Category Archives: Informational

Oct 07 2012
11 Comments
Informational

Intern Season

Summer nears and I’m sure a lot of career kids have been spamming their applications and hopefully received a few offers for an intern gig over the long break after the end of semester 2.

So I’ll be happy to drop some huge hints for all those super eager interns to get an edge.

How to dress
Just like their work abilities, summer interns’ fashion is something good for everyone else to laugh at. Avoid this by rocking up and trying to out-dress everyone in the office. It’s your opportunity to really shine since the work you produce obviously won’t be anything great.  Too often though, interns can easily be spotted by their AMAZING Crumpler messenger bags, and well maintained suits from Lowes, maybe try to pull that off so you can let others know that you really mean business. Also, go for some crazy coloured socks, you know, the ones that don’t match at all with the rest of your attire, remember its all about standing out and making your mark with your potential future employer.

P.S. – If you’re a girl (and good looking), dress in super revealing outfits and be a complete cock tease, since most of the work interns produce get thrown out, you need to leaving a lasting memory in some way and this is a good chance.

How to behave
Suck up hard. If you get asked to get coffees, say something like this:
“COFFEE RUN? OH BOY! I LOOOVE COFFEE RUNS! I’D GLADLY GO AND GET COFFEE FOR THE REST OF THE TEAM”
or when you’re asked to pick up the MD’s dry cleaning, something like this would be good:
“WOW, I GET THE PRIVILEGE OF PICKING UP YOUR DRY CLEANING? OH MY THAT’S SUCH A HUGE RESPONSIBILITY BESTOWED UPON ME, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS OPPORTUNITY”
You must realise that all the other interns are saying generic things and just being nice, your aim is to better their responses to the furthermost extent.

When talking to senior staff drop lines such as this

“The MD is amazing, I swear the room changes when he walks in!”

If you’re a back office loser, then just stick to hanging with people you work around, and don’t try to fit in with front office staff. Let’s just say we’ve had countless laughs over back office kings trying very hard to fit in with front office stars.

How hard to work
Basically, your work will be useless and probably get thrown out so don’t work hard at all. Be cocky as fuck, and let everyone know you are a future bawse. Remember: Words speak louder than actions in the intern world. Just stay back cause everyone else is and find some random things to do on your computer. Sometimes just eat lunch at your desk even though you are idle and let everyone know about it too. The aim is to look busy without really being busy, that’s what it’s all about.

Also, just randomly go to “Meetings” and disappear for a few hours throughout the day, you will seem more important and senior staff will start to respect you more for disappearing without much notice. You are showing them how much demand you have at the company!

What to say
Be as vague as you can be, mumble, make awkward pauses and be very indecisive. Make it seem as if what you know is some sort of secret that cannot be openly shared. Statements which make no sense will probably make others feel as if they are inadequate to understand. You know what they say, fake it ’til you make it!

Post Mortem

So you’ve finished your internship and are back at university, two potential scenarios after you intern.

1. You got the offer

When you’re back at University, tell all your friends, and acquaintances of how cool it was, how amazing, interesting and intriguing the work was and how you did so well at exceeding the expectations of the company in regards to your performance!

2. You Didn’t get the offer

Tell everyone how the culture didn’t align well with your personality, or how the values weren’t similar to your personal ones. Maybe throw in how you couldn’t see yourself doing that type of work and how it wasn’t quite your thing. Just downplay it and make it seem like it was some valuable experience and through that experience you now know what you want in the future.

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Jul 01 2012
6 Comments
Informational

Results!

So exams are done and I assume everyone is relaxing on their winter break (Or already studying ahead for semester 2). However, as you might begin to notice from Facebook status updates people are mentioning that results are starting to trickle through.

So I’d thought I’d write about the what goes on during the period when results come out.

So the usual updates on Facebook and Twitter will be along the lines of:

“OMG I CANT BELIEVE I PASSED <SUBJECT NAME>” (This is a typical status update for Worrying Whingers)
“<SUBJECT NAME> RESULTS ARE OUT!”
“PASSED ALL MY SUBJECTS! :)”

It’s a weird system, from memory it was semester 1 2010 when the university introduced the whole “Study plan” on the portal. So basically, results sporadically appear usually before the final release date. Spare a thought for all the students from pre-2010 who had to wait out until the official date (Or the day before) to see all their results at once.

