Ivana is a student Multilingual Business Communication at UGent. After her Master studies in Philosophy, she started her second master last year. She split this MaNaMa into 2 years, as she combines her studies with a full-time job. She will graduate in 2021 after 7 successful years of study ànd with 2 master’s degrees. When looking at her voluntary jobs at the animal shelter, bird sanctuary and Natuurpunt, she might as well have studied veterinary medicine… But becoming a veterinarian is not her ambition. However, what would suit her ambition, was a real question mark for Ivana, and that’s exactly why she created an account on myCareerCompanion.
- How and to what extent did myCareerCompanion meet your expectations?
During my second master, I got to know myCareerCompanion, one of the structural partners within our Multilingual Business Communication education. As soon as I heard about the career coaching platform, I wanted to find out what jobs and company cultures would suit me. As I will be doing an internship in my second semester, I was hoping to find out what organizations and jobs would be suitable for my internship.
- Let’s go back to the creation of your myCareerCompass profile. How did you experience the 5 questionnaires and their results?
When I was filling in the questionnaires, I was surprised about how fun they were: interactive and varied. Time passed quickly! When reading the results, I was amazed by their accuracy. For instance, I didn’t mention one single moment that I used to do Drama and Speech at the Conservatory, but ‘performing’ was one of my strengths according to myCareerCompass! So I was nicely surprised and it made me start to think of how I can use this professionally. myCareerCompass also teaches me the ‘language’ that is commonly used in the labor market. It made me realize that I had some characteristics that I didn’t value to their full potential, even though they could be very interesting to an employer. For instance, I like to know what people expect me to do and that there is a clear structure. In the platform, this is defined as ‘conventional’, which means that I like to work in a structured way and that I respect authority. This sounds much more positive and I will certainly use this terminology in the future!
- Did you recognize yourself in your ideal company culture and suggested dream jobs? Did you expect these, or were there some real eye-openers?
The results were certainly surprising, in the positive sense of the word. Some of the jobs that were listed in my dream jobs, were functions that I never even heard about. I did recognize some of the other job descriptions, but I didn’t realize that they matched with that specific function title. As I will be starting looking for an internship soon, I was really curious about my ideal company culture! I was not aware of the fact that company culture can be such a determining factor and that you can classify companies according to their company culture. Thanks to myCareerCompanion, I found out that I feel at home in an internally oriented company, where the focus is on teamwork. When I look at my student jobs, I can recognize this completely, but I never thoroughly thought of this before. I can understand now why I felt better in some student jobs than in other ones.
- Will myCareerCompass help you in your search for an internship?
Without any doubt! I will certainly keep the importance of a suiting company culture in mind. Plus when I’m asked during my job interview “What exactly would you like to do within communication?”, I know now precisely what I can answer, thanks to the function titles, duties and responsibilities that myCareerCompass shows.
- myCareerCompanion also has a myCourses part, next to the myCareerCompass part. What do you think about the courses that you can find here at the moment?
This is certainly an elaborate and interesting range. I followed ‘Discover yourself’ online, which helped me to interpret and understand myCareerCompass better. I also took a look at ‘The power of pitching’ and I was really surprised about the content. I thought that pitching was only used when presenting a product. Now I realize that I do this all the time: on the phone, during events, even at the beginning of this interview. Thanks to this course, I learned how to pitch myself properly, there were some very interesting tips and tricks. The course ‘Become a LinkedIn pro’ is also on my to-do list, I really want to create a strong LinkedIn profile, and I can use some tips to realize this!
- To conclude, what does myCareerCompanion mean to you now and how would you like to use it in the future?
I intend to follow the other courses during the Christmas holidays. The topics looked really interesting to me, but I will need to take my time for this. Next to that, I would like to fill in the questionnaires again at the end of my studies, because I suppose that I will look differently upon things after doing my internship and after graduating, for example on my skills and on the things that give me energy.
Also want to create a myCareerCompanion account? Click here.