Career Track Easter Session – 04/04/17
Today I attended a highly engaging and beneficial careers session with Herminie Berry; an experienced careers and recruitment professional. The session focused on building confidence, ability to articulate my practice and key skills, recognising my creative and non-creative concerns/interests and most importantly cultivating an awareness of the current creative job market both locally, nationally and internationally.
We conducted a number of really useful activities in the session including the JLA skill card exercise, filling out a career management action plan, brainstorming distractions and barriers to success, writing down lists of aspirations and goals and realistic approaches for achieving them and a two-minute ‘elevator pitch’ presentation to the rest of the group.
What will it take to achieve your goals? This I found particularly useful, as I do sometimes find myself blocked by my own internal anxieties and self-doubt. Recognising them and writing them down definitely puts them into perspective and actually makes them seem pretty insignificant. This was a massive confidence booster for me.
What will it take to achieve your goals? This I found particularly useful, as I do sometimes find myself blocked by my own internal anxieties and self-doubt. Recognising them and writing them down definitely puts them into perspective and actually makes them seem pretty insignificant. This was a massive confidence booster for me.
Out of everything we did, I definitely found the JLA exercise and elevator pitch the most beneficial to my development, as they were quick paced and highly focused to the position I will soon be in.
The JLA exercise allowed me to realise the existing skills I do have which I can build upon and rely on in interview/networking settings. It also opened my eyes to the areas which need improving and will only make me more employable. Discussing these skills out load was reassuring and positive for my self confidence. It was also really helpful to hear what other people think of themselves, I found this encouraging and relatable.
The elevator pitch was probably the most useful. We were asked to articulate our USP's and sum ourselves up in a two-minute pitch. We were allocated 20 minutes to write down our thoughts and the present them back to a group of six other peers. At the end of the pitch, we received feedback in the form of stickie notes which was fun and less intimidating. The general feedback was really positive, people said that I was very confident and projected my voice well. They also commented on how well I communicated my interests and wider concerns aside from my graphic design practice.
At the end of the session, we spent around half an hour filling out the career action plan. I found this incredibly beneficial, as at the moment I completely unsure of what I will be doing upon graduation. Using this table, I was able to identify a number of goals and ambitions that I have for the immediate future as opposed to a 5 - 10 year plan. I have already been contemplating a summer placement/internship/summer design school, however, this exercise allowed me to realise a number of other things that I should probably undertake once I leave college. I definitely plan on starting a research blog when I leave to document and articulate all my ideas and concepts. I also plan on regularly entering competitions and writing loads of briefs to keep my creative mind active once I leave the safety net which is LCA.
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