Networking with the Women’s IBM Network Group Atlantic Chapter

November 19, 2013 Andrea McKay 1 Comment

The Women’s IBM Network Group (WING) – Atlantic Chapter hosted a networking event on Thursday, November, 7th in support of the professional development of women in the fields of business and technology. The event, which also featured a panel discussion, was held at the IBM Services Centre in Bedford. This post was contributed to MCS by Nikita Dias, a CRMBA student interested in strategic planning and information technology. Nikita attended the event and shares her thoughts on the experience.

Attending the WING Atlantic Chapter networking event was a great experience and an opportunity to make new connections. It gave me a better sense of how women today can strike the perfect work/life balance and be successful in their career paths.

The speakers on the panel, Christine Alford, General Manager, IBM North America Services Centres and Ulrike Bahr- Gedalia, President and CEO, Digital Nova Scotia, had some incredible insights to share on topics such as diversity and work/life balance.

WING event panelists, Ulrike Bahr-Gedalia and Christine Alford

These are some of the points that made a lasting impression on me:

CAREER ADVICE:

In a global and data-driven marketplace, finding the best fit requires a true hunt for the right opportunity so be sure to go into it with an open mind and the right attitude.
Figure out your strengths, find good mentors and understand what “fit” means to you.
Take the closest opportunity available to move to the next step. It is not always possible to plan your future but always set your next goal – plan for a time horizon that is visible to you and earn the right to perform well.

CHALLENGES: The challenges faced by the speakers provided great insight for our professional lives.

Be truthful and be willing to accept challenges at all times
Deal with challenges with a positive energy and be sensitive to two factors – time and the relationships you have with your colleagues.
Communication helps one sail through challenges. Communicate openly with your colleagues at all times

WORK/LIFE BALANCE: Being women and holding such high positions can make it difficult to strike the work/life balance at times.

You need to love what you do and have a healthy balance.
Think of your role as a mother, wife, and daughter and consider everything to be a part of your career.
Never work at a job to be gender dominant.

PERSONAL BRAND: a personal brand is essential for any individual in the professional world.

You can define how people perceive you.
Deliver results, be relaxed in the face of any crisis, and bring a positive energy into the room.
Mentor others and remember that it is never too late to learn. Being a mentor can help you learn from the experiences of your mentees.

LAST BIT OF ADVICE:

Learn golf and practice it a lot. Most clients love to have a meeting on a golf course!
Be vocal about what you want and make visible what you have accomplished.
Be patient, and make time to listen to people.
Live in the moment and understand your priorities.
In today’s data-driven world, university students should possess a blend of technical and business knowledge.
Students also need to bring communications and networking skills to the table.

After the panel discussion, the session wrapped up with a lively discussion about the benefits of networking events such as these. Two of the many benefits identified were:

Meeting new people – make a point to connect with at least five new people
Understanding the culture of the company you want to work with

Louise Plourde, Business Transformation & IT Executive, CIO Office, IBM Canada, was at my table and also had some great pointers to share. Later, individuals from among the 60+ attendees shared their views on the panel’s discussion topics. We also got to tour the IBM office which believes in that “Innovation lives at 50 Innovation Drive, Bedford”.

Overall the event was a great opportunity to make new connections and gain professional development in the IT industry. I enjoyed my experience at the Women’s IBM Network Group and would encourage students to leverage networking sessions like these to learn from the personal experiences of leading business professionals!

Student Spotlight: Patricia Halim

September 26, 2012 cr549421

Patricia Halim is a 4^th year Bachelor of Commerce student majoring in Marketing. Being a motivated student, Patricia attended several of the Career Success Workshops in order to further her knowledge of the job market and develop her skills for future career development.

“These workshops are a great opportunity to learn how to differentiate yourself from your peers and stand out in the eyes of the employers. Whether you are a first year student or in your final year, you are guaranteed to walk away from this workshop feeling more confident about yourself and your job search strategy. These workshops were undoubtedly beneficial and I recommend everyone to take part and take advantage of the opportunity.”

Register for Tap The Talent

August 15, 2012 Amy McLellan

On Monday, September 24, 2012, Management Career Services (MCS) welcomes Canada’s top employers to participate in our interactive recruiting event, Tap The Talent. Employers will join us on campus specifically to assess and recruit Dalhousie’s graduating marketing students. This is your opportunity to showcase your skills and experience, make industry connections and potentially land a full-time job!

Your Participation:

Participating students will be showcased as Dalhousie’s top marketing talent available for hire in May, 2013. Students will have their profiles and resumes packaged in an booklet and sent to a number of recruiters in the marketing industry. At the Tap The Talent event, participating students will have the opportunity to make a first impression by networking during a lunch reception and by delivering an ‘elevator pitch’ to employers joining us on campus. Students will be selected for interviews according to their profile, resume and/or personal impression.

Unsure who you want to work for? Employers joining us on campus will also be delivering their own ‘evelavtor pitch’ to you; describing their company and the benefits of working for them.

