How to enter the corporate world

In the current competitive world, you can’t wait until you are out of uni or school to think about the labour market. The reality is you need to get in there before you consider applying for your first corporate job (I’m not even calling the 9h to 17h because I don’t think that even exists anymore).

Be ready to think outside the box and rethink how you see yourself and any role you might apply to.

Just having an education isn’t enough, not even if it’s the cream of the cream, the top of the top.

Enter the world of skills. Whereas most generations still perceive a role mostly as a title and experience that comes with it, think of it as the unique skillset you will be building up and that makes you, well you!

If you don’t have any corporate experience yet, how can you grow yourself? Think about any part time or summer jobs you could do. Embrace your inner barista or run the finances for your local football club.

Do you have any hobbie you could monetize? Then go for it.

By the time it comes to send your first cv you need to be able to tell the story of who you are and what you can offer. Think about all of the skillsets you can aquire and will make the difference in an infinite list of cvs.

Focus on the soft skills and adaptability. The skills needed today won’t be the skills needed tomorrow. AI could replace a lot of the known jobs today. The ability to reinvent yourself will bring you the competitive edge that could save your butt tomorrow.

Let’s break this down with some examples

Any public facing role – And I’ll continue using the example of the local barista

You will be learning customer service. Your are dealing with people and having to prioritize work & dealing with pressure: do you clean those dirty tables or do you deal with all the orders right now. Don’t underestimate the bliding need for a coffee on a Monday morning. You need to get as many coffees out as possible. For this to happen, you will have looked into the end to end process of making your favourite brew from order until it’s ready. What can you prepare in advance to ensure the flow goes as smooth as possible and with the less steps needed. This would be process optimization. Handling all the many requests: (1 flat white, 2 sugars, oat milk, followed by a cortado no sugar to a capuccino with steaming hot milk and a customer that is afraid to miss the train while keeping a smile on your face, is dealing with pressure and acing it.

These are skills you will need anywhere you go.

Organizing a local event

This could well be, organizing a celebration for your local club, getting the community together. You will be dealing with many suppliers, negotiating prices (most likely you will be cost sensitive), and ensuring all the different components of the event come together on the day of the event. Drinks are served, people attending are happy, you rented the place, positioned all the bins in place so rubbish collection end of the event is as smooth as it can be.

Running the finances for your local club

You can even do this in a basic spreedsheet, by keeping note of all money coming in and coming out. You will need to be organized and ensuring every cash flow is kept on record so you think ahead of what the club might need – more sponsors? more events so you get further revenue coming in?

Creating a website or a small plugin

Are you good with programing? You can create apps, plugins and websites for other people and already monetize your work. When it comes to sending cvs later you will be able to showcase your portfolio.

These are just a few examples, I’m sure you already have other skills you don’t even realize you can have. Don’t worry about not having done something in a specific role. You will be holding a skillset that is unique to you and could add value on any given role.

Which skills will be key? Well, this is my own view:

• Emotional inteligence – In a world where everything can be replaced, automatized emotional inteligence will continue to be one of the most important skills you can have. If you are able to maintain a cold head and think though any given problem without letting your monkey mind run wild and loose the plot, you will be a step further than most. This is not something – unfortunately – that schools even will teach out and most of the parents won’t be focusing on this either. They both focus on what they can measure, and that will be school grades. Emotional inteligence takes time and patience. It’s keeping those foundational rocks that will eventually become part of who you are. You also need to be aware of the emotions others around you are holding and how certain words could trigger a chain reaction to those around you. (You can read more about it here). It’s one of the core leadership skills for a reason and I would say one which most “leaders” lack.
• Organization – You would be amazed to know how so many people completely lack basic organizational skills. Be it in terms of organizing your own agenda, your shopping list, your life, your calendar, whatever it might be. If you are unable to keep a clear track of what you need to do and where to find what you might need for a given task, you will lose valuable time finding it later. Your mind needs to know where to go instantely for any topic. If you find you are lacking, invest time to get there. Be it organizing your own 1 per 1 lego pieces by colours – so you can find the colour you need when you need it – to keep a diary of the things you are doing and where you are spending your time. Organization has never been at the highest as in recent years. You will be surprised how even home organization is such a thing now with the rise of Marie Kondo.
• Empathy – I wrote about it so many times, so I will keep it short. Those who lack empathy and are unable to read other’s emotions won’t go far. Empathy and emotional inteligence go hand in hand and are really powerful tools. If you want to read what I wrote before check here.
• Ability to learn & focus – This might seem obvious, but you need to have the foundational skills on how to learn anything. Most of us have the attention span of a fish and can’t focus on more than a few seconds on any given task without being distracted (yeah blame it on tik tok). If you are able to focus on your mind on something new and allocate time to keep on getting better and better means you will be able to learn anything. And you really need the ability to repivot and learn anything as new skills will keep on coming all the time. If you want to continue to be relevant, you can’t just rely on the fact you might be really good and some given skills. I do recommend a digital detox once in a while and you will find that you have tons more time than you thought you had to allocate to learning something new. Whatever rocks your boat. The what is even less relevant than the how or the why.

