This article was written by a freshman, Sean Taher, dedicated to Gen Y and Z. This was also presented at ID Talent Bootcamp, Telkom University, August 28, 2015. I hope this will help youth deciding their future destinations. To read more about this article, please visit writer's website.
I believe there are three success factors needed to start moving forward in life; High Quality of Education, High Quality Network & Personal Empowerment
1) High Quality of Education
Engage outside the subject
Your development and education must not be completely reliant on your teacher and text books. Engage in different activities that can help you develop your skills that can help you today and the future. Such as me right now, talking in here right now is not part of the curriculum but it helps me to present better in the future. You don’t need to learn economics only from a text book, you can learn it from just reading the newspaper. Knowledge is free and everywhere.
Focus on the process, not only the knowledge
The objective of learning is not to know more, but knowing how to learn and apply knowledge. When learning a theory in Economics, do not only look at how it works, but how did they come up with the theory in the first place. Keynes’s economic theory was based on an era where the markets was not functioning well without a government. Thus everyone supported this because the government at that time was active post-world war II. Do not just blindly accept knowledge as you must critically think why and how it happened.
Apply the knowledge
History has allowed me to build scenarios based on past events, and enabled me to anticipate bad times. Building contingencies for the bad times during the good times, in order to avoid poor quality decisions under a stressful situation. Your knowledge is a tool, not the answer.
2) High Quality Network
Create and Maintain
Creating friends and networks is not difficult as you go into workplace and school. But maintaining these relationship is the difficult challenge. Using LinkedIn and other social media to maintain these relationships as they will be your future opportunities.
Nothing is black and white, it is just shades of grey. Think with your brain, not your heart.
Be open minded as possible
This is to both people that you have known and just met. Ideas are created everywhere and must be shared. Just because he/she does not share the same view, it does not mean they are less intelligent than you.
Utilise your network
It is at this stage where most people have problems. Making many connections without using these networks to your advantage. This is not in a sense of exploiting, but co-operating to cover your weaknesses or blind spots that you may have in your work. Your connections are your support, just like your family.
3) Personal Empowerment
Own your decisions
After hearing advice and opinions of others both for and against, you must then form your own opinions and analysis of the choices that are available to you. Think about the impact of the decision, and don’t blame others when things go wrong, from this you will learn from the mistakes and failures that you have made. Self-assessment is key for enabling you to make better decisions, because success comes from failure.
Build your personal brand
There are many tools that can help develop your own image that portrays your strengths and skills to the global market. CVs are becoming more and more redundant as firms may are not getting the full spectrum and overview of yourselves. Take advantage of the social media in order to reach out greater network that extends outside Indonesia and your work place.
Write
Writing is an excellent form of communication. It makes you to be clear in your thought process; when you put words to a page you make commitment. It forces you to sharpen your communication skills, as there is no point being smart if you can’t communicate them. For better or for worse, English is the international language of the world. Most knowledge is in English, if you want to develop yourself you must have a working grasp of the language.