I made this the topic of the blog post because it reminds me of the project I organized when I was once a Leo Club member.  The purpose of this project is to guide school leavers on selecting the best career options for themselves and to understand what the working world is like.  Getting youths who have been working for less than 6 years to share with their juniors how it feels like to have taken their chosen paths.

Today I’ve once again been asked to advice on career options for a high-school leaver.  Since I was once working in a bank, the topic began by revolving around how it feels like to be working in a bank and what are the career options in banks as well as graduates in accounting and finance.  Well, I wasn’t a graduate in accounting and finance so really I can’t talk much about that, but I could probably share some of my general advise to school leavers.

Here are some tips:

• To find what your true passion is, just imagine you have all the money in the world and never needed to do anything to earn a living what would you be doing.
• Once you’ve found the true passion, pursue that path, money will come when you enjoy the work you’re doing.
• If you plan to pursue higher education, which nowadays most people do, just choose the one you’re most interested in and the one you think you’d score the best.  Why?  Because once you’ve graduated it only goes to prove that you have the discipline and determination to finish a 3 - 4 year program.  You’ll learn from scratch no matter that job you take up next.  If you ask for my view, I usually do not bother what degree you’re graduated in, the results means more than the subjects.  I guess the only the only few careers that requires you to have a degree in the same field of work would be the professions like architect, engineer, doctor, lawyer and accountant.  If you’d like to be a businessman, programmer, planner, strategist, management consultant or even HR; it doesn’t really matter what degree you’ve got.
• If you graduated and you realize what you studies wasn’t exactly what you planned to work in, don’t worry, refer to the point above.
• If you plan to do business some day, business degree may not be your only option.  Remember this, any first degree plus some work experience and you’ve met the prerequisite to do an MBA.  The same cannot be said about a business degree graduate wanting to do a postgraduate in other areas.
• English and communication skills are the core to any profession.  Those who speaks and express themselves professionally often gain a upper hand in any profession, even when they are not the most technically skillful person.  So always work your way to become more “street smart” and take up english lessons if you need to.
• Professional grooming is another key.  Invest in yourself to dress up professionally, your potential employer may be anywhere.  Dress up for the position you aspire to be, not the position you’re in.
• If you want to know more about a profession, ask someone who’s truly in it.  You’ll have a lot of friends and relatives who will tell you how great is it to be an accountant, engineer, lawyer or to work in a bank, but what they see is just the surface of things, only those who’s really in the profession can understand the hardship.  Do not take the words of the “experts-wannabe” without consulting the real experiences.
• Finally, if you think your degree means everything, read the book from Robert Kiyosaki “If you wanna be rich and happy, don’t go to school!“

A degree only builds a foundation to be added into your CV and to be called for interview.  The rest will be your soft-skills and how you present yourself as a complete package.  Do make sure your experience is beyond the books, and to do so, you’d need to choose a course that truly in your area of passion!

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Tags: career, college, courses, experience, MBA, school, Youth Development

This entry was posted by Clayton J.C Tan on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Achieving Dreams, Human Resources, Malaysian Education, Youth Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.