Beyond Academic Success: 3 Key Lessons

As Nepalese students around the U.S complete their final exams and papers, I wanted to share some important lessons I learned that helped me particularly in the early part of my professional career.

Academic success is important. Being from Nepal, we understand the importance of an education and getting an opportunity to study in America is definitely a privilege. Achieving success in school requires certain skill sets and achieving success in the professional setting requires a different skill set. I would like to talk about the skill sets necessary for the latter part.

In my experience, there are three valuable components to achieving professional success. They are: networking, having a mentor & being part of professional organizations. Schools and universities do not emphasize enough how important these valuable lifelines are to professional development and success.

At the national Ascend conference in late October of this year, I attended a session titled Dragon Ladies, Paper Tigers, Model minorities? Non Asian Perceptions of Asian Americans. It was very interesting to listen in and hear the challenges faced by Asian Americans trying to reach the highest echelons of American businesses. In a research study, it was shown that fewer than half (46%) of Asians have a mentor in their professional life. Also Asians, particularly Asian women are less likely than people of other ethnicities to share new ideas or challenge a group consensus in a team meeting. These observations made me share what I learned in my professional journey so others can learn from it or prepare accordingly.

Networking: Businesses do not hire grades, they hire people. While your grades do increase your chances of getting noticed and standing out in a pool of candidates, your networking skills play a huge role in creating opportunities like interviews, informational interviews, coffee chats etc. I cannot emphasize how important this skill set is. This is the single most important advice I would give to someone in school: get better at networking.

Having a mentor: Mentors will help you make important decisions related to your career and can guide you along your career path. Most schools have mentor-mentee programs and they are a great resource for anyone who is looking to get a step ahead of the competition. I am sure we can all find one or two people in our network that can be mentors whether they become our go to person in our professions, academic pursuits or other endeavors.

Professional organizations: Being part of professional organizations increases your professional network and keeps you updated on the industry. Holding a position in professional organizations further increases your chances to know speakers, hone different skills sets and boost your resume.

I have shared helpful links to the points made above in Parakhi Buzz Section. I also started a conversation at Buzz to further talk about challenges faced by Asians in moving up the corporate ladder in America and to share/talk about experiences which can help others avoid mistakes in the job market. Please continue this conversation there.

http://www.parakhi.com/blogs/2011/12/11/beyond-academic-success-3-key-lessons