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What impact has Career Services had in your life?
Career Services played a vital role in changing the trajectory of my life through its mock interview service. It helped me to secure a job that formalised years of work experience in student positions. The mock interview questions and top tips gave me the confidence to walk into my first professional interview with a clear mindset and understanding of how I should approach an interview: it is not just a regurgitation of your CV, it is you selling yourself using your experience as the motivation for why you should be employed.
As an introvert, I am not used to talking about myself and the work I have done. Jessica Oosthuizen guided me on how to properly advocate for myself during the interview so that my years of hard work would be properly articulated to the panel. To me personally, this made a world of difference in calming my nerves and anxiety, because I had never had a panel interview before! At the end of the day, Career Services impacted my life by giving me the necessary tools to honour my years of hard work in a way that allowed me to walk into the interview relatively calm and grounded. The biggest value to me was knowing that I had done my part, I had prepared as best I could, I went for the mock interview, and the rest was up to the panel.
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Would you recommend Career Services to other students? Why or why not?
I would highly recommend booking a CV writing or mock interview session with Career Services. In my case, working through the possible interview questions showed me how I should approach the questions by always circling back to my CV and using each interview question as an opportunity to advocate for myself. The mock interview gave me the confidence I needed to stay clear-headed during my panel interview. This is because some of the questions that Jessica and I went through came up during my interview and I knew how to answer them even if the context was different. It is this sense of familiarity that made using Career Services invaluable to me. I would highly recommend it to all students.
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What is your current occupation or job?
I am an officer in the Directorate for Institutional Research and Academic Planning (DIRAP) at the University of the Free State. In this role, I am responsible for institutional planning by co-developing the Strategy and Annual Performance Plan of the university. This includes facilitating the development of faculty and support department annual performance plans. All of this supports the Executive Management to make evidence-based decisions through Cascade, the university’s progress reporting platform.
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What do you wish you had done at university that would have better prepared you for your current role?
We all have our own paths; however, when I reflect on my journey at the UFS over the past six years, I am thankful that I jumped at every opportunity I was presented with.
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What top three tips do you have for students and graduates entering job hunting season now?
Top three tips I can give to students and graduates:
- First, I would say, start working as early as you can. Work as a tutor from your second year and build your professional CV from there. This economy is tough; you have to maximise your credentials before graduation to give yourself the best possible chance of finding employment.
- Second, go to Career Services to polish your CV. It’s a free service and the pay-off for a correctly formatted CV is worth it.
- Third, take the small jobs, and take the odd jobs that no one else wants to do. They will build your CV, confidence, and problem-solving abilities in meaningful ways. Unless you are doing a professional degree, your career path will not be linear. So, get good at a lot of things by being adaptable.
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