Master Your MBA Journey: Key Insights from the MBA Career Essentials Week

Within the first month of arrival on campus, HEC Talents, our career center, helps MBA students become better prepared to approach companies. They offer workshops in everything from networking and CV writing to personal branding and interviewing skills.

The Career Essentials is a weeklong series of 10 mandatory workshops that arm MBA students with a successful strategy to not only land an internship or full-time job but also to achieve their long-term career goals.

“Remember that each of you brings unique experiences and backgrounds to the MBA program, which will shape your individual career journeys,” Career and Corporate Development Manager Pooja Prabhushankar told students during a recruitment lecture. “Take the time to understand and identify your core skills and build on them as you tread a meaningful new path.”

The lecturers were very relatable, given where the students are in their journeys, and they helped us to present our best selves to the recruiters, said Zainab Arilesere, MBA ’26. 

“It’s very inspiring because it’s helping me to have a better understanding of my goals,” said Luis Dominguez, MBA ’26. “The Career Essentials Week has been awesome and has helped me to better understand myself, what motivates me, and how to take ownership and responsibility of my future decisions: What’s next? And what are my biggest passions?”

More than anything, the biggest takeaways were from doing a lot of introspection, said Joji Anaghan, MBA ’26. “The workshops provided an avenue to structure our thoughts and discuss them with our peers. It created a sounding board for us to think about our futures in a such a way that brought out a lot of insights.”

Hirofumi Ishida, ‘MBA 26, redirected his career focus thanks to the Career Essentials workshops. After meeting one-on-one with his mentor and discussing his previous work experience, he decided to switch his path from technology to healthcare. 

Prior to joining the HEC Paris MBA program, Hirofumi’s wife became sick and struggled to get access to necessary medicine. “I want to provide good medicine to patients. My wife went to five to six hospitals before she was able to get good medicine,” Hirofumi said. “In Japan, when patients go to the hospital, it’s rare for a doctor to give good medication because they have a lot of tasks. Doctors talk to patients 1 to 2 minutes. I want to help doctors to create time with their patients to provide good treatment. I want to help them work efficiently.” 

Hirofumi said his hope is to work in product management for the commercial line to improve the patient experience.

“The seminars were beneficial for me because I got a big picture of my career for A, B, C, and how to develop my career using the strategy HEC Talents taught me. I realized what I want after the MBA.”

A Brief Summary of the 10 Career Essentials Workshops

• Know Yourself Foundations – Find clarity in your personal or professional path. Learn to identify your core values and aspirations, transferable skills, and career interests.

   

• Impactful CV Writing – Learn how to adopt a self-marketing approach to write a CV, apply insights from research on the evolvement of skills in the workplace and adjust your CV following peer feedback.

   

• What’s Your Superpower? -  Discover your unique strengths and learn to effectively communicate your personal brand through storytelling and impactful pitch development in this dynamic workshop.

   

• Network for Success – Learn useful principles of networking, timesaving tips to create and maintain your network, and make the most of networking opportunities.

   

• Understand the MBA Recruitment Environment – Learn the importance of being proactive, well-informed, and adaptable to the evolving job market.

   

• Intro to Career Strategy – Define your career plans and make a list of actionable steps needed to move forward with your plans and ideas and templates on how to manage the process. 

   

• Digital Bootcamp – Unlock the power of the digital world with practical insights and essential skills for various careers in this action-packed bootcamp.

   

• Case Cracking Foundations – Train for case interviews by identifying the main steps, learn which skills are tested during the process, and learn the main elements of an effective program.

   

• Fast Track Your Professional Success with LinkedIn – Implement key steps to have a spotless LinkedIn Profile and master the art of networking.

   

• Master Interview – Learn the basics of job interviews and master it: golden rules for interview success, differing interviewing techniques for phone, video conference, in person, group and assessment center settings.