How about a career manual on how young professionals can land their dream job at a Fortune 500?
Introducing MONDAY MINUTES, a career manual for young professionals on how to turn your career goals into reality.
MONDAY MINUTES are my personal reflections, learning, and strategies on creating your career path. I am a luxury beauty marketeer at the world leader in beauty and a mentor to multiple young professionals from Imperial College London & Cambridge University. Throughout mentorship sessions with young professionals, I have encountered reoccurring questions that seemed to be top of mind for so many.
Thus, instead of solely just sharing advice on an individual basis, I decided to create MONDAY MINUTES to make this information accessible to everyone who is seeking guidance on drafting their career path. Every Monday I will share my personal experience on a career related topic such as:
1) How to identify a career path that you are truly passionate about?
2) How to perfectly prepare for an interview?
3) How to stand out compared to other applicants?
4) Why are mentors important to achieving your goals faster?
5) Why is having a short-term and long-term plan pivotal?
6) How to bounce back stronger from application rejections?
Multiple of the young professionals that I have worked with now landed jobs at their desired Fortune 500 company. Thus, most likely these topics have crossed your mind at some point.
MONDAY MINUTES #1: The power of listening to the right people
It seems such an obvious thing, but truly listening and more so listening to the right people can be pivotal to achieving your career goals. Sometime in 2020, when the pandemic hit one of my mentors told me that “the ability to listen is going to take you places that speaking never could”. This notion has changed my life forever. It was then, when I realized that all my goals that I foresee for my life must be addressed in a different manner. And that manner should be defined by the art of LISTENING. From that day onward, I spent every day researching, learning, and talking to professionals who had the success that I aim to have. All with the goal to soak up their learning, to listen and to duplicate their “success moves”.
I have come to conclude that there are 2 components surrounding the art of listening:
1) Select carefully who you are listening
To achieve your goal, select carefully who can help you in achieving this goal. You will want to make sure to identify a professional who has achieved exactly the type of success that you aim to have (and dream big here!). You can research these professionals on obvious platforms such as LinkedIn (but I do not recommend to just randomly write people on LinkedIn!), Ted Talk, Forbes, etc. Once you identified the professional, I recommend to research and analyze their career path:
- What development steps have they taken?
- What different functions within a company did they gain experience in (for instance Marketing, Sales or Digital Marketing)?
Once you have studied what the professional has done, research online if they have published any work or if they have engaged in public speaking (check YouTube). Then try to truly study how they are thinking and what their core competencies are.
If the professional is working within the company that you are dreaming of joining, then you can start to analyze the way they think and what strategies they are working on. This will allow you to drop fundamental insights when you land an interview at your preferred company. You will have in-depth insights that go beyond just quickly screening the company’s websites or checking their mission statement or latest product launches.
2) Listen & duplicate exactly what you are being told
Should you be able to even get in touch with the professional that you have been studying, then in a careful and humble manner try to ask, if they could spare a couple of minutes to share their learning with you. The digital acceleration has allowed a networking trend of digital coffees & catch-ups, leverage that. Should they agree to do so, remember that it is key to be prepared. To use the insights that you studied and to listen to the advice you are being given. This advice is gold for you and should be used as your blueprint on your next steps to achieve your goal.
Creating a long-term relationship with someone who gives you this type of advice is like your lottery ticket to drafting your future career. And that is why next week, I will outline the importance of a mentor and how to find a mentor.