A lot of students are going to go around asking everyone about results and how they went. This is when The Career Kid will just disappear or just give a very generic response like “I did well” or “Not bad”, or be super busy bolstering their resume ahead of applying for summer internships. Also, Have fun trying to reach FOBs, as they will probably be back in their home countries until semester 2 starts. The level of difficulty in reaching Private School kids will be similar, as they will probably be somewhere overseas, perhaps enjoying the European summer.

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Remember to follow the blog on Twitter @MelbUniBlog

Anyhow, enjoy the break!

Mar 31 2012
17 Comments
FAQ, Informational, Majors, Student Profile

The Career Kid!

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.

Tagged
Mar 21 2012
17 Comments
Informational, Majors, subjects

BCom Majors I: Accounting

In my latest series of posts, I’ll be going through each of the majors in Bachelor of Commerce. I may also do some majors for other courses too with some guest posts.

BCom Majors: Accounting

“Because I can’t get a job with any other major”

The accounting major is most popular major of the BCom at UoM. This is reinforced by the multiple lecture streams available for most core accounting subjects. Below is a rundown of the Accounting subjects:

Accounting Reports & Analysis (ARA): Pretty straightforward. Basic bookkeeping. Just a revision of VCE Accounting with a bit of a difference in some content. I don’t see any reason how this subject cannot get smashed, it’s very easy.

Accounting Transactions & Analysis (ATA): Much the same as ARA. Just covers different topics. Another easy subject to score in.

Accounting Processes & Analysis (APA): An absolute joke of a subject covering garbage topics which are very easy to spin some nice BS on. Great average booster if you’re good at BS.

Intermediate Financial Accounting (IFA): Probably the hardest subject in the major. Easy to smash it if you know what you’re doing though. Big consolidation question on the exam is usually pretty fun.

Cost Management (CM): Very easy, lots of easy theory questions which are common sense and then there’s all these costing methods and variances to learn which are pretty simple too. Hear that now there’s a lot more theory in it these days which is probably making the subject even easier, if that’s possible.

Business Finance (Bus Fi): Just simple finance. Mid Semester test for this subject is basically a free 25% since there’s like a few multi-choice questions which are pretty straight forward. Also this is a subject which has massive amounts of FOBs. Don’t be surprised if you’re tutorial has around 90-95% of students being FOB.

Financial Accounting (FA): Lots of lame theory from business finance and some basic working out. Few of the topics are quite interesting but most of this subject is largely garbage.

Auditing & Assurance Services (Audit): Absolute joke of a subject. Impossible to fail, Easy to H1, hard to get 90+ on.

Enterprise Performance Management (EPM): A mix of Organisational Behaviour and Cost Management according to most people. Much the same as auditing in terms of scores. Hard to fail.

Principles of Business Law (PBL): Easy H1 with a ton of rote learning and regular quizzes.

Corporate Law (Corp): Content is quite interesting, subject is generally not bad. Exam weighting is heavy however, so just cram during SWOTVAC.

Taxation Law (Tax): Ratty and very lame content. Not too difficult to get H1 but tough to get 90s. Get a good partner for the assignment.

The FOB contingent is high for the Accounting major, as it’s basically a permanent residency factory for most FOBs, but don’t let that deter you from pursuing it! There’s still plenty of local students in it too.

In terms of career outcomes for graduates, most go into professional services like the big 4, the less worthy go to mid tiers, some go straight into industry, and the super geniuses go into government since the exit opportunities from the APS are amazing and going to Canberra is cool and super fun!

Most of the locals will end up being employed prior to graduation unless they’ve got a horrid transcript, even then most still get decent jobs. For FOBs, they usually try to get PR and get a job here or end up back home or in a nearby country.

Oh, and before someone goes through and starts picking out grammar and spelling mistakes, just note that this post was written on my phone during a commute in a foreign country and I can’t be bothered going through and fixing it all.

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