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How to get a job you want, part 1: seminar
Blogs Maria Boicova - 11-07-09
Questions ranged from: “How you helped to sustain morale within a team?” to “Describe the most ingenious or creative solution you have delivered?” and from “Which client relationship would you describe as your most successful?” to “Specifically how do you adapt your style or approach to suit cross-cultural audience?”
Yesterday we had a seminar organized by our Career Services on How to get a job you want. Before starting the seminar I had a chance to briefly talk to Jane Barrett (CEO of Workmaze Ltd, who was invited to give that seminar for us) and she asked me: “What is your challenge?” My challenge… Hmm… I want to fully know myself, to find a job wherein I can build upon my skills and knowledge and realize my full potential, as well as eventually to have a good work/life balance and be happy with my choices in life. Obvious, but challenging if one thinks about it. The funny thing is that one of the challenges – “to know myself” is exactly the very first step towards getting a job one wants…
During the seminar we performed several interesting exercises, such as for example - mini-mock interview (full scale mock-interview performed by professionals, inter alia Jane herself, we will have somewhere in January). Everyone was given a list of questions that are very common for a competency based interviews and having been split in pairs we had to ask each other some random questions out of the list, then listen to replies and give our fellow classmate a feedback: how did he or she answered, how good was an eye-contact, what can be improved, and so on. Questions ranged from: “How you helped to sustain morale within a team?” to “Describe the most ingenious or creative solution you have delivered?” and from “Which client relationship would you describe as your most successful?” to “Specifically how do you adapt your style or approach to suit cross-cultural audience?” Ouch! But in order to prepare for the real life competency based interview you have to think about all the possible tricky questions and be able to provide concrete examples to back up every statement of yours. And that’s what I am thinking about right now, before updating my CV what I plan to do this weekend…
Another interesting exercise we performed was writing on a rose paper what are we interested in – field, profession, industry,… and – on yellow paper – what field, profession, industry,… do we know or people from a close circle of ours know. After completion of that exercise two blackboards were covered by rose and yellow “post-it”s, which will be further circulated amongst us, for us to be able to see who from our fellow classmates might actually help us “network” into the field of our interest.
But back to “exploring myself”. Hmm… So what is my approach to managing important projects?...
Maria Boicova is a Full-time MBA student at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School (Leuven, Belgium). She is a Patent and Trademark Attorney from Latvia with a background in law and management.