My Graduate Career

And then I realised that with flexibility you can easily use your knowledge across platforms and come up with a totally new set of skills: We measure success and happiness by the number of feel good moments we have.

I say the most successful experiences lie precisely in our failures — because they are the ones from which we learned most and forced us into improving ourselves. One of my frustrations during my first job was the fact that I was much slower at performing tasks that others did in half the time simply because I was not familiar with the programs they were using.

What to do at a careers fair

But with just a bit of patience and perseverance I was able to pick up their tricks and, in some cases, come up with a better solution. Whenever I was going through a rough phase I felt like it's something I would never be able to overcome and yet here I am, stronger than ever and looking forward to life's next challenges.

When the pressure of finding a job was finally off my shoulders, I decided to start investing some energy into observing what my colleagues do. I knew how important the relationship with your co-workers is, although people tend to forget that.

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When looking for a job we are mostly interested in compensation, work load, and location and we forget how important it is to get along with the people we will be sharing most of our time with. According to various environmental psychology research studies , the environment in which you work has a great impact on your levels of productivity. This is why moguls like Google and Apple are looking to provide their employees with the most amazing working space , hoping it will provide inspiration for the most innovative ideas. So take this into account when first starting a job, learn your office's dynamics in order to get accustomed, feel comfortable and collaborate with your co-workers.

Andreea Magdalina is a community manager and multimedia analyst. Find her on Tumblr here and Twitter as trrpaipai. This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more content and advice like this direct to your inbox, sign up for our weekly Careers update. Based on my own experiences, I've compiled a list of a few things I have learned so far: Don't be a drama queen I'm saying this from my own experience because I sometimes quite often, in fact tend to take things too seriously.

Careers fairs are a great opportunity to make personal contact with leading graduate employers, and allow you to meet many employers in a short period of time. You will collect a lot of useful information. And you will be able to distribute your CV, with the possibility of setting up future interviews.

These events usually take place early in the first semester of the academic year. Check with your careers service for dates and venues of their fairs or see the events calendar on this site. The registration desk is usually situated inside the main entrance. You will be asked to sign in and will be given a free programme which will help you find the companies you are interested in. Most fairs consist of company stands manned by Human Resources personnel, or other company representatives, who briefly talk one-on-one with students interested in their company.

Some employers will approach you, but in most cases you will have to make the first move. Be prepared to wait if there are large numbers of students at the stand. Find out which companies are coming. Research companies you are interested in — this will allow you to ask intelligent questions on the day.

Don't be a drama queen

Know why you want to work for each company and be able to express your skills, accomplishments and goals in a clear, concise manner. Update your CV and have it reviewed by your careers service. Together, this helped to channel my energy and focus, so when I finally did find the starting line, I knew I was running in the right direction. Mahdi Shariff is a chemistry and management undergraduate at the University of Warwick and founder of The Insiders — a student careers blog. He tweets at MahdiShariff.

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To get more content and advice like this direct to your inbox, sign up for our weekly Careers update. And that's where I believe one of the problem lies — they are looking for any job.

Too many students don't know what they want to do, how to find out, or even where to start. Write down what you like and dislike doing By writing down my preferences, I typically found I question the statements more thoroughly than when just thinking about where my interests lie. The types of questions I considered were: Filtering your options After identifying my core interests, the next step was to filter the potential career options I was compatible with. It was worthwhile considering lifestyle choices, such as: