Hello fans, I am Albert van Stam (29), currently working as a junior supply chain manager at Martens Kunststoffen (Oosterhout). In 2015 I graduated my SCM master at TIU. Thereafter, I did nothing for a few months, made peace with the concept called “work”, and began my “career” as a Logistics Engineer in a consultancy start-up (I can write pages of interesting/unique findings during my first job). Once I realized that my first job was quite unrelated to my personal style (I do like to work “smart” instead of hard for many unstructured hours, I decided to quit, found a new job, terminated my Logistics Engineer contract, finally used all my vacation days as a sort of buffer between the jobs and started a new work-related adventure. Anyway, if the editor is still content with my stories I might write another story about my first jobs. I shall enlighten you today with some of my personal work-related life lessons that I’ve experienced between studying and signing a contract.

 

Lesson 1: Enjoy your “study”/postpone work for as long as possible

Seriously, although work can be really fun (???), work often influences/ destroys your current daily flexibility as a human being. For example:

  • You are no long able to have crazy booze adventures at random occasions during the week
  • People have expectations related to fixed arrival time frames at specific locations (often 5 times a week between 0800-0900
  • No more skipping of things that bore you (teachers/ stuff to do/ articles written 40 years ago/ lectures at 0845 etc.)

 

In addition to the destruction of freedom, the current generation students/starters will have to work till they are at least 80 years old (true story!). Therefore, I can only suggest to enjoy the unrestricted and free life for as long as possible. Things I’ve really enjoyed related to the “study” were:

  • Free drinks/important stuff organized around the free drinks (symposium, Supply Chain day, Business Café’s, back 2 campus, language cafe etc.)
  • Asset S&L, and the specifically the trip4you committee where we organized an amazing adventure in Boedapest 2014.

 

Lesson 2 Finish education (at some point in life)

Not completely contradictory to the first “lesson”. At some point in life, but only when you feel ready, it is ok to switch from total freedom (and being broke) towards the work side with endless responsibilities (and never-ending debts payments).

 

Lesson 3 Sell yourself during the interview

So, you’ve made up your mind and graduated. What’s next? Well, get ready for the “job hunting” process, which is quite unique these days. Prepare for endless assessments, 14 rounds of interviews, video blogs (???) etc.

 

I suggest to at least think about the following points before you finish your “study”:

  • Create a good CV: Asset S&L and TIU (A-building) offer many good opportunities to test and improve your CV,
  • Update your LinkedIn profile, so it can be used to supplement your CV and to impress HR with endless information,
  • Do some extra stuff like:
    • Follow some courses (free MOOCS about stuff that is actually interesting instead of the often boring lectures: https://www.coursera.org/).
    • Go on an adventure in another country, for example by an Erasmus exchange. (which is still a good excuses to endlessly party in another country).
    • Follow some additional courses in Tilburg,
      • In the A-building you can follow many personal development courses for a very decent price (or you could at least a few years ago, the current TIU website confuses me),
      • Again in the A-building you can follow interesting language courses (for free!)
      • Asset S&L organises very interesting courses, for example the Six Sigma green belt, which is very valuable for your personal development and for future companies.
    • Perform in some kind of study related (Asset S&L) committee, not only a unique way of meeting new crazy people but also an instant invite to all the free drinks related activities.

 

Ok great, amazing lessons to get invited for an interview, but is there more? Yes, of course! In my opinion it is really important to create a great story that you can tell during an interview. Prepare like a boss, and:

  • Prepare for the basic questions like, what are your strong/weak points blablabla.
  • Create counter questions, for example: Ask the interviewer were the company will be in 5 years (and how the function can be part of this “vision”). Use this question to counter the famous “where do you want to be in 5 years”-question
  • Perform a background check of the company (I once found out, just a few days before the interview, that the company was performing super shady activities)
  • Connect with the interviewer during the interview, with help from table position, smiles, interaction jokes etc etc.

 

With the following amazing words I shall finish these work-related lessons: good luck.

 

Albert

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1 Comment

Daan van Hulten · June 16, 2016 at 8:08 am

Fantastic article, really nice how you elaborate on the differences between student life and working life! Very nice addition to the “S&L at work blog”.

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