{"id":862,"date":"2016-03-03T10:14:23","date_gmt":"2016-03-03T17:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/?p=862"},"modified":"2016-03-03T10:14:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T17:14:23","slug":"alumni-guest-entry-mel-gabanna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/alumni-guest-entry-mel-gabanna\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Guest Entry: Mel Gabanna"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I was always envious of people who ‘just knew’ what they wanted to do for a living and had a clear post-MM career\u00a0path to work towards. I had no idea what\u00a0I wanted to pursue and struggled with feeling like I had no purpose or intention in my job search. It wasn’t until Steven Fitzgerald (our fearless leader at Habanero Consulting, an IT Consulting firm) came to speak to my MM class in 2011\u00a0that I started to realize,\u00a0maybe it doesn’t really\u00a0matter\u00a0what<\/b>\u00a0I do. As Steven shared stories of Habanero and spoke about the culture and values that drive\u00a0the company,\u00a0I\u00a0vividly\u00a0remember\u00a0thinking to myself ‘that’s the guy I need to work for, that’s where I need to be’ without really knowing what Habanero even did. It was a big “ah-ha!”\u00a0moment for me\u00a0and I started gaining a lot of clarity about what was important for me in a career and what I valued in a workplace. I shifted my perspective from trying to figure out ‘what’ to do and focused on finding the right people and leaders to surround myself with – the right\u00a0‘who<\/b>‘.<\/p>\n

Jim Collins (smart guy, read his books) explains his version of\u00a0Who vs. What in this\u00a0little video clip, check it out\u00a0–\u00a0(Your Personal Hedgehog – Who vs. What\u00a0<\/i>–http:\/\/www.jimcollins.com\/media_topics\/all.html#audio=85<\/a>)<\/p>\n

“Far more important than what jobs you take early on is who you work for, and who your mentors are” – Jim Collins<\/p>\n

I would have\u00a0never predicted that I’d\u00a0end up working in IT consulting, but the amazing quality of\u00a0people I work with at Habanero and the feeling I get when I go to the office is exactly\u00a0what I was looking for.\u00a0 As it turns out, Habanero’s ‘what’ happens to be\u00a0super interesting to me, so that’s\u00a0a nice bonus.<\/p>\n

My advice to the MMs, especially those feeling a little lost in the job search as May starts to approach, is not to worry too much about figuring out the ‘what’ right now. That will continue to change and evolve as we go through our careers for years to come. If you’re ‘what’ is flexible, start hunting for an amazing ‘who’. They are harder to spot and take more work to find\u00a0so get out there and talk to people – network, network, network. And use the BCC as much as possible, don’t wait until graduation to\u00a0realize\u00a0how valuable those resources are!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

– Mel Gabanna, MM ’12<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was always envious of people who ‘just knew’ what they wanted to do for a living and had a clear post-MM career\u00a0path to work towards. I had no idea what\u00a0I wanted to pursue and struggled with feeling like I had no purpose or intention in my job search. It wasn’t until Steven Fitzgerald (our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32030,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1163088,255],"tags":[460,4977,691],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-guest-entries","category-careers","tag-advice","tag-alumni","tag-career"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32030"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":865,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/saudermmstudentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}