USINGYOUR CO-OP OR SUMMER WORK EXPERIENCES
The following questions summarize the response of someone using co-op or summer work experience to maximum effect, in the fact of rising competition. (You know the answers you should be giving to these questions).
Do you talk to co-workers, managers and customers?
Do you discuss important topics: the market, technology, challenges, opportunities and the future?
Do you seek out people to talk to?
Do you talk only when you have a specific work-related need or when a question is directed to you?
Do you engage in conversation to advance your career explicitly?
Are you prepared to offer insight and observation?
Do you plan your conversations?
Are you prepared to practice oral communication?
What can you do if you are shy? Force yourself to talk?
Do you try to identify your organization's chief competitive advantage and its chief competitive threat?
Do you discuss these issues with co-workers and managers?
What observations do you offer from your experience outside the organization, especially from your academic studies?
To what extent do you see yourself as transferring expertise from the university to your employer?
What suggestions have you made to your employer to improve the organization's competitive position? Or do you wait to be asked?
How much research and study do you undertake to find suggestions for improvement? Or do you wait to be asked?
Do you ask about the history of an organization, especially from senior managers? Do you read about it?
To what extent is the performance of your co-workers different depending on whether they enjoy their jobs or not? Your managers?
Do you decide explicitly what parts of your work you like best?
Do you discuss career likes and dislikes with your co-workers and managers?
How often do you "expand" your job duties to experiment with a new task?
Do you ask more experienced workers to describe their career paths to you? Ask about their satisfaction?
Does your employer know you expect to build your career within your area of strong interest? Or do you look like a hired gun?
How often do you smile when assigned a task? Or when you complete one?
As the term begins, do you look for a project that can be undertaken in addition to your regular duties?
What about projects which lower cost, increase sales, speed research, facilitate customer feedback, improve information flow, eliminate bottlenecks, provide training or otherwise advance the organization's goals?
Do you discuss alternative projects with anyone who will listen?
Where will the resources for your project come from? Do you prepare your arguments to win those resources?
Is your goal to implement at least one independent project a term?
How many of your fellow co-op students are launching independent projects?
How many of your managers are doing so? Do you notice who is getting promoted?
What are you waiting for?
What procedure in your organization has been in place the longest? Are you considering whether it should be replaced, updated or improved?
Do you evaluate the organization's technology to see where it may be upgraded?
What technologies or procedures are not being applied as effectively as possible? How much time do you spend thinking about these issues?
Do you methodically search for the information you need to address these issues. Do you decide who you should be talking to?
Do you discuss with your co-workers and managers what you have seen in the university's labs? Read in your textbooks? Heard from other students? Heard from your professors?
Do you consider how you might recommend changes at the lowest possible cost? Do you "sound" like you care about cost?
Do you practice aggressive time management, so you can have the time to perform your regular duties and make independent suggestions for improvement?
Or do you let your manager manage your time, too?
Have you identified the key innovations your organization has made over the past decade?
Do you discuss with co-workers and managers how these innovations were identified and implemented?
Do you ask aggressively about those that failed? Why they failed?
Do you identify at least several areas where your organization needs innovations? Who do you tell?
How many of these opportunities for innovations are you trying to solve yourself?
As you do so, do you always keep the customers' preferences in the front of your mind? Do you sound like you do in discussions?
Do you try to maximize your personal contact with your organization's customers?
As you try to create an innovation, do you always worry about the cost?
Is your personal goal at least one innovative suggestion a term?
Do you keep track of all the persons you have met in your work terms? Written records?
Do you use your own personal business cards to make sure that others do not forget you?
As you approach graduation, do you, if you have not yet done so, arrange to meet senior managers and executives?
In your last terms do you especially "prime" your network with respect to career plans A, B, C and D?
Do you tell everyone what you want to do with your life?
Of those you have worked with, have you identified those who will succeed and determined why?
Have you identified those who are likely to fail and determined why?
Are you determined to never repeat someone else's mistake? Never to waste a minute of your experience?