The Successor Search: Round 1 (or maybe Rant 1)

Fellow students, as we all know this is the Deadlines Wave of the winter semester, where there’s a seemingly endless list of group projects, papers to write, that third midterm to study for and the like. And while I strategize how I should eat the giant cupcake I have for a snack without stuffing my nose with icing, I knew that everything else has got to be approached the same way- with a strategy.

On Monday afternoon, after a group meeting for a school project, I came to my weekly meeting here at work slightly nervous because of some difficulties with the retreat planning. After the discussing ideas for mitigation we get a call and have another speaker confirmed! Crisis averted! Talk about timing! If only Mondays always work that way.

On Tuesday, I wasn’t actually planning to come to the office since I needed to do some major editing for a group project written report, which still needed a lot of work. But then I got an email that takes me back to the office to make some phone calls. And that is when it got dropped in my desk- the selection and short-listing task list for my successor. I read through the agenda, the rules and all is going well, but when I started reading the cover letters and resumes, my mind is blown!

The hybrid perspective I talked about in the last blog totally kicked in. While I stayed focused on my goal, which is to evaluate the applications based on the qualifications that we are looking for, I can’t help but comment to myself as a current co-op student looking for a placement. I’ve never seen such a variety of resume and cover letter outlines before! Even the examples shown in the seminars from the Co-op office are nothing in comparison. Gee, these students are involved in a LOT of things, which is pretty amazing! While half the time I am fascinated, sometimes I feel like these students have done so much more than I did! It looks like there is really a great competition for job searching out there.

In my perspective as a member of the selection committee, at times I did find it difficult; this is quite a few cover letters and resumes to read at one time! I totally get it now, the things that the co-op coordinators have been repeatedly calling out on our resumes and cover letters because yes, it could also be tough on the other side. The way it looks at the first glance really impacts reading the rest of the application. Consistency, format and spelling are very important too! How am I suppose to know for sure that you can write very well the reports and documents I make here when you cannot even show that in these 3 pages? This is the first and maybe only part of you that I can see. It’s just as valuable a wearing a non-wrinkled shirt in an interview if we did short-list you.

The most important thing is I was looking for is relevance and excitement. I have a very solid pile of applications with great strengths in each of them. I guess it particularly resonated to me because this person will be my successor, the individual who could and will take this pilot position to many directions it can possibly go and the opportunities are huge. I thought that there is no need to point out every single thing you volunteered for since unfortunately I only had a limited time to read them. I’d like to read a select number of volunteer or working experiences so there is room to elaborate what you did there, and how it connects to what we are looking for. I wonder, do companies think of the same way when the hire new staff? I want him or her to have the skills that it takes and maybe some that I wish I did as soon as I started in the position. I was looking for passion! Passion not necessarily for the job (although that would be nice) but more so for the organization because we are serving students! In retrospect, I now reflect on how companies  feel when trying to see how much the applicant wanted to work with them and all they see is that the mission statement is just pasted in there. What is even worse is when nothing about it is mentioned at all!

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, now I know.

The short-listing is next week. We’ll see what happens. After that I’m actually more excited, or nervous, or both about the next stage – the interviews! I’ll keep you all posted!

Cheers,

Giselle

One Experience, dual roles in the job searching stage

Hi! I am so sorry for being MIA for almost a month now! Things have been really busy, including during reading week and I hope that all of you are prepared to tackle the remaining half of the semester.

The campaign for the SU elections is in full speed right now. This update sounds like a student-type update rather than a work-type update but then again, that is what my job in involved with – student activities. I think I’ve never been excited and aware about this before. Also, thanks to the facebook page in our department, I manage to get a steady feed on what different Faculty Associations and student groups on campus have been doing recently. It’s really fascinating what students are capable of doing to make a difference not only in the university environment but beyond that as well.