So no matter your age and where you are with life, just focus on the skills of tomorrow and bagging as many relevant one as you can.

When it’s time to make a change

Inspired by the change of seasons, was thinking about when it’s time to move on. Most people just think that moving on means that what we had before was bad, like a failed relationship and time to move on, a tiny house? time to move on. But does it really have to be just about leaving bad things behind? Well, not always.

Thinking of my own career, I have been quite lucky over the years that I never left because I was in a bad place or a in a bad team, but mostly because another opportunity popped up. This is certainly true for the biggest changes I had:

• Was contacted by a London company when I was still in my home country and the first question that popped in my mind was: well, why not? So I’ve packed my bags and just moved. Was it easy? No way! Not to mention it was quite expensive to move. All the savings I had accummulated up until that moment were simply gone with paying hotel rooms, deposit for the house, flights and other moving expenses. Also my other half moved with me without having a job. It was really hard but honestely the best decision I ever did.
• Then I moved because a friend sent my cv as he was hoping I would be flying less, working from London more and working less hours. I did stop flying indeed but not really the travel. I will confess I did regret this move quite a lot. I really liked where I was but looking back I knew I was in a breaking point. It was a matter of time, I had to change.
• The last time I moved, and it’s almost been 4 years now, was because on my first day back from my maternity leave I did a coffee stop to chat with my to be new boss. This was the moment I’ve said goodbye to consultancy firms and went to industry instead.

So indeed for me there was always a pattern which was always about opportunities popping up and me saying yes. This is a very priviledged position to be in, I have to recognize that. However it got me thinking a lot about the topic.

What is the point you start to feel comfortable in your seat? I mean we all like to be cozy and know the people you work with, it brings a sense of belonging and stability but sometimes from a career perspective it means you are no longer doing new stuff which is key to your own development.

Maybe worth saying I’m writing this with the view of personal development and not necessarily thinking about the career growth. Following from the previous post, this is a different angle of exploring Ikigai, Where else could you be thinking about using your skills to bring you a new angle into your work life (and maybe even personal) and where you could also bring a fresh mind to a different team?

Recently in a coffee chat, one of our senior leaders said that she was trying to speak with different people (at her peer level) working in completely different teams to have a better view of what else is done within the organization and for herself to have a better view of what she could be doing and what else she could learn. And I thought, this is actually a really good idea!

I do remember when I was still graduating from uni and I had no idea what I wanted to do. My first internship was at the HR department but because I was good with technology I’ve ended up helping to implement the internal sharepoint. At the time I really wanted to explore marketing and I applied for a few positions, but where I’ve landed was in customer relationship development in a huge technology firm. My boss back then told me I would be a great fit for consultancy, so that’s what I did. I’ve sent my cv to one of the big 4 to see where it would take me. Given my past background in technology I ended up in the technology arm of the firm. Even there, on my first year I was helping the team to produce user guides for all the different areas, as part of that I’ve ended up doing testing and ultimately it gave me a good view within that area of what I could be doing. I think I was the only one of my peer group who ended up having a choice of what I wanted to do next! After that I’ve managed to never do the same thing twice and I guess that’s why I never really abandoned consultancy because each project is different.

But now I’m missing back the days where I could just experiment completely different things to have a better sense of what I wanted to do. I’ll be totally honest, I still don’t know! Yes that’s right, because I know there are so many things I haven’t yet tried I don’t know what else is out there I can try and maybe end up liking.

So really the question you should be asking yourself, maybe for a smaller step, is what are other teams doing in your company? Is there anything you could try? Could even be as simple as speaking with your line manager and find a few hours to help a completely different team so you can grow a particular skillset. I keep on telling my own team, if there’s anything you want to try just let me know and we’ll work together to ensure you get a few hours so you can do it. I don’t think they take me seriously though. But if you don’t try how do you know? I just seriously can’t understand people that stay 20 years or more doing exactly the same day after day. Yes, it’s comfortable I know, so is my sofa and I don’t spend 24h there.

Just because the office is the office, it doesn’t mean you can’t make it fun for you, and surely learning something new and prooving you can do it is a good healthy challenge. If it goes wrong you can always go back to what you were doing before.