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The Ivey Career Management Podcast shares practical career advice, alumni insights, and expert perspectives to help Ivey students and graduates navigate their careers with confidence.
[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Welcome to the Career Management Podcast, where we bring you stories and strategies from students,
special guests and the career management team. As we get set up in the studio,
make yourself comfortable and let's get started. Today's topic is mental health and wellness.
Everyone has mental health and wellness and we all navigate our challenges differently.
Career management believes it's important to give voice to these topics
and here today to help me give voice to these topics is one of our very talented HBA2 students,
Berk. Hi Kate, thank you so much for having me talk about this important topic of mental health.
A brief intro about myself; I started in BMOS in my first two years specifically in consumer behavior route,
and then I knew I wanted to get into Ivey. I loved the case method pretty early on, and now I'm wrapping up my fourth year in HBA2.
Congratulations on being close to being done. That's very exciting!
Mental health and wellness are pretty big terms and can mean different things to different people.
What do they mean to you? Mental health to me as an Ivey student means the balance between academic and emotional fulfillment.
I kind of see this in three different stages for myself, the first one being setting boundaries.
I make sure to set boundaries for academic and non-academic time.
Finding that rest within the week, especially in busy weeks or high pressure exam seasons, can be super helpful.
Number two is taking care of yourself. Now this means a few different things to me.
Getting your eight hours of sleep is a game changer; it may not always be possible, but if it happens, you'll feel great the next day.
A healthy diet... this doesn't mean every day, it means as much as you can,
and of course, socializing. It's very important to be social.
If we're always into our academics. It can kind of take over us, and burnout is a real thing.
For sure. Have you always known those, those boundaries and those best practices for yourself, or is that something you've learned over time?
I think I've definitely learned this over time.
In my first year, the transition was massive, specifically because I was a COVID student in high school.
That means a lot of our courses were online.
We didn't have the most high level of education when compared to regular high school, and then transitioning to university,
first of all, it's a different method of learning, a larger amount of students in every lecture room,
so there was less attention...
It was a steep learning curve, but I think over the time I picked up on different methods and found out what worked for me best.
Fantastic. Before we get into the specifics of recruiting, what are your general strategies?
Of course. So I have 3 to 4 key strategies. Number one being physical activity.
That's always been a game changer for me. I've enjoyed it.
And this can be as little as taking a few steps a day, walking outside, but it could also mean maybe going for a nice run,
hitting the gym at the recreation center, or even for a swim if you want to feel refreshed.
My second tip is finding hobbies you enjoy outside of academics.
Now, I had one hobby in my first two years that many people might find strange, but I really enjoyed learning different flags.
I had a game on my phone and then I kind of got hooked on it pretty early, and I continued playing it and playing it,
and now I would say I know almost every flag in the world, which is pretty cool.
You'd also be great on a trivia team, Berk. Yes, hopefully.
Do people invite you to do trivia for that reason? I've tried trivia nights outside with my friends a few times and they were kind of surprised.
Okay, awesome. Well, and I'll keep you in mind, too. We always need a flag person.
Are there any other strategies you'd like to share? Yes. I think the final, most important strategy is having a support group.
Now, this support room-- support group can be filled with friends and family, peers, even professors and TA's.
Everyone at university, at Ivey, at Western is there to help you and make sure you connect with them,
because they are willing to help you get over any of the issues you may be facing during your academic journey.
Okay. Switching to the recruitment side of things, certainly from a coaching perspective,
we see how challenging recruitment can be for students, whether it be the stress of preparing for interviews,
the panic of having no offers, or panic of having multiple offers um,
getting to meet and know people, building that network from ground up, it can all be challenging.
What are some practical recommendations you have for students regarding recruitment?
Of course, recruiting! Uh, everyone's least favorite thing to do throughout their academic journey.
My number one tip would be to start early. A lot of the positions you're in, you may be interested in fill up quite early;
that means sometimes a year in advance, six months in advance, and you can always find out about these through Ivey's resources.
Another second tip is use LinkedIn and learn how to use it effectively.
Career management does a great job in helping to teach how to utilize it, but also peers maybe have more experience.
Through LinkedIn, you can see people who did positions that you're interested in, ask about how the interview process went,
and this all comes down for me to say "make coffee chats a norm".
Coffee chats can be awkward, and I've had several throughout the summer that were awkward, but it can also be super beneficial.
You can learn what a day to day looks like, how to succeed in your role, and maybe what next steps you can take to fill out the position.
And lastly, follow your interest. In my second year when I got my first internship, it was specifically tailored toward the data side of things.
I thought I was an analytical person, and then quickly after experiencing that, I knew it was not for me.
It was more slow paced than I would have expected,
so then near the end of that summer, my manager reached out to me and then said, "there's a very cool accelerator program".
Essentially, I got to build my product from scratch, and then I presented to over 500 employees in the bank.
I thought this was a great opportunity and it sounded more fast paced.
I applied, interviews like great, and I got the role, tested it out, and it was a great summer.
Very productive, very efficient. Super different. I knew that wasn't for me.
So that summer I continued coffee chatting.
I learned about various teams throughout the bank, all the way from strategy to investments and wealth management.
And then I met an individual who mentioned the risk side of the bank, and I haven't heard of,
many of the risks. I thought risk was very math heavy and I was like, maybe not something I'm too geared toward,
but then one of the managers told me about a position called Market Risk, this kind of balanced,
market fast paced-ness, but also the analytical side of the data from my experience.
So they told me there's a new grad opening. I applied, and then I learned more about the role.
I got the role, accepted it, and now I'm very excited to be starting in July.
Fabulous. I'm hearing some of our Life Design themes come up:
The "get curious" about what else might be up there.
"Talk to people" just about your interest, about what else might be possible and "trying it out", doing that
prototyping or taking on that internship to really lean in to... to what you're interested in and good at.
Very cool Berk. Yeah. What I'm hearing from you is that this is really a journey of self-discovery.
Even if you know what you like, you know what you're good at, you know what you're in for...
Um, as you try things out, that might change. Your interests
might change, you might discover new or different things that you're good at, and change isn't bad;
It's actually really normal. Yeah, I completely agree with that.
And one thing to remember as an Ivey student, failure is part of the journey.
I've gotten rejected several times when applying to roles I was interested in, I maybe knew that I wanted it so bad and didn't get it,
but you can always keep trying again. Trying does not hurt and you have to ask the questions if you want the answers.
That does mean reaching out to the right people; learning how to leverage your network, especially here at Ivey.
Everyone is super willing to help and you should definitely utilize it.
Berk, thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your encouragement with us today.
My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Kate. Thanks for watching.
If you'd like to see more of the podcast, check us out on your LEARN Career Management community.
You can also book a one on one appointment with us through 12Twenty Appointments tab, or come visit us in room 2235.
Take good care.