Also, we had a new logo! See how nice it looks? It is totally a huge upgrade from our old one that is all shades of brown. We are updating all our documents right now and even though I might be working in this position anymore when more professional templates for our published materials are developed with the logo, I’m still looking forward to the positive effects that this will bring to our visual identity.

My English literature class talks quite frequently about the concept of the hybrid figure in many of the pieces that we have read and I am definitely one of those right now. The search for future SGO is also up and going and while I am working on the arrangements we need for the hiring process, I am still doing my job searches for my next placement after I finish the SGO position. This interviewer-interviewee hybrid persona is quite interesting so far.

Taking my time now to reflect on my interview experiences in the past, including the one for this position, I realized that there were surviving moments, and others that are total slip-ups. I was both mildly amused and a little bit embarrassed when Amanda recalled clearly how I responded to one of those questions that were literally meant to trip you up. Ugh, I still remember my terror in that one and how I felt like my ears were on fire upon hearing the question! But thanks to my training in Toastmasters about Table Topics, I managed to first, calm down and second, come up with a structured response. Our meeting theme during our Toastmasters Meeting last week was also about interview questions and we learned good techniques from all the 15 members who attended the meeting. I also remembered a phone interview last year and since I had no experience answering the question “how many pennies are there at the mall?”, I stalled for an indefinite amount of time and I knew I lost my chance on answering properly. These were really precious lessons learned during the interview process as an interviewee and I am really looking forward to being on the other end of the table.

Over the past month, I had a chance to see and chat with some of my friends, which proves to be more challenging now since we are so busy with school, co-op, clubs and being involved with other organizations. I remember one of them, who is in an Accounting co-op right now, saying that the work has been busy which at times isolates him. The other friend, who I saw again right after finishing my volunteering commitments two weeks ago, told me he just “wants a well-paying job”. I don’t know, but somehow I imagine that if I am asked to say a one-sentence description about my ideal job, that it will not be like that. I can see myself carefully considering how it affects my life, based on my interests and how much of the “making a difference” aspect do I want to see reflected in my career choice.

 

Now aside from looking at Placepro, Beartracks made all the classes for the fall and winter semesters available. Good luck with your job and class searches and I’ll keep you all posted.

- Giselle

 

Writing Me: Adventures in Self-Assessment and Cover Letter Development

One of my nicknames when I was a kid is “Major”. As in it stands for Major General – derived directly from my last name. Haha. Now I kind of want to be one, since I am applying for some jobs that I am NOT a major in. Accounting.

Here’s the story on why it ended up being my minor. After taking all my classes during the first year in Business, I realized that I really enjoyed my Business Law class, Finance is not my strong suit and I liked Management Accounting thanks to my professor at the time. So I stuck with the major I signed up for prior to business school and switched my minor from Finance to Accounting. I really enjoyed taking the Management Accounting stream of courses to complete my minor, but I have a feeling that that might make it more challenging for me in terms of job applications.

Now with these very few job applications available, I need to make sure that I’m still a big load of awesome, if you know what I mean. Previous Co-op experience – check! Volunteer experiences that are current – check! A decent GPA standing – check! Resume updated and formatted – check! And the final piece to make my application package look catchy at first glance, the cover letter, is still work-in-progress.

I think of all the documents needed for a job application, I actually stress out about the cover letter more than anything. The fact that Accounting is my minor and not my major like many of my fellow undergrads make me uneasy about being considered in many placements that are offered.

From my very frequent visits to our co-op coordinators in the Business Careers Services office, here are the three main themes of their advice whenever I ask them to scrutinize my cover letters so I can put my best foot forward:

-       Grammar and tense consistency: Unfortunately word processing programs have spell check, but nothing remotely close to a grammar police. When the first few sentences in a paragraph using present tense suddenly shifts to sentences in the past tense and vice versa, the flow of events gets a bit more confusing to the reader, who will only quickly scan it for 30 seconds. It’s okay to use all past tense for verbs even you are currently doing the position right now; you can save that tidbit for the resume and the interview.

