Career Charting: Lessons from Jen Melton's Seminar

As a student wishing to work in the advertising sector, I recently had the opportunity to attend a session by Jen Melton, a Group Account Director at Saatchi & Saatchi. Her presentation was jam-packed with useful material that, in my opinion, will have a significant impact on the course of my career. In this reflection blog, I'll go over Jen's primary themes and how they relate to my personal and professional development. I earned a bachelor's degree in human resource management in 2018 and graduated. Soon after earning my degree, I started working for a staffing firm that provided customers from various sectors with the workforce they needed. I began working there as a trainee and within six months advanced steadily to the positions of recruiting executive and team leader. Since I was a trainee, I did not anticipate them to offer me a raise this early in my career. However, based on my performance, I was given the chance to deal with clients, which was extremely new to me. I was originally performing poorly compared to other trainees during the first two months. I sought feedback on my performance from my manager because I was feeling really demotivated and wanted to know where I was falling short. She provided me with comments in a very considerate manner and was quite direct. "I was very disorganized when it came to maintaining data sheets, which causes a lot of confusion for myself when contacting candidates or clients," she said. As a consequence, I lose the applicants and cause misunderstandings with the clients. As a result, it hindered my performance and prevented me from completing the job. I responded to this criticism in a really positive way, and the next day I set out to organize my data. Within a month, I was able to meet my goals; in fact, there was one month in which I produced the billables for three months, an accomplishment for which I received praise from our company's director. Following the conclusion of my degree here in Canada, when I begin my job hunt, I will look for an organization with the following organizational culture and values in my first position:

First and foremost, I want diversity and inclusion in the workplace because they foster a productive atmosphere for employees.

promoting equal chances for workers and refraining from acting unfairly against any one employee in particular.

Most significantly, a business that promotes work-life harmony.

The methods I would take to determine organizational culture and values are as follows: I would conduct in-depth research on the firm I am applying to throughout the job search process. There are several platforms available today that allow workers to publish reviews of their workplaces. Glassdoor offers insightful information offered by both current and previous workers.

Another option to network with workers and learn about the company culture is through LinkedIn networking. I have to follow my instincts and trust them in the end.