June 21st, 2010 by admin
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Sometimes I wonder if I am making the right decision in my career choices. During my freshmen year, I started out as an accounting student because I had no idea what part of business interested me the most. At the time, my only mentor was a senior accountant at Ernst & Young who told me accounting would be an excellent field. He was right in the sense that the business world had a high demand for accountants and that professionals in the field made lots of money right after graduation. In addition, the Big Four accounting firms budgeted a lot for college recruitment and their leadership training made them the top companies to launch a career. However, after a failed interview for a program during the summer and the economic downtown in 2008, I fell out of love with the profession.
I did not really like my accounting classes and it seemed like students were only in it because they wanted to make money. The classes were not hard, but it was just not something that interested me. During my sophomore year, I slowly began moving towards a career in finance. Although I did not know a thing about financial markets or stocks, I did well in the introductory course and decided I could slowly learn the details about the financial industry. Unlike accounting, every finance student was switching out of the subject because they were afraid of not getting jobs due to the bad economy. During the summer, I took a financial analyst internship working in a corporate setting. To my dismay, financial work did not interest me either. I found that corporate finance was practically 50% accounting and that it was not a very thrilling job.
During my Junior year, I took over the American Marketing Association chapter my friend was in charge of and decided to pursue marketing. I did not especially like marketing students at my school, but I enjoyed learning about consumer psychology and social media technologies. Every marketing student wanted to get into advertising because commercials and graphic design were the only things they knew about. Furthermore, the majority of marketing students at my university were lazy under-achieving students who thought you had to be very good at math to do accounting. This was obviously not true since accounting was mainly based on the rules and only involved elementary math. At the end of my junior year, I took a sales internship that I am currently really pleased with.
It is hard to say if sales and marketing will be the profession I stay with, but one thing is very clear. My end goal is to become a CEO and I cannot accomplish that goal without experience in the front lines of sales. I believe that having this sales experience starting out will give me many opportunities in the future. After a few years, I plan to get my MBA if everything goes well or when I decide that the advanced degree will help me move along in my career. At that time, I might use my MBA to do a career change or just to advance myself within my current company. Wherever I go, I feel ready to tackle the challenges ahead because of everything I have experienced and the careers I have explored.
June 19th, 2010 by admin
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I have always been known to think too far ahead of myself. During my interviews for internships, I worried about getting one offer before another or about not getting any offers at all. In my mind, I kept thinking about my plan A, plan B, plan C, and so on. In the end, I found that all the planning in the world is worthless without continued persistence and a little bit of luck.
It is important to plan ahead for things, but I quickly found that almost nothing went according to my plans. The internships I thought I might get an interview for did not materialize, but a lot of good ones I did not expect fell right in front of me. Those surprise opportunities came from my persistence to keep searching for internships when I did not hear from my initial internship applications. From this experience, I find that it is extremely important to build a network and plant seeds for the future. I find that many students scramble to network without giving their seeds time to bear fruit or to build the wrong kind of network.
I pick and choose organizations I enjoy being a part of and also strive to become members of other affiliate groups. Ascend and other national professional organizations have given me great opportunities to meet new people and find great mentors. On the other side, the Bay Area has many great entrepreneurs I would like to meet but I still lack the courage to start my own company. My future desire is to have a corporate job but also to flourish as an entrepreneur, rather starting my own business or building my family business. I have decided to take a double route because neither being a corporate employee nor a full-time entrepreneur suits my needs and desires. I guess my posts have been getting sporadic, but I hope to find a more common theme as a brainstorm this summer.
March 20th, 2010 by admin
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Photo by curtisandmeichelle's on Flickr
Many college students do not realize the many great leadership programs available to them. One such program is an event hosted by Monster.com called the Monster Diversity Leadership Program (DLP). The program is a free 3 day event in which students attend training sessions from Fortune 500 companies and participate in activities that build their leadership. The event is hosted in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and brings together students from all over the country. Participants receive free housing on the host college campus during their stay as well as meals for all three days. In addition to a free room and meals, students have the opportunity win scholarship prizes and meet company representatives. I attended the San Francisco DLP and was able to meet companies like HP, Target, Enterprise, Tyco Electronics, Lockheed Martin, and the Navy. These company representatives conducted leadership sessions that taught about diversity in the workplace and helped to critique student resumes.
One of the big takeaways from my Monster DLP experience was becoming a student ambassador for the program. After attending the conference, I applied to be a Monster DLP ambassador and helped to spread the word about the program. I wanted to encourage more students from my school to apply for this great program because it helps students to develop their leadership potential and to meet some awesome people. During my Monster DLP, I met Joseph Harris, the YoYo performer on America’s Got Talent, and he did an amazing performance for the conference attendees at the closing session. The application only takes about 10 minutes to complete and it is guarantees your placement in a program that can change your life. I encourage any student who is interested in the program to apply at www.monsterdlp.com. The program has a rolling deadline but the applications are usually approved in March and April. Although the program is somewhat selective of top students, you are good shape if you have your resume polished and submit your application early.
