Friday, March 4, 2011

Differentiate yourself: Good marks are not enough!


From 2006 to 2008 I traveled extensively in China meeting hundreds of teachers and students in different regions.  My largest presentation had more than 300 students (see figure). It was great to meet such a large crowd and introduce them to DB2.

Though many people attended my presentation, only a bunch of students (2 or 3) approach me to ask more questions, or introduce themselves.
I was not there to offer jobs, but certainly, I was a good contact for the future.

Here's my point:  With so many students looking for work, you need to differentiate yourself somehow.  You cannot just sit at the back and wait for a job to come to you. Even if you have good marks, they are not enough. In fact, more often I'm hearing that extra curricular activities are more important than good marks.  A good mark shows you can study, and are good to take exams. Extra curricular activities show you have real skills readily useful at the workplace. Of course, if you have both it's better!

In future blog posts I will provide some ideas you can follow to differentiate yourself. By the way, here there are some other interesting pictures of job career fairs in China. My wife is Chinese, and she attended some of those job fairs. As you can see, it's very challenging (close to impossible) to impress anyone in those job fairs.

We have a global market, differentiate yourself!

Cheers, Raul.


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