Jamie Grant – Page 7 – Penn & Beyond

An Alum’s Mentoring Memoir

The last three years have been a flash and here I am just a year away from graduating! I keep telling myself I can tackle anything that is ahead but the uncertainty of what is ahead is making me all too nauseous.

Guest Post by Nisar Amin, GEx ’03

I have never been so anxious before. The last three years have been a flash and here I am just a year away from graduating! I keep telling myself I can tackle anything that is ahead but the uncertainty of what is ahead is making me all too nauseous.

I remember this feeling like it was yesterday, but actually this was back in 1995. It was just one year prior to the completion of my undergraduate studies.

The temptation to go into the workforce was high for me, yet I had a yearning to pursue higher education at the same time.

I was lucky enough to have met an alumnus of the chemical engineering program in which I was majoring. He had been in the workforce for over 10 years and we struck up a good conversation focusing on my dilemma of either entering the job market or continuing my education.

My mentor and I had numerous conversations over the next six months. What made him a great mentor was that he challenged me to come to a decision on my own. He never told me what to do, but rather gave me plenty of examples from his own professional career.

He always made the effort to meet up with me or have a telephone conversation when I needed to talk about my career. I am sure this was difficult to do since he had a full time job and a family as well. I was amazed by his dedication to help someone who was in need without expecting something in return.

My decision at the end was to enter the work force and gain some valuable industry experience. My plan was to work in the industry for minimum of five years and then gauge my interest for higher education.

I am not sure if I would have made this same decision on my own if I didn’t have my mentor at the time. For me, my decision was the right decision. I matured as a person in the work force for those five years and appreciated a higher education much more when I entered University of Pennsylvania to pursue my Master’s degree.

Today I have the distinct privilege and honor to be a mentor to aspiring students at the University of Pennsylvania. I try to listen to the student’s need and see if I can guide them to the best of my ability. I hope one day all of the students that I have mentored will continue the cycle and make a difference in someone’s life.

Nisar Amin is an alumnus of the Executive Masters in Technology Management program, co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and The Wharton School. In addition, he holds dual Bachelor degrees in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry from the State University of New York Buffalo and Fredonia, respectively. Nisar currently works for BASF Corporation as a Manager of New Business Development in the chemical intermediates division. Nisar is an active member of the SEAS Alumni Society, and has long been a mentor to 1^st year SEAS students through the Penn Engineering Mentoring Program.

Part 3 of a series on mentoring programs and opportunities.

One of the best ways to prepare for life after Penn -or to help you make the most of your time at Penn – is to find a mentor. Use the Career Services Networking and Mentoring website as a great starting point!

TO DO: Connect with your Mentor…

One of the best ways to prepare for life after Penn – as well as to help you make the most of your time at Penn – is to find a mentor. Once you have one….the idea is to stay in touch! Alumnae Liana Esposito (EAS ‘2007) has kindly shared her recommendations for connecting with your mentor, enhancing your experience at Penn…and beyond.

TO DO: Mentoring

Making the Most of Your Mentor

Get involved! Having a mentor will help you learn about career options and may guide you through an often overwhelming process of choosing a career path. Your mentor may become the start of your professional network.
Be proactive. Do a little background research on the type of industry and position in which you may be interested. Mentors are volunteers who participate in the program because they want to assist people less established in careers by providing information and advice. Allow them to help you. Be proactive about establishing contact and initiating the conversation. Understand that having a mentor will not guarantee you a job or an internship. Talking to your mentor will shed light on a type of job or industry of interest to you and put you in direct contact with a professional in that field. Your mentor is a personal resource who will guide you as you explore career options.
Ask the hard questions. General questions will get you an overview but specific and direct questions will allow you learn more from your mentor. For example, you could ask how it is working for [insert industry/company/etc. here], but you will learn a lot more by asking what is it that drew your mentor to X, what keeps them at X, what is the most challenging thing about being a part of X or one thing that they would change about X. Asking poignant questions will give you thoughtful and direct responses and facilitate your conversation.
Nurture the relationship. Be conscious of how much time passes between e-mails or phone calls. Often, it is easier to decide at the beginning of the relationship how often you will be in contact. There is no “correct” schedule, the amount of contact depends upon both parties and their availability.
Learn as much as possible. Take advantage of the personal time with a professional in your field. Share your resume with your mentor and get feedback. Ask for advice about academic and career decisions. If given the opportunity, meet with your mentor in person, tour their work facility and meet and speak with some of their coworkers to expand your network.

3 tips from one who’s been there…

Part 2 of a series on mentoring opportunities and programs

One of the best ways to prepare for life after Penn – as well as to help you make the most of your time at Penn – is to find a mentor. Use the Career Services Networking and Mentoring webpage as a great starting point.

Alumnae Anna Tiffany (EAS ’05), Scale-Up Engineer in the Coatings Technology Center at The Dow Chemical Company, volunteers her time as a Mentor through the Penn Engineering Mentoring Program. Below, she has kindly shared her top 3 tips to help students connect with their mentors….useful advice to help you add value to your experience at Penn…and beyond.

There are so many options available for Penn grads that to decide what direction to take can be stressful, exciting, and confusing all at the same time. The best way to understand your many options is to talk with someone who’s gone through it already. That’s where mentors come in; their role is to provide students with perspective and guidance on the many paths that lie before them. But what is the role of the mentee in the relationship?

