Why leadership prevails over your WAM

The moment you sit in your first graduation job interview, your potential employer isn’t looking at your WAM or your academic achievements. They’re looking for an entrepreneurial character to help grow their business. That’s why when you see them clicking their pens or not writing anything down, it’s a cue to move on. Tell them explicitly what makes you different.

How?

Leadership. It is the most employable skill, as leadership experiences can’t be solely studied.

So what exactly is WAM?

WAM:
Weighted Average Mark; a non-experience based numerical assessment of work ethic assigned to all enrolled students.

To an employer, it can tell them how much of a high-achiever you may be. They wouldn’t know if you’ve crammed content the night before. Or how many all nighters you’ve pulled thus far. Let’s be frank: it’s just a number. Like ATAR. It does not encompass you as a character.

So why leadership?

Communication
First impressions count. It gets your foot in the door.  How one presents themself as self-aware through communication differentiates them from the rest of the graduate employment market. They’re looking for people who will make the best fit for their workplace. Someone who can communicate their ideas clearly and confidently.

Initiative
Unless you’re superhuman, you’re probably not going to start off your first graduate job as the perfect worker. Your employer knows that. That’s why initiative is desirable. They will be asking themselves, “Is this candidate willing to challenge themself and learn new things?” When people see you with initiative, they see you as someone who can take charge and be dependable. Only through a self-development mindset can you experience true professional growth. After all, experience cannot be studied.

Teamwork
Regardless of the field, teamwork is the definitive quality of a desirable employee. It doesn’t matter how good you are on paper. Selflessness is good teamwork. A realisation of collective aspirations beyond one’s self and working to common ends is what employers can’t do without. Think of it as nailing the theoretical components. Only achieving on a theoretical level is not as pleasing as an individual with practical experience.

Networking
Harnessing opportunities to ascertain your future pathway remains in and out of the connections you foster and maintain. Building bridges with not only professionals, but also students from diverse backgrounds and experiences canvasses a network for future collaboration and impact. Glue yourself to a suite of possibilities with extensive networks. It’ll land you jobs deemed to be out of reach.

AIESEC: Your Gateway to Leadership
AIESEC is the largest student run organisation in the world, facilitating students with volunteering and internship exchanges in over 125 partnered countries since 1948.

From Kofi Annan (Former Secretary General of the UN) to Neil Janin (Global Director, McKinsey and Co.), participants of the Global Leader program have paved new pathways for communities, businesses and lives around the world.

AIESEC spearheads its members into an immersive environment with developmental space to enhance practical skills in areas such as business development, marketing, finance and human resources. 

So why leadership over WAM?
Employers don’t reduce the company's future to a number. They will find value in your capacity to impact as an innovative leader.

Be prepared the next time you head in for an interview. Loosen your grip on the inky CV. An interviewer seeks experience prepared by the opportunities you seize here and now. All the doors close itself eventually. Initiate the start to your future, work with potentially prominent figures of the world and expand your network.

Good luck.

Solenna Fu
Current student at the University of Sydney and Public Relations Officer, AIESEC Sydney

The Top Five Benefits of International Internships

Choosing to intern globally is a big decision to make. It’s not only a choice to commit yourself to a new professional atmosphere, but to change entirely your daily habits of food, culture and social life for a time.  It’s like going hiking in high altitudes – your body needs time to acclimatize and it may be difficult initially, but you are no doubt going to emerge a better hiker when you’re finished.

The rewards of training in new environments are plentiful, but what are the top five rewards of global internships?

It grows the initiative muscle
Initiative is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger and more efficient it becomes. It’s a big step to jump on a plane and voluntarily shift your time zone, let alone commit to an internship in a new and exotic land. When interning overseas, you no longer have your deeply knit friends or family watching over your shoulder. You are in charge of yourself and all things get done only if you proactively choose to do them.

Living in a new culture
The great thing about travelling overseas is how much it allows us to learn about the world beyond the society we happened to be born into. In an even more profound way, international work experience is a chance to not only learn about a foreign culture, but to live in the heart of it. Have you ever thought about who you would be if the dice roll of nature had been different? What if you were born into an entirely different culture? This question can’t actually be answered, but global internships provide a nice experimental gaze into other cultural realities.

A CV more interesting than your average bear
Take two candidates for a graduate engineering position, Bob and Bill. They have roughly similar grades and extra-curriculars. The only difference is that Bob interned in Australia whilst Bill worked for a company in Vietnam. Before the filtering process of an interview, Bill is a little more intriguing – he stands out. He signals a more interesting candidate, one who takes initiative and is curious about self-development.

New friends, new ideas
Making friends overseas is fun because every conversation is potentially a challenge to your entire way of viewing the world. New jokes, food and dance are all great benefits – but even more profound is the exciting novelty of a new climate of friendship.

Coming back a superhero
Returning from their internships, participants often say that they feel like new people – like their dreams and visions for the world are somehow so much closer than they’ve ever been. This sense of agency and courage is nothing short of super hero status – you feel like a new person because you are a new person.

 

AIESEC’s Global Talent

AIESEC is a student run institution that organizes international internships and volunteering opportunities. Operating in over 125 different countries, Global Talent offers internships in young and gunning startups, all the way to big game multinationals. Internships can range from six weeks to two years, depending on what a candidate is looking for in their placement. AIESEC Sydney operates from campus and exists to facilitate the wonderful experience of global internships for University of Sydney students.

We live in the best time to be alive. The world has always been large and endless, and yet today it is firmly in the palm of our hands, if that’s how we want it to be. In the old days, if you were born a cultured German, you remained a cultured German – and might not have even acknowledged that something outside of your part of Germany existed. Today, not only can we skype anyone from anywhere – we can travel abroad to live, work, eat and laugh amongst them.

Ninos Mansor
Current student at the University of Sydney and PR Manager, AIESEC Sydney