Claudio Ceper Gives Good Advice on Jobs

SIX TIPS TO JUMPSTART YOUR CAREER FROM THE BAA BOARD MEMBER IN CHARGE OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Ready, steady, go. After the August vacation break, in September everybody's professional activity must go back to full speed. The new season can also be an opportunity to renew your job prospects and give a new impetus to your career. If you choose this route, it is useful to get some advice from someone who's been a headhunter all his working life. Here are a few useful tips coming directly from Claudio Ceper, who supervises career development for the Bocconi Alumni Association (BAA), is chairman of the Forum on Meritocracy and, above all, stars in the series of seminars that Bocconi's Career Advice devotes to job interviews and career prospects.
 
i) Correctly define your personal brand, i.e. your strengths and weaknesses. If you do not have a precise idea of the activities you have a knack for, you'll never find a job that suits you. What does it take to do it? The ability to listen to yourself and trust the judgment of people you know well. You must always remember that strong people are not afraid to ask for feedback from others, to hear their opinion on themselves. It is very helpful.
 
ii) Evaluate the professional career choices that are available by matching and reasoning on four elements: passion, people, brand, and money.
 
iii) Do not choose a given professional activity if you are not passionate about it. Without passion nothing gets done.
 
iv) Appraise carefully the people with whom you are supposed to work. If you do not like them initially, just leave it there and forget about the job. The biggest mistake I myself have done in my career occurred precisely for this reason: taking a job you like with people you don't like. Avoiding repeating this mistake has helped me enormously.
 
v) Assess the type of company you are going to work for. If you cannot stand stress, do not even get close to strategic consulting, if you wrote your thesis on consumer goods, do not think about working in a bank. And if you a are young graduate, give a preference to multinationals. Big companies, with their corporate standing and large-scale processes, can teach a lot. Small enterprises, on the other hand, provide little know-how and you will learn less there.
 
vi) Finally, the compensation package. Even they offer you high figures, do not accept the job if you don't like it or doesn't feel right. I have seen many making professional decisions exclusively based on pay, only to quit their new employment six months later.
 
 

by Andrea Celauro
Translated by Alex Foti