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

Just need to take the first step

Nine months ago, I stepped off the plane in Sydney after many hours in flight. It was an early chilly morning. Looking at the newly risen sun, I took a deep breath of the cold air, full of unfamiliar smells, telling myself that I could fulfil my goals.

However, to achieve these goals was anything but easy. I thought I had learned English well enough, but then I found myself barely understanding the conversations around me. I thought I was good at studying, but then I found myself having difficulties applying my knowledge to real cases. I thought I could find an internship at a local firm in the same way I did in China, but then I found myself limited in many aspects as an international student. There were so many challenges and much competition. I was scared. I began to lose confidence.

It was at this point that I decided to go for a consultation at the Business School career kiosk. Through the consultation, I realised that since the possibility for an international student to enter a local firm would be relatively slim unless haivng a high English level and necessary working skills that could match native students, what I needed to do was take a step forward, leaving my comfort zone to enhance my capabilities.

The first step I took was taking part in Neuroblastoma Australia – a charity activity – as a volunteer. At the beginning, I was too shy to speak and was afraid of doing things wrong. But as soon as I finally took the first step to start chatting with Shirley, a friendly girl who was working next to me, I immediately knew that I had worried too much. Actually, we had many things in common, and we might have kept talking forever if time permitted.

Later she introduced me to her friends who were also working there as volunteers. Gradually, the barrier in my heart disappeared. At the end of that day, not only did I finish my job well, but I also got to meet many new friends and had fulfilling conversations.

Encouraged by this volunteer experience, I joined many other activities. At the same time, I kept gaining employment skills from the Business School's Careers and Employability Office (CEO) career workshops, where I learned how to modify my resume, enabling me to stand out in an Australian employment environment. I also embraced opportunities to network with employers and recruiters, and so on. Several months later, in the summer holiday, I was offered an internship position from a Sydney company, which although small, provided me with a great opportunity to apply what I’ve learned in a real-world setting.

A week ago, I walked into the career kiosk consultation office again. This time, I had a professional resume with two pages full of my extra-curricular activity and internship experiences in hand, and talked in much more fluent English with a confident tone. I was going there for Industry Placement Program (IPP) application advice.

Another winter is coming now. Looking at the newly risen sun, I take a deep breath of the cold air, and smile. It is never easy to go uphill, but it may not be as hard as we think as well. All we need to do is take the first step, and have the initiative to be fully prepared for future opportunities, so that when we look back, we will be proud of how far we have walked.

Brenda Zeng
Brenda is an international student and current student at the University of Sydney Business School.

Beyond boundaries, beyond my comfort zone: explore AIESEC, explore yourself

Taking on challenges is a fact of life. There are some challenges, though, that take you beyond your ordinary sense of feeling comfortable in your own bubble of family, friends and culture. By being pushed outside this ‘comfort zone’, one can observe a true test of character and adaptation taking place. For me, I hadn’t thought such an experience was possible while I was still at university. Enter AIESEC.

In brief, AIESEC is the world’s largest youth-run organisation that develops leadership through exchange. To think of how this works, imagine working with a different culture for 6 amazing weeks and getting the chance to really impact their local community. For me, a true leader is the person who makes the effort to ensure that each action they take is positively contributing to someone else in some way. And this is what my exchange was all about. 

Grabbing this ‘big opportunity’ to do something life-changing, I embarked on a 6-week AIESEC exchange to Hungary over the recent summer break. With my passion in teaching, my program was to teach a range of subjects including English, Mathematics and Economics to high-school students at a  Hungarian high school in a lovely city called Kecskemet.

Fun times with awesome classes like these: 9D Group 1

A typical day would involve getting up early, around 5-6am to arrive at the school by 7:45am. As the students enter the room, I would greet them in Hungarian and tell them we were going to have a fantastic English lesson. To make my classes really engaging and fun, I always made sure to get everyone to participate at least once as well as ask the students questions on different topics such as health, food and even transport to stimulate their interest in English.

My fellow teachers at Kada Elek School of Economics

Aside from teaching, it was great to have the support of other AIESEC interns who were going through the same experience. The international connections I made with people from countries like Brazil, Korea and Egypt will always remain and have given me an enriched global awareness of the power of youth.

Upon reflection, the thing that stands out to me most is how fortunate I was to have built such great relationships with the Hungarian people. Linking this with my vision of being an inspiring leader for the students, the small actions were highly valuable. I will never forget the experience of trying to learn Hungarian every night from Google Translate, or from students, teachers as well as random people from the street. I will never forget the movie days I organised and the chats I had to get to know each and every student. While the language barrier was extremely tough, real persistence like this is the best form of living and breathing another culture.

