Your Checklist to Becoming Competitive

Labour markets are interesting. The more niche/advanced your skills become the less competition you will have as long as there remains a market for your skills. But you also have to signal these skills – a fine art of letting employers know with somewhat certainty that you can do something.

I’m going to quickly list out some things which you should do as soon as possible if you want to compete:

General Competitiveness:

• Get a job – this could be anything, but we need to start filling your resume up

• Get good grades – all else equal, employers will take the one with higher grades

• Get involved on campus – student groups, mentoring etc

• Do the global leadership program → show on your transcript, leadership experience (don't have to finish it)

• Networking – start meeting people, go to events, and start a Linkedin → this will open doors for you and improve your social skills

Specific Competitiveness:

• Define your end goal/s – this could be a job or a few different jobs (do the below for each job if they are different enough)

• Figure out how to get there – do some research, look at others who succeeded and start to emulate their success

• Get an internship as close as you can to one of the end goal jobs – if you have the choice try not to pigeonhole yourself (pick a super niche job) as you want to get broad experience early on. Pre-penultimate internships may be hard to get but it’s essential you do.

• Goal-aligned extracurriculars – case competitions, blog writing, other projects etc

• Once you are competitive on paper you need to start looking at succeeding in applications – interviews (about you, behaviourals, technicals), cognitive tests, resume and cover letter building, networking etc (this is a huge part which I’m not going to go into here)

Resume Goals:

Depending on how competitive the industry you are trying to break into will determine how full on this part is

Super Competitive jobs (penultimate internships):

• GPA – 85+ (in an aligned degree/s)

• Work Experience – 1 industry-aligned internship (quality over quantity -- one good one is fine)

• Campus Involvement – 1+ experiences (ideally one being a solid leadership role)

• Extracurriculars – 2+ quality experiences/initiatives

Good luck.