I'm (High-Key) Lost: Simple Steps to Finding Your Career Path After Graduation

By Phoey Lee Teh and Tom Sander

"I'm (High-Key) Lost: Simple Steps to Finding Your Career Path After Graduation" is a quick and easy guide that covers the short and sweet basics to help you begin figuring out your career path. It is packed with easily digestible answers to the most pressing questions you may have along this career-finding journey. There are no long-winded lectures or complicated assessments here, just the bare essentials to help you get started.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunway University Press
• Release date: May 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9789675492907

Book preview

Introduction

Welcome to the proverbial rat race! Your first foray into the workforce is a significant milestone. For many, this is the threshold to cross into adulthood and cement your independence.

However, while the journey of your childhood may have ended, a new journey is beginning. Your career path plays a big part of how you live the rest of your life. You will have to start thinking about long-term life goals you may not have had to before, and you may have personal obligations and commitments to meet to achieve them.

This book will help guide you through the early stages of your career exploration and hopefully to kickstart it.

Part 1 is all about understanding yourself: helping you find out what motivates you, what interests you, and what values you have; the various strengths and weaknesses that you have; and your social network as well as how to leverage it. Knowing and understanding these core elements of yourself will help you recognise what kinds of career paths, roles, and employers might make you happy.

Part 2 explores the types of company cultures and values there are and the ways to identify them, as well as seeing how they align with your values. It introduces you to the concept of soft and hard skills, how you can determine the types of skills you have, and which you can use for your job applications. It will also guide you through the process of matching your skills with the kinds of jobs that you may be interested in, and ultimately help narrow down the types of companies and jobs that you apply for.

Part 3 walks you through the preparation of documents for the job application process, including the content and structure of your CV, how to write a cover letter, obtaining references, and the application submission.

Finally, Part 4 is all about the interview. You will be introduced to the steps that should be taken prior to the interview, including tips like developing an elevator pitch to quickly and succinctly deliver your key talking points alongside various other preparations to present yourself. You will also be walked through the actual interview itself and the things that you will have to do in it, before wrapping up with what comes after it, regardless of whether the interview is successful.

Finding the right career path is not easy. Do not be disheartened if you struggle to find your dream job, as it is a struggle that many others also go through! Each failure is a potential learning experience, and every interview is an opportunity to network.

Together with this book, you will be armed with the right questions to ask, the right mindset to take, and the confidence that you are headed in the right direction despite whatever ups and downs you may face.

PART 1

Knowing Yourself

Chapter 1: Your Motivations and Values

The first step to your career exploration is knowing yourself. Ultimately, all potential would-be employers are hiring you, so the best place to start should be with yourself: learning and understanding what makes you you. What drives you? What are your values? What characteristics do you have that make you stand out?

These are just a few of the many questions that you can ask to develop a better understanding of yourself, which will then make it easier for you to present your best self to potential employers.

As a fresh graduate, filling out a job application form may feel like a struggle. You may have your educational qualification, usually a bachelor’s degree, and perhaps some internship or part-time work experience. What else is there that differentiates you from everyone else with similar (or better) qualifications and experience?

If I were interviewing you, I will always ask you to tell me about yourself. It shows me how well you can present yourself, whether you can give more than just what is in your application. Pitch yourself, use story-telling elements to describe you as a person, your motivations, your habits, and your interests.

Anne, Recruiter and Organisational Consultant

To recruiters and employers, that difference is usually found in you, the person. Your personality, your values, your skills, and any other intangibles beyond qualifications and experience. Thus, it is important for you to know and understand these parts of yourself first.

The Pursuit of Happiness

It is a common truism among employers that happy and motivated employees are more productive employees, and studies regularly back this up. For example, a Forbes article in 2019 revealed that:

Highly engaged teams are 21% more profitable, with those that score in the top 20% showing a 41% reduction in absenteeism and 59% less employee turnover

Disengaged employees cost US companies up to 550 billion USD a year

On a more personal level, being happy at work is known to be beneficial for your physical and mental health. If you are happy at work, you are also less likely to want to leave, which means you avoid having to worry about your prospects, meeting financial obligations, and repeating the job-seeking process, among other potential causes for concern.

So how do you maximise the possibility that you will be a happy future employee? An easy starting point is to examine and identify your motivations and values, beginning with a few of the questions below that you can contemplate on your own and discuss with others:

What excites you?

What is important to you?

What gives you a sense of purpose?

What can you see yourself doing in the next one, five, ten, twenty years?

Do you have any goals that you wish to achieve in life?

Do you have any pressing financial obligations or other commitments that need to be met?

The first three questions are a guide to establishing what interests you may have, what you like, and to explore what drives you to potentially perform well at work.

The next two questions are about looking at the bigger picture and examining your intentions over a longer span of time, and whether your interests can be a sufficiently sustainable motivation for the near future.

Finally, you should also consider your real-life