Looking beyond the horizon

Alumna Vikita Chandnani (BBA 2020) specialised in marketing and has always taken up related internships to gain experience in the field.  However, when an opportunity in a different field popped up, she decided to take a leap of faith.

In her own words, Vikita shares how her job-search took her down a different path:

Calling 2020 “one hell of a ride” would probably be an understatement. In spite of the pandemic situation, the class of 2020 stepped into their final semester of university with eyes full of hope and hearts full of zest for what the outside world has to offer. But this optimism was peppered with a healthy dose of reality, especially for fresh graduates and fellow job seekers out there.

The job search journey started much earlier in my university days. I used to actively take up internships, while juggling my studies and co-curricular activities, to know what holding down a job feels like and how different it is from schooling.

Getting an early start allowed me to take my time and put in effort to explore, actively seeking growth and learning opportunities, such as using internships to gain a better awareness of strengths and weaknesses.

I remember getting an internship offer very close to the start of a semester and I realised that I would have to juggle both the internship and my studies in order to graduate on time. Despite knowing that I would have a lot on my plate, I went ahead and that internship turned out to be instrumental in my search in a tough job market.

If there is anything that the economic impact of the pandemic has taught me, it is resilience. I knew that while I had no control over the situation, I could control how I choose to respond to it.

In spite of my best attempt at staying positive, graduating without a job in June 2020 was extremely demoralising.

While the search was frustratingly fruitless, I decided to make the most of my free time to try new things.  This may be in the form of courses, an internship or even a traineeship. After all, I would never have this flexibility again once I start working.

I strongly believe job seekers should grab every opportunity for learning and growth, and make the most out of any situation. To support fresh graduates, NUS introduced several upskilling courses under the Resilience and Growth Initiative so I took the opportunity to improve myself by exploring topics like Data Literacy.

Another valuable lesson this journey has taught me is to be open-minded. I graduated with a specialisation in Marketing from NUS Business School and all my three internships were related to either marketing or digital media. As such, when I got the opportunity to apply for a role in Facebook’s digital rights operations team, I was skeptical. It was an area I had never explored and had no idea if I could excel.

But I took a leap of faith and the process made me realise that no two jobs are the same. Even if they are in the same field, I would have to learn and adapt either way. This enabled me to streamline my reflections in preparation for my interviews. Instead of the actual tangible work done, I started focusing on the transferable skills that I learned from my past jobs and thought how I could apply them to another role. All these reflections led me to securing a full-time role and it has genuinely been one of the most fulfilling experiences I have been a part of.