple of months of practice, but you will get a chance to dive into a real job, see the “kitchen” of the profession you are studying, get an idea of what professionals in your chosen industry actually do. It will be good for your life experience, and your CV.

It is very important to constantly work on your CV. Add there new achievements: getting a certificate of language proficiency, a recommendation from a large company according to the results of an internship, writing a term paper, built on the material obtained during an internship in a foreign company. And even participation in a volunteer project to save a rare species of turtles or the restoration of medieval cathedrals can be filed in the CV, as the acquisition of international experience and the development of intercultural relations. Your CV should convincingly show that you are not only a graduate of a prestigious university with excellent grades and a diploma on a current topic but also a well-developed, erudite person, vividly interested in your profession, seeking practical experience and the necessary skills. You always show initiative and will also work energetically for the benefit of that company.