Juan, MAcc'18
“My educational experience at the Goddard School has improved my career prospects significantly.”
WHY WEBER?
I'm from Uruguay from a small city called Rivera located on the border with Brazil. I have 6 siblings. I studied 2 years of accounting before coming to the US. My wife and I decided to come to have the experience of studying and working abroad.
I transferred to Weber from LDS Business College because I heard from a former student how good the professors are and the student-oriented environment. I was surprised by these characteristics and I saw it while talking with the staff before applying.
WHY A MASTER OF ACCOUNTING DEGREE?
I finished my Bachelors in Accounting back in August 2017 and now I'm finishing my MAcc in April 2018. I always knew I wanted to do something with numbers. I decided to do accounting because it was related to business and because it would allow me to learn more about the information that companies generate. I saw this as a valuable knowledge for any career.
HOW DID GODDARD'S CAREER SERVICES IMPACT YOUR JOB SEARCH?
I read the emails that I got from them and I started to use the new tool called handshake. I completed my profile and then saw how good that tool is for searching jobs that match my skills and characteristics. Therefore, I applied for several positions that I liked and got called for an interview. I saw that one company that I had applied had a spot on the industry night and that they had a presentation event the next day. I went to both meetings and talked with the people representing the firm. This experience allowed me to make an impact and to present my skills and desire in a more direct interaction.
INCREDIBLE ACCESS
I had several great experiences with professors and staff. I was amazed at the willingness that every professor and staff have to listen to your concerns and to give you their best advice. I saw that every interaction with them served as a building block that helped me shape my career objectives and allowed me to invest in the skills that I saw would have a big impact in my chances to be noticed.
One of the most valuable experiences was related to my doubt of doubling my efforts on learning more data analytics skills or to stick with the accounting core knowledge. In one of the several discussions that I had with Dr. Randy Boyle, I learned that my accounting knowledge made my programming and data analytics skills more valuable. So I focused on searching for positions with those emphases and changed drastically how my resume looked like. This had a direct impact on how I thought my job search would be.
ADVICE
Take advantage of having experienced professionals in career services and excellent professors at Weber and try to use their office hours to learn from them in conversations and on one on one interviews. Listening to their career experiences and also talking about your goals and career prospects with them allows you to learn from their insights and opinions. They helped me to see my strengths and how to adapt my message better. Also, go to the meetings and events made to make connections, these are opportunities to meet professionals in your field.
No one knows your potential until they meet you and talk to you. You have to be in the right spot to present them why they need to hire you or why they need to find you a good contact for a job opportunity. I learned to be bold and to be direct when asking for an interview opportunity or a contact. Everybody knows that you are studying to get a job after that, don't be afraid to ask for contacts or for interviews, that's how opportunities are made.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
I'm finishing the last semester of the MAcc program. I will start the job as soon as I finish the MAcc. I'm currently reading white papers regarding my new job and reading books regarding Big Data analytics. My educational experience at the Goddard School has improved my career prospects significantly.
The experience of the professors and the quality of their programs has increased my confidence in the knowledge gained and has helped me see how I can apply these daily. I learned that if you focus your efforts on building your own knowledge bag by talking with professors and by pro-actively studying the class content you will see that in just a matter of months your knowledge gets doubled and you will sense more confidence in your professionalism.