Job opportunities are not advertised through the Tap The Talent event, however, employers will often extend an opportunity to students they’ve identifyed and wish to hire. For a list of employers participating in Tap The Talent, contact Jonathan.Perry@dal.ca

Who Can Participate?

If you are graduating in May, 2013 from the Commerce, Management or CRMBA program and are looking for full-time career opportunities in the marketing industry, we encourage you to register.

How to Register?

In order to participate in Tap The Talent, students must submit the following information to mcscoop1@dal.ca by Thursday, August, 23, 2012. Registration forms are also available online.

Your name, program, year of study and your Banner Number.
Arrange for payment of the deposit by credit card or cash (See details below).
Submit your resume and profile in Word format. Please use the subject line: ‘Tap The Talent Documents’.

Event Deposit

The Tap The Talent event is free of charge, unless you fail to show up. MCS requires all student participants to provide a $100 deposit to confirm your participation. All deposists will be returned to participating students concluding the Tap The Talent event. Because a number of employer parnters are coming on campus specifically to meet you, the deposit will ensure student indeed attend and participate. A $100 deposit is payable by credit card or cash. Please phone 902-494-1515 or visit MCS, (Rowe, 2100) to arrange your payment.

Contact

For further information, contact Jonathan Perry at jonathan.perry@dal.ca or call MCS at 902-494-1515.

Workshops In The Eyes Of Our Students (Part 2)

May 8, 2012 Amy McLellan

Management Career Services (MCS) conducts an interview with 3rd year Management (and international) student, Hongwei Xie who chats about her experience participating in the MCS Career Success Workshop Series.

How did you learn about the MCS workshop series?
As an international student, I was unsure how to pursue a career in Canada. The advertisements for the MCS Career Success Workshops promised information and advice on how to find a job, how to get connected with professionals, and how to prepare for an interview…. all skills I personally needed to learn and develop.

What inspired you to attend an MCS workshop?
I admit that I was doubtful in the beginning. I thought the workshops would only be useful for local Canadian students. My doubts disappeared after I attended the first one. Not only did I gain career-related insight, but I also gained confidence and motivation.

Which workshops did you attend?

Informational Interviews
Interviewing Tips
Resumes
Cover letters
Networking
One-day Job Search

What was the most effective/ informative take-away you learned from the MCS workshop?
I found the Informational Interview workshop and the Interviewing workshop particularly helpful. The Informational Interview workshop taught me how to be proactive when connecting with professionals in Canadian organizations. The Interviewing workshop provided a new perspective towards the interview process. I learned of interviewing that I had never thought about before.

Did you apply any of the tips/ tricks learned throughout your job search and/or on the job?
Yes, there are many things that I’ve started to do differently:

I dress and present myself professionally.
I now research and prepare good questions to ask before the interview.
When answering an interview question, I am sure to reference examples and positive results from previous experiences.

What would you tell your fellow students about MCS workshops?
Like me, you may think the workshops will take too much time. But once you attend one, you will discover that there is a lot of insight, advice and skills can be learned. Even if you believe you are a strong contender who can get a job easily, the MCS Career Success Workshops are still relevant and valuable.

And for international students who are looking to develop employment experience in Canada, the MCS Workshop Series will help you get started.

Good luck with your studies and your career!

Workshops In The Eyes Of Our Students

May 7, 2012 Amy McLellan

Management Career Services (MCS) conducts an interview with 2nd year Commerce student, Kelly Owen who chats about her experience participating in the MCS Career Success Workshop Series.

How did you learn about the MCS workshop series?
“I heard about the MCS Career Success Workshop Series via email. When I mentioned the workshop series to my friends, some of them had already been and spoke highly of them.”

What inspired you to attend an MCS workshop?
“When I first discovered the MCS workshops I was in the process of looking for a summer job. I was having difficulty writing a resume and cover letter and decided to attend the Cover Letter Workshops for guidance. After the workshop I realized how helpful it was and signed up for several others.”

Which workshops did you attend?

Cover Letters
Resumes
Interviewing
Informational Interviews
Job Search
Career Path Assessment

What was the most effective/ informative take-away you learned from the MCS workshop?
“The most effective take away was from the Informational Interview Workshop. I had been nervous to ask people for their time and unsure what questions to ask. After the workshop I realized the MANY benefits of an informational interview.”

“From the tips and tricks I received, I gathered my courage, requested and conducted an informational interview with the forensic accountants at a big four accounting firm. The accountants then introduced me to the head of recruiting at Ottawa’s Ernst and Young …. and guess what? I landed a position for my first (and second) co-op work term.”

Did you apply any of the tips/ tricks learned throughout your job search and/or on the job?
“Shortly after the MCS Career Success Workshops, I attended the Corporate Tour. On the tour I referred to the lessons I learned during the Networking Workshop. The tour was a great opportunity to practice and apply my networking skills in a real-life business atmosphere.”

What would you tell your fellow students about MCS workshops?
“There’s no doubt that the advice and support provided in the MCS Career Success Workshops Series played a large part in my success finding (and securing) employment. Anyone can take advantage of the advice and help offered by simply attending a workshop. You never know where it may lead.”

