Today I had the opportunity to sit in on a lecture presented by Ellie Doyle, a founder of TalentHub, a local recruitment agency. She was able to talk to us about the importance of finding a job that suits you best as well as building your own personal brand and identity. Happiness, enjoyment, and work-life balance are all important factors when searching for a job that best fits your abilities and skills. One of the main takeaways I took from her presentation was the importance of essential skills to be demonstrated during an interview or your resume. According the competency model that was presented, essential skills are harder to develop then technical/hard skills. Knowledge and technical skills can be taught pretty easily but developing soft skills such as leadership, communication, and self-awareness are not easy to come by, but generally are developed over time. When referring to these topics, I was really interested when she mentioned “What does someone say about you when you aren’t in the room?” This question was not an easy question to answer and I certainly had to think about it for a while.
To refer to competencies, I believe that my greatest competencies are adaptability and teamwork. I chose adaptability because I love to embrace in new work environments and cultures. It brings out a different side of me and the ability to adapt is also an opportunity to learn and develop traits and skills you did not have before. For example, for my internship this previous school year within the venture capital industry, I came into it some prior knowledge but definitely not enough to be successful as a analyst. I came into the internship with an open-mind and a willingness to learn each and every week and at the end of the internship program I was acknowledged as one of the top students. I was able to adapt to a corporate work environment even though it was all remote and embrace everything that was thrown at me every week. On the other hand, teamwork is another strong suit of mind as I have grown up playing sports my entire life and it has taught me to trust, support, and rely on others. Working as a group or as a team always is more productive and usually brings out the best in me and my best work.
My personal brand is that I am a driven and supportive person who always wants to learn and build upon things from the past and is always helpful towards my family and friends. I am passionate about everything that I do and always tend to put in my best effort to anything that I love doing. I always look to build upon and improve on previous mistakes so that I can be an overall more well-rounded and versatile person in and out the classroom.
After the lecture, I was able to go on a tour of Croke Park which is the home stadium of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). It was very interesting to learn about the history of Gaelic football and hurling and how these athletics are not professionals and do not get paid. The stadium was very nice and I liked how we got to see every aspect of it.