-       Personalization to the company: There has to be a balance with the phrasing so that it doesn’t look that you copied their mission statement word by word, but you are still telling them that you know a bit about the company. I think this is the main part that I have to work on still. It’s a trial and error process, and having someone else read it is definitely valuable to see if you have that personal touch to the letter.

-       Relevance of your skills to what they are looking for: Being in the Cooperative Education Program, by default you already are a great student with a lot of skills, a lot of experience and a lot of enthusiasm. Since a cover letter is short, make your current skills stand out in a few words that will fit what the company is looking for. Say you worked in a job where you did a lot of independent research projects. If one company says they are looking for self-motivated people, point out the part where you accomplished your projects with your own discipline and initiative, if they say they want research experience, modify your statement a little bit so that the fact that you did research stands out a bit more. Same thing goes with resumes. That is why it is always handy to have your current job descriptions right beside the description of the placement available when you are drafting your application package.

While doing this, I am also currently doing an assessment of my position as requested by my supervisor. It is a pilot position so my evaluation will play a big role in terms of what the next-in-line person will do. It makes me realize that the job has so much more potential to it in terms of what it can do for the students that we serve, and now that some routine has been establish I hope that there is more opportunity for it to grow and expand.

Good luck with the job searches and cross fingers for me as well!

Cheers,

Giselle

WKEXP 911 Recollection for my 25th CESA Blog Celebration

Notes from my weekly meetings go to this pile. I wonder if this pile is actually as big as my blog posts if I print them?

Hooray for the 25the Blog! Also, I would like to extend my welcome cheers to Michelle, our new blogger who is currently on a placement with Deloitte! I didn’t get a chance to know for sure if this is your first work placement, but whether it is or not, I think that this blog will remind you and all our fellow students on a placement of the things we have to do as required by the Cooperative Education Program.

I have to admit I’m suffering from a bit of a writer’s block right now. It’s not that I have no idea what to share, because there’s so many things going on in the office right now that I really wanted to share, but I seem to have a more difficult time arranging my thoughts. It’s been many months ago since I have done this, so I decided to reuse the tried and true method of recollecting what you have done recently in your placement: the WKEXP 911 way – the reflective journal.

Here it is, a recollection of what happened during the last 1 and a half weeks.

What I did:
I started to finalize more details about the retreat that I am planning. It is my first time planning an event that involves students of this number and that runs all day. I did a lot of research of  how the past years went, gave suggestions on modifying the event details and introduced new ideas such as creating a theme for the event. In my experience, retreats or conferences usually have a theme and it was accepted as a good idea. In my department, we also are in the next step of developing the promotional/educational videos of my department. I learned a few basics of Imovie and have been doing basic editing and cutting of the raw footage since last week. There are also the routine activities which include organizing the details for the monthly meetings of two groups of student representatives that I organize. My supervisor also asked me to review some documents for the department which will be used for both the short term and long term.

What I have learned in this time frame:
I have learned how to do more ways of formal writing when I wrote the letters of invitation to prospective speakers in the retreat. I learned the fundamentals of IMovie, which I found as a definitely better program for movie editing 101 compared to Windows Movie Maker. I had an opportunity to see through the documents that I reviewed how the planning documents for a department are created. I imagine it takes observation of the projects of the department, the rate and timeliness by which they are accomplished, plans for future projects and the capacity of doing routine tasks and new projects.

What I have learned about myself personally and professionally:
In this position, I am becoming more comfortable sharing ideas that the department have not considered before. As I have been multi-tasking on many projects in this position since I started last May, I did not feel as flustered anymore with deadlines or when something does not work our exactly as planned.

That is actually how I wrote my draft for my reflective journals last summer. For students in their first placement, at this point in time you are in your third or fourth reflective journal entry. There were times last summer where I feel like the week flew just too fast and I don’t know what to write. It took several journals to learn that there is always something new that you have learned, even if it is something like being better at some skill or applying a skill that you are already good at in a different manner.

