As usual, NUS Career Center organizes many career workshops in both 2 semesters to empower students with soft skills and career interest. During the recess week, I was lucky enough to sign up successful for a two days business boot camp for non-business student. In fact it was a very good opportunity for me to equip with some business knowledge and explore some different functions in business area.
I felt inspired by the new career mentor, Jonathan Kwan. He is from Canada, once worked for a law firm, and now he is a founder of a start up company, specifically working with HR in various companies. Throughout the flow of workshop, he totally brought to my mind with a fresh style and lingo.
If any candidate wants to look for a job, then the ability of understanding some business concept is definitely necessary. For example, reading a financial statement or understanding a balance sheet.
What I learnt
During 2 days, we learnt about how to make a business plan and marketing, analyse 4P framework as well as present for the case study. We attempt to get familiarized with many business concepts and have a rough overview of what is each function in business sector. I love the passion all of us bring to this session. Apparently, I think Career Center made a right decision of organizing such workshops to non-business NUS students.
Networking skills
Forget networking, start mingling. Most conversations in networking events are small talks. So take this chance to interact with employers. Who knows you will meet them at the interview. So the first impression is very important.
There are various ways to make a conversation and follow up. For example, we can start like this: "You looked bored, I looked bored too. Let's start to talk". To follow up, we may say: "Could you tell me more about ....". The most common tactic is finding the common ground between you and the person we are talking to.
Everyone needs to make a decision
I met a guys, an EE student who is in the same batch with me. He shares with me that he is getting bored with 4 years in NUS since that he is not interested in the Engineering curriculum's program recently. He definitely wants to do something else different. And he tiredly looks for a direction now. The fact may be proven that many Engineering fresh graduates were offered a job which is not related to their course.
His story made me think a lot. We need to listen to our heart what we are really want to achieve and match our interest with our capabilities and skills.
What I think is applicable for ES2007S
As a module for Science and Engineering students, I think it is a good chance to introduce some business concepts and engage students to activities in class. Simply doing a business plan may be more interesting than trying to do some old topics in many semesters.
And there might have more presentations. I myself, as an engineering student, feel jealous with business students who do presentation every day. Thus it gears me up to take more actions. I aware that my communication is not perfect. I need to be persistent and practice more. Take extra effort in every action to achieve a better result.
Last but not least, I regret that I cannot follow ES2007S till the end. I feel like I lose an opportunity, maybe the last opportunity to improve my communication upon graduation. It is my choice anyway.
In the end, I wish everyone in the class an enjoyable learning experience.
Thanks.
