My Job Shadow Experience

Luckily, I had a chance to visit a company’s global headquarters during the spring break this year. I shadowed with the Global Information Technology team and Internal Audit team. Truth be told, the whole experience was unforgettable, and I learned lessons that possibly would never be learned at school.

The path to career success is not always straight. To find the one thing that you really love is very important.
While talking with the IT Director, he told me that he used to be in different positions before his current position. Sometimes, we unconsciously limit ourselves because we are trying so hard to follow the mainstream demand of the society, or only focusing on the areas that fit into our majors. However, life is unpredictable. There is seldom a straight path to the success of our career. After graduation, our job will be a major part of our life. No one wants to spend eight hours a day, five days a week on something that we don’t even love. More importantly, it will be very difficult to achieve success if we are not enjoying what we are doing. Therefore, it would be a better idea spending more time discovering what you are really interested in, than follow the rest of your peers.

The role of teamwork.
It’s self-evident that teamwork is extremely important when it comes to team projects, but I didn’t realize the real-life meaning until then. I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to join in a phone call conference with different parties from Europe simultaneously. The purpose of the phone call was to discuss about the process of a major on-going multi-million IT project. The work is very challenging due to the goals of the project itself, the number of people involved, and the culture and language barriers. Without effective teamwork, not to mention about such multi-million global project, even a department-wide project could fail miserably.

Flexibility and adaptability.
In terms of the company’s internal audit department, young auditors are required to rotate from one factory to another and from one department to another. From the perspective of managers, they can have an opportunity to assess young auditors and place them in the correct places. For young auditors, before they finally become competent auditors, they need to know the organization and its activities as well. With that being said, they need to have strong flexibility and adaptability. Such abilities are often desired by many other different industries. Other than the skills and specialties required by a particular job, we should also know how to manage our time, and to adapt to new environments and situations. Those abilities can not only help us in our career, but also in our life.