Pursue excellence and success will follow
By: Alice Tien Tran
Tags: Hacks, Careers, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Jobs

Searching for a job has always been a huge subject to discuss. Topics may vary from how to impress the future employers to how to polish your CV and to answer 100 interview questions. Trust me, my bookmark was full of those links. However, within this article, I would love to share my job search journey from other perspectives as I haven’t graduated yet and I had no idea what I was good at, which job that I wanted to do.

After desperate time looking for an internship and a huge amount of rejection emails, I realised that a company would need me if I could create value for it. I listed my strengths and interests which I found suitable for the job and tried to strengthen them by studying, practicing the soft skills such as pitching, making presentation and networking. I felt more confident and found my first internship and did Digital Marketing for a startup. That’s how I prepared myself to be a potential employee and let the company recognize me.

Therefore, here are some ways that help you to pursue the excellence.

Study as much as you can

If you know what you want to do, it is absolutely good news. In my opinion, studying at university is not enough, you also need to do research and find out what skills and knowledge desired your job requires. If you want to work in Digital Marketing, study SEO, Google AdWords, and basic design or learn some simple design tools like Powtoon for animated video, Canva for Marketing materials.

Look for any knowledge gap and fill it, there are so many online courses offered by famous universities and professors (check Coursera, Eliademy or Udemy) that you can dig in and find some golden information to enrich your knowledge. Real work experience is great but first you need a professional knowledge base.

If you aren’t sure about what you want to do, try everything. Give a chance to all the options that you have in mind in order to find which job will be “the one” for you. A princess must kiss a frog to find her prince. For sure you don’t have to kiss a frog so why don’t give yourself some opportunities to learn and experiences more.

Get involved in the community

Knowledge is important but it is not enough. There must be a reason to have “business culture” and of course, this culture is different in countries and companies. So why not to get involve in the field which is interesting to you, get to know people who work in the position that you are curious about and get some insights on the job; find out about know the culture of the company that you crazily want to work for.

I participated as volunteer for The Shortcut and it was one of my best experiences. I learnt a lot about multicultural working environment, how to communicate with my co-workers who came from so many different countries. And yes, I learnt how to say “Hello” and “Cheers” in different languages. The most important thing is that I could learn the real skills that I need for my career. I registered as volunteer for the social media team and I was responsible for Twitter during some of the School of Startups workshops. I got to be involved in the real work with the great help from my seniors.

Be open to opportunities

Last but not least, study and network with an open heart and positivity. You never know when the opportunity will come and who could be your future co-worker or maybe even … your boss.

As Steve Jobs said: “You cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect the dots when looking backward”. Don’t freak out if you are a fresh graduate or a soon-to-be-graduated or a job hunter, get ready to “connect the dots” by preparing yourself with knowledge, skills and a positive, pro-active attitude. One day, you will realize you are doing your dream job.