What I did about Youth Employment & Why
by Egle Vinauskaite, 26 from London
I graduated in 2011, which was a brutal year to look for a job. I can remember the headlines – 1 million unemployed young people in the UK.
Just like today, back then there too was a gap between the skills you get to demonstrate at university or summer internships, and the frightening list of requirements that you get evaluated on at multi-tiered assessment processes.
Luckily, I had solved my perpetual and greatly dreaded Catch 22 of graduate job hunting by getting involved in whatever I could get my hands on. I deliberately sought out projects, events, or even ideas that had the potential to illustrate my leadership, communication, organisational and many other skills.
I did expect them to enhance my professional profile and put me above the competition. After all, teamwork skills gained through a university assignment and those gained while organising an intense and very public event have varying scope and recognition. In hindsight, I can confirm that they did just that. However, what I did not expect was the profound effect these projects had on my outlook on life and future career choices.
They helped me discover myself and flex different parts of my brain, conquer my fears, and reaffirm my strengths. For example, at one time I was an audit intern by day, and cooked up engagement programmes for 100+ event volunteers by night. Is there ever possible to get experience like that at one place?
When advising my peers about career planning, I would use my own journey as an example: 1) identify your career goal and the profile of the person you need to become to reach it, 2) identify the experiences that would showcase the right things in the right light for it, 3) dive in!
The many inspirational people from unconventional career paths I’ve met in my sidetrack had me questioning the career plan I’ve had since the early school years. My journey eventually took me to Skillbright, which is my personally tested career advising approach scaled to benefit many. I hope Skillbright will help you shape your own career path, either in terms of getting that job you dream of or finding out your calling is completely elsewhere after all.
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