10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You

May 1, 2012 Amy McLellan

Now that exams have finished, our graduating students are gearing up for Commencement. As they move forward with their lives, I thought I’d share an interesting article courtesy of Charles Wheelan, Wall Street Journal.

10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You

Class of 2012, I became sick of commencement speeches at about your age. My first job out of college was writing speeches for the governor of Maine. Every spring, I would offer extraordinary tidbits of wisdom to 22-year-olds—which was quite a feat given that I was 23 at the time. In the decades since, I’ve spent most of my career teaching economics and public policy. In particular, I’ve studied happiness and well-being, about which we now know a great deal. And I’ve found that the saccharine and over-optimistic words of the typical commencement address hold few of the lessons young people really need to hear about what lies ahead. Here, then, is what I wish someone had told the Class of 1988:

1. Your time in fraternity basements was well spent. The same goes for the time you spent playing intramural sports, working on the school newspaper or just hanging with friends. Research tells us that one of the most important causal factors associated with happiness and well-being is your meaningful connections with other human beings. Look around today. Certainly one benchmark of your postgraduation success should be how many of these people are still your close friends in 10 or 20 years.

2. Some of your worst days lie ahead. Graduation is a happy day. But my job is to tell you that if you are going to do anything worthwhile, you will face periods of grinding self-doubt and failure. Be prepared to work through them. I’ll spare you my personal details, other than to say that one year after college graduation I had no job, less than $500 in assets, and I was living with an elderly retired couple. The only difference between when I graduated and today is that now no one can afford to retire.

3. Don’t make the world worse. I know that I’m supposed to tell you to aspire to great things. But I’m going to lower the bar here: Just don’t use your prodigious talents to mess things up. Too many smart people are doing that already. And if you really want to cause social mayhem, it helps to have an Ivy League degree. You are smart and motivated and creative. Everyone will tell you that you can change the world. They are right, but remember that “changing the world” also can include things like skirting financial regulations and selling unhealthy foods to increasingly obese children. I am not asking you to cure cancer. I am just asking you not to spread it.

4. Marry someone smarter than you are. When I was getting a Ph.D., my wife Leah had a steady income. When she wanted to start a software company, I had a job with health benefits. (To clarify, having a “spouse with benefits” is different from having a “friend with benefits.”) You will do better in life if you have a second economic oar in the water. I also want to alert you to the fact that commencement is like shooting smart fish in a barrel. The Phi Beta Kappa members will have pink-and-blue ribbons on their gowns. The summa cum laude graduates have their names printed in the program. Seize the opportunity!

5. Help stop the Little League arms race. Kids’ sports are becoming ridiculously structured and competitive. What happened to playing baseball because it’s fun? We are systematically creating races out of things that ought to be a journey. We know that success isn’t about simply running faster than everyone else in some predetermined direction. Yet the message we are sending from birth is that if you don’t make the traveling soccer team or get into the “right” school, then you will somehow finish life with fewer points than everyone else. That’s not right. You’ll never read the following obituary: “Bob Smith died yesterday at the age of 74. He finished life in 186th place.”

6. Read obituaries. They are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives.

7. Your parents don’t want what is best for you. They want what is good for you, which isn’t always the same thing. There is a natural instinct to protect our children from risk and discomfort, and therefore to urge safe choices. Theodore Roosevelt—soldier, explorer, president—once remarked, “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” Great quote, but I am willing to bet that Teddy’s mother wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer.

8. Don’t model your life after a circus animal. Performing animals do tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish for doing so. You should aspire to do better. You will be a friend, a parent, a coach, an employee—and so on. But only in your job will you be explicitly evaluated and rewarded for your performance. Don’t let your life decisions be distorted by the fact that your boss is the only one tossing you peanuts. If you leave a work task undone in order to meet a friend for dinner, then you are “shirking” your work. But it’s also true that if you cancel dinner to finish your work, then you are shirking your friendship. That’s just not how we usually think of it.

9. It’s all borrowed time. You shouldn’t take anything for granted, not even tomorrow. I offer you the “hit by a bus” rule. Would I regret spending my life this way if I were to get hit by a bus next week or next year? And the important corollary: Does this path lead to a life I will be happy with and proud of in 10 or 20 years if I don’t get hit by a bus.

10. Don’t try to be great. Being great involves luck and other circumstances beyond your control. The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen. And if it doesn’t, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being solid.

Good luck and congratulations.

Rumble, Young Professional, Rumble

March 26, 2012 Amy McLellan

Bruce Springsteen gave a speech at a music convention a couple weeks back. Although the speech was aimed at music industry professionals – and hopefuls – the concluding portion is parallel with how you, as a rising professional, should live your life and manage your career. Great advice from a living icon:

“Rumble, young musicians, rumble.” Springsteen continued, “Open your ears and open your hearts. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry, but worry your ass off. Have iron-clad confidence, but be skeptical — it keeps you awake. Believe you’re the baddest ass in town and remember you suck – it keeps you honest. Be able to keep two entirely contradictory ideas alive and well in your heart at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy it will keep you strong. And when you walk onstage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it’s all we have, and then remember — it’s only rock and roll.”