Inside The University of Melbourne

Ahh, it’s that time of the year again, when many final year students realise that they must start to decide on what they’ll be doing next year in terms of employment.

Now in my course there were a bunch of career losers, yes, a LOT. The University of Melbourne is probably renowned for these types of students.

Now let me describe the stereotypical career loser.

Generally, this is the type of student who isn’t exceptionally talented, maybe just slightly above average at the very best, but usually average or slightly below. They CONSTANTLY just think about their career prospects. From bitching about their marks, to whining about how they got rejected when their less career-focused friend got the offer at firm X or company Y.

No, this is not some nerd who just wants to get a killer transcript, and then tear it up in the real world; these losers are the ones that think that rocking up to a careers event is going to give them a massive edge over their peers.

Often, they are very very ratty, they won’t reveal information about what jobs they applied for, will not help anyone else out in anything job/uni related (including their friends) and are absolute dogs when it comes to passing on assignments to others.

Example:

Kid A: Hey dude, did you apply for firm X’s vacation program?

Kid B: Nah man, they open?!

Kid A: They closed weeks ago!

*Two weeks later*

Kid A: Hey, I got rejected at firm X at the final stage

Kid B: Oh I actually got an offer from firm X

Kid A: ??!?!

Now, imagine the awkwardness… this is normal for career losers though.

Usually, without sounding overly racist, these kids are usually Asian (I’m expecting some raging from this, but it’s just merely an observation), but obviously this isn’t always the case, a few white kids and curries are also of this mould.

Career kids will always be discussing dates of applications opening and wheather anyone has heard back from X company in regards to their Y position. They will often have “friends” who they solely discuss job prospects with, nothing else. A catch up with these “friends” will probably entail trying to gain information regarding the group stage of Company X’s process and what types of questions to prepare for. Basically, prepare to be used by these type of people if you are their so called “friends”.

Most career kids will spend extensive time on trying to bolster up their resumes so they can have a chance to get their desired jobs. More often then not, they do not attain that dream.

Career Fairs:

This is basically Christmas for Career kids. There are a couple of these during the year and are basically opportunities for companies to spit their propaganda about how great they are. Career kids will be anticipating these events for months, by preparing questions, picking out what to wear, how to do their hair and the persona they will adopt during the fair.

Now the only reason you should go to these is to leech the freebies (Usually company stationary) which they offer, nothing else. The information being presented is often found on their website or just Googled. There is no point trying to go there and impress the representatives and think you’ll now be ahead of your peers, because you spoke to an employee of your dream company.

It’s very rare that talking to a Junior HR Consultant or Junior Analyst at Company Z is going to get you a gig there. All you’ll really hear is the lame generic responses from their website, with a fun twist on it.

Aims:

Most loser career kids in Commerce will be aiming to get into the Holy Grail of Finance that is Investment Banking. Now, considering how small the investment banking intake is in Australia (and the field in general), it’s unlikely any of these career losers will actually get “snapped up”.

Let’s look at it from another point of view: Investment Bank A plans to hire 3 graduates Australia-wide for 2012, 421 Career losers turn out to their Sydney & Melbourne industry nights. There is a good chance that the people who actually do get into Investment Bank A aren’t even at the event. All that time and effort to rock up, with no real gain.

Here’s a real life example of a career loser:

I was talking to someone and asked them what their plans were for the winter break back last year and this is the response I got:

“Yeah, bolster up my resume these holidays so I can get an Institutional Role at one of the Big 4 Banks, basically it’s IB at a smaller level!”

This is the model response you should aim to give when you are a career loser. Your existence revolves around your career, not your friends, not your family, not your hobbies, but the job you do.

I can imagine talking to these people in a social setting, everything asked by them will be in an interview-style question, which is why I generally avoid career losers.

Another example:

I was walking around university back last year and saw something really interesting.

In one of the study rooms in Frank Tate building there were 5 fobs doing one of those online tests as part of many recruitment processes these days.

1 Fob was at the white board drawing stuff, another was with a calculator sitting next to the fob who was inputting responses on to the laptop whilst another fob was there sitting with a piece of paper working things out. The last fob had a stop watch in his hand.

After seeing this, I really was shocked.