Career Management

Just as in high school you chose your subjects based upon affinity and future aspirations students should now be considering how to manage choices today for their preferred careers of tomorrow. Some careers, for instance IT, will follow a fairly direct path, others like business, require a broad set of skills covering humanities to corporate etiquette. Finding ways to hone these skill sets while still in college will place you in a more competitive position at graduation. There are some useful skill sets which will cross a broad range of career choices.

Show your Competitive Side

Be competitive and record your achievements and then put them out there. Whether in sports, intellectual pursuits or the arts, prove that you have taken a risk, you’ve competed, and you’re a winner. A willingness to compete shows strength of character and companies like to see a track record of achievement. Don’t be bashful about putting out everything you’ve got, minus maybe the canoeing badge from grade 2!

Show Leadership

Like competitiveness, leadership is a trait companies find desirable. Leadership needn’t be loud and bolshie or even overt. In fact showing that you can lead a team with quiet assurance is better. Some ways to display your leadership skills might be to present examples of situations in which you showed courage or lead a controversial decision. Discussing the issues you are passionate about and talking about what you have done to support your beliefs is also good.  Any examples of situations in which you were able to motivate a group is also excellent. In a job interview being able to express the qualities that make a strong leader will help too. Work on creating a strong leadership base now so you have a range of authentic examples when you graduate.

Prove your Team Spirit

Interaction with peers is inevitable in every occupation and employers loath having to work through office politics. Show them they won’t have to because you are a team player. So now is the time to join a team or club or environmental group so that later you can articulate your team spirit. When relaying your experiences, show that you were able to work with and relate to, a broad group of people. Diversity is a fact of life and companies value employees who are able to work across cultures and personalities. Even better if you can show how you developed relationships and influenced stakeholders in the course of your activities.

Be the Ideal

Integrity and a strong value base are as important and highly regarded in the workplace as it is at home and at school. This may be the most difficult attribute to convey when it comes time to sell yourself. The simplest way will be to have examples of times when you had to make difficult choices or value judgements and how you dealt with those situations.

Release the Inner Nerd

Intellectual curiosity is terrific. Allowing yourself to openly get excited about the areas of study you find fascinating will provide you and those around you, with the energy to explore and diverge down different paths of discovery. That kind of energy will grow as it’s nurtured. By the time you are set to go forth into the working world you will be a veritable pulse of excited intellectual energy and the people meeting you will feel it, sense it, and when you express it in terms of their business, they will definitely want you on board.

Making choices now in preparation of future career aspirations is plain common sense. Selling yourself after graduation will come naturally along with confident statements of skill sets supported by a student career of proactive engagement, if you start today.