Saturday (8/5) Office of Cooperation, International Affairs, and Alumni (OCIA) held an event with the theme “Professional Personal Branding 101 Career Readiness”. This event is an edition of the regular segment of OCIA Pengen Ngobrol, which is a webinar event that invites alumni professionals from the Faculty of Psychology UGM to share their experiences in the world of work.
The event took place from 14.00 WIB until 16.15 WIB. This event was attended by 75 participants, the majority of whom are prospective graduates of psychology degree from the Faculty of Psychology UGM.
This time the OCIA Wants to Chat event brought two alumni of the Faculty of Psychology UGM. The first speaker was Irvandias Sanjaya S.Psi. This young entrepreneur who has experience working in several large companies and is also the Co-founder & CEO of Design For Dream brought material about “Online Professional Personal Branding”. Then the second speaker was Yosepha Sistine S.Psi. This Senior Acquisition at XL Axiata brought a material entitled “Career readiness: Improve your CV and Motivation Letter”.
Personal branding in this era is very important. But there are still many people who put that aside. On this occasion, Irvandias explained clearly the reasons why we must have personal branding in this era.
“Maybe if we go back in the 90s when we talk about brands, we tend to focus on brands, such as Nokia or Apple. But now, we too can grow as our brand. That’s why people come up with the stigma of being an influencer, as a youtuber and so on. Because, yes, he is a corporation for himself and may generate profits as a return for what he does on a daily basis,” explained Irvandias.
Furthermore, Irvandias explained a lot about how to build personal branding through Linkedin. He explained about how to create an attractive and effective personal branding. He wanted to share the experience of creating a profile on Linkedin which led to him getting the 2018 Linkedin Power Profile Award.
In the second session, Yosepha, who has experience in the field of human resources, discussed a lot about how to make a good and effective curriculum vitae (CV) and motivation letter. This is very important for prospective undergraduates who will soon go to work.
When large companies open job vacancies, the CV of applicants who enter can reach thousands. Therefore, recruiters do not have much time to read the entire contents of the applicant’s CV. Usually only screening for approximately 7 seconds per CV.
“Therefore, we need our CVs to be able to stand out to create opportunities to be well deliverers from the position we are currently applying for,” explained Yosepha.
There are some general criteria for making a great CV. Yosepha explained that there are several general CV criteria that can stand out when entering a company. The criteria include being open strong, sharing accomplishments, being selective, and making it simple & readable.
“So if you make a CV, the 15 to 20 words that you write at the beginning of the CV are very crucial to determine whether the recruiter will look at your CV in detail,” explained Yosepha.
The event went quite smoothly. The presenters were also quite interactive by answering all the questions from the event participants. The event committee hopes that this event can inspire prospective Psychology graduates to remain enthusiastic in facing all the demands that exist in the world of work.