Off the cuff

To continue our interview series, Marios from The Lecture Room has shared his story about how he acquired the skills to secure a job after graduation. Enjoy! 

In September 2006 I enrolled on an International Business Programme, at UH (University of Hertfordshire) Business School. What would soon follow were four years of late nights, early mornings, questionable eating habits, the occasional “I’m still alive” phone-call home and plenty of material for The Lecture Room. So, for the most part, it was pretty much the same life I was living before I started university.

Working full-time for a year before I started university prepared me for all manner of student-life scenarios. While my job wasn’t the usual nine-to-five (I’ll leave the details for a different article on a different day), I developed two things that, in my opinion, apply to everyday life situations: A STRONG WORK ETHIC and to EXPECT MORE is necessary for any form of success.

A strong work ethic: You won’t always like your job but it’s the only one you have at any given time - so do it well. My job was far from glamorous (event security) but I met a few amazing people and went to a lot of festivals for free. It also paid my bills and ensured my bank statements never featured a minus figure. More important than this, it showed that someone had trusted me to represent their brand and service – remember this. So, in appreciation of this, I did my best to fulfil every element of the job spec.

It sounds a bit seedy but wherever you work, you’re essentially selling yourself to your next employer. If you expect to be nominated/referred/chosen for a better position anywhere, it only makes sense that you show you’re capable of more – for me, this was picking up extra shifts that no one else wanted to do. The same is applicable when studying at university. If you have to put together a presentation, don’t pick the generic PowerPoint templates, custom one that helps illustrate the purpose of the presentation.

Expect more: Being content with what you have isn’t a bad thing but in the same breadth I don’t expect anyone who lives by this to complain about a lack of improvement in their life.

Expect more from yourself and the people around you. Where you are now, is not where you have to be 10 years from now. Setting goals for what you want to achieve is crucial. This is more about knowing when you’re not doing so well, than when you are. Whether you’re planning for the best grades, securing your ideal job, or buying your first house, setting clear objectives will help you to determine the level of effort and resources you need to invest. If I was content with what had been predicted for me and my peers – years of unemployment and a mountain of debt - I would most probably still be unemployed and lacking any distinguishable skills.

I graduated from university in 2010 fully aware that my degree was valuable but not as valuable as it once was, so I had to put in the hard work and get additional work experience to differentiate myself from other graduates. As a result of this my days ran like this:

• 5.30 am: Job searches and working on my blog (The Lecture Room)
• 9am - 6pm: Internship; Content Editor and researcher
• 6.30pm – 11.30pm: Part-time work (event security/working on my blog/job search - the wonders of a Smart phone!)
• 11.30pm – onwards – Working on my blog

It seems like a lot but doing this meant I gained enough practical skills to muscle out graduates who, in many cases, had a better degree than I did.

But what employers were most impressed by was that I did it all with a smile on my face and showed I was prepared to do more.

Photo details: Lunch atop a Skyscraper (New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam) is a famous photograph taken by Charles C. Ebbets during construction of the GE Building at Rockefeller Center in 1932.

The photograph depicts 11 men eating lunch, seated on a girder with their feet dangling hundreds of feet above the New York City streets. Ebbets took the photo on September 29, 1932, and it appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in its Sunday photo supplement on October 2. Taken on the 69th floor of the GE Building during the last several months of construction, the photo Resting on a Girder shows the same workers napping on the beam.” – source - http://indeliblephotos.com/moment-photo.html

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