TRANSCRIPT
Xonana Scrubb:
So my first touchpoint with career services was right in the beginning of the school year. I came into school with an exploding job offer. Not something I particularly recommend, but it was a great opportunity. I was really torn because as a first-generation grad student, first-generation college student, I've never really sat down and actually took the time to really think about okay, Xonana, this is what you're good at, this is what you want to do. Instead, it's been just a series of, I've had a great career, but it was more serendipitous. And I really want to be intentional coming into business school.
Harvard offers career coaching from the time you become a student here. So I signed up for my coach, his name is Doug, he's amazing. And in our first session, he just had me talk through the experience I've had professionally. And so we sat down, went through my story. I was able to tell him the things that I liked, the things that I didn't like, some of the greatest experiences I've had at work, some of the not-so-great experiences I've had at work. And we then were able to drill down and distill what would be some of the general types of things I'd be looking for in a future career.
That was immensely helpful. I ended up not taking the offer that I had, and instead I decided to do on-campus recruiting. At this time, I was freaking out, honestly, because I just turned down a great job offer. I'm here. Yes, I'm at HBS but at the same time, we're in a pandemic. I didn't really know what was going to happen. And he was really, really great at calming me down. I would just get on Zoom and essentially have a little meltdown, and he would just be like, alright, girl, you'll be fine. And I ended up actually doing on-campus recruiting to find my internship.
Harvard Business School's career services department is extremely helpful. Whether you're having a freak-out moment or you just need to talk through some options that you're dealing with, they're really there and they're really supportive.