It can be a paradox for any employer. How do you find someone with a breadth of experience and knowledge who is fresh and enthusiastic for the task? For many employers who opt to create graduate jobs, they are sacrificing the knowledge and experience for the fresh face and enthusiasm. There is however, a way of surprising them at interview with an elevated level of knowledge and experience.
It’s possible to swallow a lifetime of experience of successful people in a couple of days of good reading o f their autobiography. It’s not quite the same as experiencing things yourself, but if you analyse what ‘experience’ really is, reading can be an accelerated path to building it up both artificially and quickly.
Experience is quite simply a large basket of scenarios from which you have witnessed ‘cause and effect’ which when applied to future events, allows you to accurately predict outcomes of behaviours and events before they happen. The bigger your database of your experience, the more you have to draw upon to make accurate predictions and valuable decisions.
My suggestion is that you can artificial accelerate your knowledge and experience prior to interviews for graduate jobs through some selected reading, to artificially build up your own database of experiences.
The following are my top 3 most influential sources
Richard Branson - Loosing my Virginity. A great book looking at the ups and downs of Richard Branson’s career. For the first time it made me realise that highly successful people are successful not through lady luck, or extraordinary talent (although it helps) but through vision, shear hard work and above resilience to the inevitable failures on the way to success. There are lots of messages throughout this book with real life examples which back them up which I still draw upon today years later.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey. Probably the most influential book I have ever read for both business and life. It talks about the need to follow the seven habits to maintain a ‘balance’ in life. People often perceive highly effective people as workaholics with no work life balance. This book describes how success is not sustainable without balance.
Sunday Times and read the ‘How I made it’ section each week. This details a success story of some one who has ‘made it‘, usually from a standing start to a highly successful business. They are intrinsically interesting but I find that each article will leave you with at least one key learning point from their experience that you may not have picked up in life from your own experience.
A key question for any employer is ‘how much research has this candidate done’. Research for job interviews shows a conscientiousness which bodes well for a potential employee. If they have applied thought and effort to the interview process, they are likely to do the same to jobs tasks, and of course, the converse is true. So, if you are able to quote examples from numerous sources of reading throughout your interview, you will present as a professional and thorough candidate, increasing your chances of success.
In summary, once you have decided on the area in which you wish to find your career, find autobiographies of people who have been successful at it, get on the internet, buy Sunday newspapers and build on your own personal database of experience. Your potential employer will be both surprised and impressed at an ‘old head on young shoulders’.
Good luck.
This article is written by John Bult of
Graduate Jobs