I hope that you have a good rest of the week and don’t forget to submit your outlines and goals for your WKEXP reports!

Cheers,

Giselle

Hello!

Best buddies in business are a must-have. They will be the only ones who will laugh with you about a joke on Debits and Credits. 

Hi everyone! I’m excited to blogging all about my life over the next few months! I guess I should introduce myself before I start ranting, eh? I’m a 4th year student, but it’s my 3rd year in the BCom program, and, like a bajillion other students here, I’m an Accounting major. I’m also currently on a co-op term with Deloitte in Edmonton. During my last weekend before starting my first client file, I was volunteering at JDC West. It was the craziest, most amazing conferences I’ve ever witnessed. Everyone was so pumped up and everything was pulsating with school spirit! I was a Social volunteer and the Social OCs (Organizing Committee) had warned us all beforehand to ‘Be prepared to not sleep at all.’ Okay, well, I thought they were exaggerating like when people say ‘You’ll be pulling 12 hours days, everyday, for busy season at a Big 4 firm.” And, they definitely were not exaggerating (and neither is anyone telling you about the 12 hour days, but we’ll get to that later…)! I don’t even think my eyes were blinking at the same rates by Sunday afternoon! JDC was an adventure, that’s for sure. But you know what? You’re young now; only our 20-something bodies can handle that much abuse over 3 days, so try it out and you won’t leave disappointed (just exhausted). Holy smokes though, my first day after that weekend was brutal! They had trained us a bit before, but it’s hard to grasp anything until you start doing it. It’s like Accounting class; I really don’t understand anything until I’ve done some practice questions. My first engagement was intense; long days and lots of confusion on my part. I’m so thankful for everyone else in my team though; I’d be goner without them! Everyone in an accounting firm knows what it’s like to go into their first audit, not knowing anything, which is why everyone is so willing to answer questions. And 12-14 hours isn’t really quite as bad as it sounds. It’s not like I work until late night, only until 8 or 10, which is the same hours I’d have if I worked a part-time job on weekdays after a day full of classes. This past week with another client file hasn’t been as long of days, but it was tough juggling two engagements. It takes a lot of prioritizing and managing my time. Everyday I’m learning something new, which makes everyday interesting so far! I’ll keep you all posted on my next few adventures; until then, have some happy working/studying!

- Michelle

Considering the balancing act, Academics during the Co-op program

I hope that everybody managed to survive the past freezing week of school/work!

Speaking of freeze, two weeks ago was the Antifreeze event here at the SU. It was funny how I managed to get more caught up with SU events by working over here. It was great to see many groups of students with competitive and spirit during the first week of the semester. You can check out pictures of the event on their Facebook page.

 “I only have 120 days left on my terms and I’d like to get a lot done”

-       Excerpt from an email I received from our SU Vice President Academic while discussing our end-of-year activities here in our jobs.

Actually now, if I did my math right, it’s actually just 100 days more before our terms are over! I actually feel the same way. A little excited, dreading it a little bit and there’s the pressure that you want to accomplish as much as you could in your job. For our fellow students on placements, how do you feel as soon as you finished 2/3 of your time in your placement?

Remember the report that I was talking about last October? Well, I just finished it a few days ago. I do admit I am very relieved that it was over. For a while I also felt a little bad about requesting an extension of the deadline (from December 31, 2011 to January 13, 2012), but I think it was worth it. The collaborative effort was not as extensive as I hoped it would; I primarily interviewed the other people once and had to do more of the analysis on my own. I sure learned a lot in terms of writing a report, especially making recommendations based on a situational analysis. Another thing I learned, finishing a report on Friday night is not fun at all but not worrying about a report over the weekend is a great upside.

While for the other research project that I am working on, the interaction with my partner is also not as much but I think the main reason is the way we split up our tasks. That being said, I was very excited when two of the universities have contacted me back for clarifications and confirmations. As for the French Universities, there is no progress yet since I do have to wait for my backup for translations. Well, as the old adage says, patience is a virtue.