One of the most amazing host families I stayed with, true blessing

While teaching in a professional environment taught me how to present and teach English effectively, this exchange meant more to me in terms of redefining my understanding of cultural diversity. It showed me how important good education is to realising one’s potential and that challenging yourself greatly improves trust of your own capabilities.

In a nutshell, I have developed a thicker skin and am now better equipped to deal with uncertainty. When I said it was ‘life-changing’, I definitely meant this. There is no better time than now to invest yourself into a project, which you’re passionate about whether it’s teaching, conservation or any other cause. The professional development to be gained speaks for itself too. The bonus of attaining key employability skills such as a adaptability to change will differentiate you by miles.

Special thanks must go out to the Business School for providing  me with a scholarship that has helped me realise my personal goal of  improving the educational outcomes of less privileged high school children. I am now more committed than ever to continue volunteering in meaningful ways. For example, participating in the Business School Peer Mentoring Program and helping the community in whatever way I can.

Steven Chan

Current student at The University of Sydney Business School

AIESEC Go Volunteer exchange: A life changing experience

It’s eye-opening what travelling over the summer break can do for a uni student, especially if the purpose of travel is volunteer and social work. That’s what I found during my trip to Europe at the beginning of 2014, as part of AIESEC’s Go Volunteer exchange. AIESEC is a global youth network that develops leaders through international exchange. With the aid of a Business School scholarship, I was able to undertake my AIESEC exchange in Hungary over a period of six weeks. My ultimate aim was to develop cultural awareness and understanding in my work in two very distinct institutions.

My fellow volunteers, who were all from Brazil, whom I lived and worked with at the refugee camp.

The first was a refugee camp, whereby many of the refugees came from countries such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Iran, Cameroon, Syria and Algeria. Together with my fellow volunteers who were all from Brazil and Mexico, I taught English basics such as ‘My name is….’ and ‘it is nice to meet you’ to the adult refugees. As many of them had experienced various degrees of emotional, social and physical struggles in their own war-torn countries, their aspiration to learn English was one of their goals in their pursuit of reaching safe and democratic countries such as Australia or America. For some of them, their brave stories of enduring months of travel by foot or with strangers made me cherish how fortunate I am to live in Australia. And although my father was once also a refugee, this experience of living and working in a refugee camp propelled many questions in my mind about how Australia was dealing with its humanitarian issues.

Myself and a volunteer playing soccer with the kids at the refugee camp.

After two weeks of teaching and getting to know the families at the refugee camp, I was offered the opportunity to work in a school for blind and mentally disabled children. Having never had any experience of working with the blind, I was anxious about how I would cope and manage my interactions. However, my anxiety was unwarranted. Whether it be saying hello to me and attempting to hold up a conversation in English (very few Hungarians can speak English) or bringing fruit and other snacks to my dorm room so that I wouldn’t get lonely living by myself, the staff and students all made me feel so welcome and safe. The warmth shown to me by everyone in the school really motivated me to do as much as I could to contribute to their learning and teaching environment.

My grade 3 kids at the Blind School.

So what did my typical day look like? I would wake up at 6.45am, have breakfast in the school dining hall, and start my first class at 7.15am. I would usually go to five classes throughout the day, teaching children who ranged from 7-17 years old, all of whom had very unique personalities and levels of English proficiency. Usually, I was accompanied by the classroom teacher, who could translate for me. What was really inspiring was that the teachers at the school were also blind and aside from their teaching jobs, they each had unique interests and talents which they pursued. For instance, one of the English teachers that I worked with was an opera singer who was concurrently working on her PhD, and is involved in numerous charitable and social initiatives to raise awareness about programs and opportunities available to blind people. She is such a great mentor, colleague and friend to me, as are many of the other staff members and students that I met.

Making ANZAC biscuits at the Blind School.

All in all, working in the refugee camp and the blind school gave me so much motivation to explore ways in which I could better serve my community back here in Australia. Hence, although I am devoted to finishing my Bachelor of Commerce degree and am involved in a number of student start-ups and societies, I am committed to making a concerted effort to contribute to my community by volunteering for humanitarian and youth development causes, as well as attending festivities that celebrate cultural diversity. Looking back, I can honestly say that my 2013/2014 summer break was undoubtedly the best summer break I’ve ever had.

Christine Ma
Current student at The University of Sydney Business School.