Career course and Mentorship Program

[Pradipta Banerjee]

The new curriculum provides a very unique career course and mentorship program for the students. Can any first year students fill in on the experience so far.

Cheers

[Pradipta Banerjee]

Can any of the first students pls post a reply? I am eagerly looking forward to one.

Thanks

[Smile2008]

Hi Pradipta,

I am a first year student, and here is my opinion of the Careers and Aspirations program thus far!

The Careers Course was really helpful. It was fairly short (3 weeks I believe) but it made you think clearly about your goals and what steps you would take to achieve your goals. To help you with this, we read some interesting articles and watched interview clips of alumni who shared about their own career paths, and how they ended up there. Another interesting piece was that EVERY student in the cohort had to share at one point during the course, and it was great hearing all the different perspectives and backgrounds of where people were coming from---whether childhood experiences, or specific work experiences. All in all, I dont think the course is meant to suddenly make lightbulbs go off, but it was an interesting way of framing careers and how you plan to make meaning out of your future plans.

The Aspirations group is really a time when you meet with a team of a faculty member, staff member, and a second year student, to discuss how things are going for you, and if you are able to achieve your goals here at SOM. For me personally, it was a time to get to know some people from my team (since it is random placement into groups) and the meetings are also a time to step back from the intensity of academics and job hunting to stop and think about why you are here, and what your original plans were. There are also individual meetings with faculty and staff that you schedule to get individualized attention. The program itself provides a plug into the SOM community where you have contact with faculty and staff right away!

Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have more specific questions.

[paulip88]

Sorry for the dearth of replies. We're in the middle of exams right now.

For both the careers course and the mentorship program, I think a lot depends on what you want to get out of it. I'm probably not the best person to speak about this since I have a pretty good idea what I want to do after SOM.

The careers course talks about the stages of people's careers and also has some exercises to try to help you understand what motivates you. It's not incredibly personalized, but does ask some good questions.

For mentorship, we have MANY mentorship programs. We all have a faculty mentor, staff mentor, and student mentor. Your experience naturally depends on your mentor and also what you ask from your mentor. I haven't asked much of anything so I can't speak to that. We also have the option of linking up with an alumni mentor of our choosing. I'm not taking part in that either since I couldn't find an alum in my location and industry that was participating in the program. There are a lot to choose from though. I'm just looking for a very particular niche (tech product development).

Anyone else want to speak about this? I've covered the mechanics, but I don't think I really answered half of the question.

[Pradipta Banerjee]

Hi Smile and Paulip,

Thanks a ton for a very lucid description about the career course and mentorship programs. I have one specific question based on Smile's feedback. Could you pls explain the purpose of every student sharing their childhood/ work experiences. I really cudnt figure out that part.

I am basically from the FMCG industry and aspire to ultimately do strategic consulting in the same industry. My initial plan is to join a FMCG company like Unilever/ Pepsi and then, subsequently join a consulting firm like BCG.
Will I be able to get clarity on my goals through mentors including the alumni??

Thanks and Happy holidays to both of you and everybody else helping us out through this forum!!

[paulip88]

For me, I got two things out of the exercise:

1) I got to know myself a bit better by thinking about my earlier experiences and some of the things I learned about myself through those experiences. Like how I value time, money, culture at work, etc. I'm pretty self-aware, but I think got some value out of thinking about my earlier experiences. I generally only think back to more recent experiences, and looking further back helped me see the longevity of some common themes.

2) It was interesting to hear about other people's backgrounds. We often know people for who they are at school, and maybe by where they worked in the past. A lot of people have some interesting backgrounds, and it good to see some more of that shine through.