In terms of job search updates, still there’s not much luck for me still as most of the placements uploaded are out of town. One of the things that students looking for a Spring/Summer placement have to consider is about taking classes during their placement. For me, if I wanted to graduate within my target date, I need to take one course in the spring, one in the summer and a full course load in the fall term. As for the conditions of the Co-op program, students are allowed to take one course per term. After my visit with an advisor, some of the options that she recommended are:

1-    Night Classes

2-    Distance Classes

3-    Individual Research Project

Different factors have to be considered such as:

1-    Available space in your electives

2-    Transportation to make sure you won’t be late for your night classes after getting off from your work placement

3-    Time commitment of each both in class and in terms of readings projects and homework

Spring and summer classes have a different timeline in them where you have to spend more time a week for each class. I have never considered taking research project at all but the prospect of working closely with a professor for research seems interesting. Six weeks might be too short for a research project, but it is definitely an option for taking a course in a different setting, regardless if you are in a placement that term or not.

Spring and Summer registration opens in February 15 and there are many placements that are loaded right now. Good luck with your job search and class searches and I hope you’re all enjoying the second week back to school.

-Giselle

New Year= Same placement, new lessons, new challenges

Welcome to the new year! I hope that all of you have managed to rest and relax a little before facing a new semester. For those who found a work placement and has started recently, or those who are continuing another term with your employers, congratulations! For the students who just stated attending classes, congratulations as well! For the next four months I know I will be able to relate to both groups since I will still be doing both. Again.

I’m still working on the same few projects that I left last December. One of them is in the beginning phase, and now to move forward I started to contact the Students’ Unions (or equivalent) in Universities across Canada. I did hit one major roadblock though; I can’t speak or write a single word in French! When my research partner and I split up the universities to contact, I ended up getting two from Quebec. Darn for me not knowing French! At least one of my bosses offered to help me contact them by him sending a message in my behalf. It was a relief but it was indeed slightly frustrating that I am not able to do it. I have always had second thoughts about taking introduction to French courses on campus, fearing it will ruin my GPA. I suppose I am naturally bilingual since I speak Filipino since childhood, but I am still not sure about my abilities to learn a language in a formal setting. Maybe I should consider using some of my seven free elective spots for this purpose.

Moral of the story: try to learn it! It could come in handy when you least expected it especially in Canada. Also, in jobs where it is not an absolute necessity, it could come out as a skill that really stands out. That’s how I view my bosses right now who are very capable in French communication. It is not limited to learning French as well.

Last week a large part of our weekly meeting was focused on making a tagline as a part of our re-branding process. Marketing is waiting for us to give them a new tagline to include in the new logo (which looks really awesome in its first draft). After twenty minutes of bouncing words and phrases that still didn’t sound quite right, we decided to continue searching on our own time for the current week. To compensate for my lack of natural ability for these things, I am trying to make up through research for tips on how companies with memorable taglines do it. I do hope that I can have a Eureka moment by the end of the week, not by dreaming it as suggested since I don’t remember anything when I wake up the next day.

The New Year also caused a big shift in my resume as I have gained a few more volunteer positions and have to end some of them. I just came back for the Co-op office this morning to have my resume reviewed again after I have done these changes. I was reminded that with the 30 second scan that employers usually do, the transferable skills should jump out and not the specific tasks that you do in either an employment or volunteer position. With that in mind, I’m hoping to revise it again so that I can start applying for those positions that I just found on Placepro yesterday.

I hope you have a good week settling back to your routines. For students currently in a placement, I encourage you to share a part of your experience here by contacting CESA so you can start blogging. I’ll bet many students will be looking forward to you sharing your experience and it’s a great way to reflect on your experience and improve communications skills (isn’t that one major thing that employers actually look for?)

- Giselle