In the best mentoring relationships, mentees are not idle sponges simply absorbing information from their mentors. Instead, mentees – just like mentors – are active participants. There are three things you can do as a mentee to ensure a successful mentoring relationship, and you have to start even before you contact your mentor for the first time. Before seeking a mentor, you must determine what it is you are looking to get out of the relationship. What do you hope to accomplish? Making a list of questions you’d like your mentor help you answer is a good way to start thinking about what you want from the relationship. Understanding this (and sharing it with your mentor!) will help guide your mentor’s efforts.

Once you have a mentor, the mentee should be the one to drive the relationship. Set up meetings (if possible), ask questions, and request feedback. At the same time though, be respectful of the mentor’s time. The level of communication needed for each relationship is different, but it would probably not be appropriate to contact your mentor every other day. On that note, communication can either be regular (say once a month) or on an as-needed basis. It’s really up to what you need, but the frequency should be established at the start of the relationship. With my mentors, I like to switch between regularly scheduled meetings and as-needed ones, changing as my needs change.

Finally, as the relationship advances, keep your mentor informed with your progress, particularly about topics you’ve discussed. We want to know how you’re doing- we wouldn’t invest our time in you otherwise! Plus, the more your mentor knows about your interests, the more helpful they can be.

So to sum it all up, decide what you want, drive the relationship, and keep in touch. These three things will help you get the most out of your mentoring relationship. And who knows, you might end up with a life-long friend in the process.

Your resume is lonely for its BFF…

by Jamie Grant, C’98, GEd ’99

If you find that you’re applying to internships or full-time positions, or for interview consideration through On-Campus Recruiting, but are not getting the response you seek, it might be that your resume is lonely! I don’t say this to be silly (resumes don’t really have feelings…although sometimes I imagine they do cringe under my ferocious editing pencil). Rather, I encourage you to more carefully consider the value of a well written and individualized cover letter as part of your search – and as a new BFF for your lonely resume.

By sending a resume, through a website, attached to an email, for OCR, without a cover letter, you are giving away your power – to demonstrate your excellent writing skills, to take ownership of how your resume is reviewed, and to persuade your recipient that YOU are the best candidate for the opportunity at hand. Like a boat without a rudder or a car without a GPS, your resume alone can lack obvious direction and easily get “lost” amongst the many applications a recruiter may receive in this competitive job market. This is especially true if you are applying to an opportunity not directly related to your major or your background – without a cover letter, how might your reader understand how someone with your skills, background and experience could be an ideal candidate, and not just dismiss you outright because you’re not the most obvious fit?

My advice? Don’t leave it up to your recipient to draw conclusions or make assumptions as to how you are the best candidate for the job. Take control and exercise your job seeking power – use the job description, company website, or any other resources you can find to help you understand the type of candidate the organization is seeking, and spend time carefully drafting a cover letter – or the body of an email, or even text to include in the “Miscellaneous Comments” box on the web application – to accompany your resume. Explain exactly how you are the person to add value to the firm and inspire your reader to contact you for more details, and hopefully an interview! Trust me, your resume will be much more impactful, productive – and thankful! – if you don’t send it out into the world alone.

A map to (career research) treasures!

by Jamie Grant

To write the best resume, cover letter, or to ace an interview, it is imperative that you spend time considering the interests and focus of your intended audience – the employer – and to prepare accordingly.

Aside from knowing someone in the field, how can you best learn about the industries that you are targeting in your job or internship search? Hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars worth of materials from two of the best resources for career research – the Vault Career Library and Wetfeet Guides – are accessible to you, dear Penn students and alumni, for FREE, behind the Online Subscriptions, Pennkey-and-Password section of the Career Services online library.

Vault “Career Insider” includes many features and tools to help you in your research, including 39 comprehensive Industry Guides, with individual guides on topics like: Environmental Careers, Sales and Trading, Social Work, Hedge Funds, Television Writing Careers, and the Energy Industry, to name just a few. In addition, there are specific guides for particular organizations and industries, like the 2011 Guides to the Best Consulting Firms by practice area (Economic, Energy, Financial, HR, Operations, Pharma & Health Care, or Business Advisory), the Top 50 Consumer Products organizations review, and reviews of popular internship sites and professions with “Day In The Life” features. And, the Vault resources aren’t just limited to the U.S. – with particular guides for European and Asian markets, Vault can be an invaluable tool to help you learn and understand the nuances of your targeted industries.

Wetfeet Guides’ Industry Profiles, under the “Careers and Industries” part of the site, provides 29 easy-to-read, quick overviews of industries from Accounting, Advertising, and Aerospace/Defense to Education, Health Care, Pharma & Biotech, Real Estate, Telecommunications, and Venture Capital. With five minutes of reading, you can get an ideal, insider’s view to an industry.

The best part of the Penn subscription benefit is that you can download the guides, reviews, and more as PDFs, right onto your laptop or iPad to read at your leisure. And while I can only provide a cursory overview of the amazing depths of these two resources, you have the opportunity to access these sites and see for yourself through our Career Library. Pretty soon, you too could be “talking the talk” of the professional club you hope to join, and your job search materials will be even better!