kemals

On 11th of April 2019, I was given the opportunity to give a talk to the students of the Software Engineering at the Faculty of Polytechnic at the University of Zenica on the topic of “Career and expectations management in IT.”

It was my pleasure to do it in front of the students at the University in my hometown.

As part of the talk, I tried to share some of the lessons that I learned throughout my career so far. We spoke about the importance of volunteering as one of the ways to gain work-related skills besides the knowledge gained throughout Academia. I underscored the importance of formal education as it gives the framework which enables people to cope with the situations that are in front of their professional careers, as well the mental framework that allows students to learn and quickly adapt to ever-changing IT landscape.

Besides that, I tried to inform the audience about the importance of having mentors that can recognize the passion and hard work and steer people towards the right career paths.

Moreover, we spoke about interviewing: what the expectations are from the candidates, how to answer some the questions that candidates might be asked and how to get attention from the companies candidate might be interested in. Also, we spoke about the format of the interviews and how that is changing lately. Also, I ensured to mention how work is being evaluated at some of the companies that I worked with.

In the end, we spoke about the importance of configuring and ensuring proper working environment as well as maintaining the right balance between work and outside of the work activities. Most importantly, at the end of the presentation, I ensured to mention the importance of taking care of both physical and mental health.

Overall, it was my pleasure to speak with those young, enthusiastic group of people that emit such a good and positive energy. In many ways, they remind me of myself when I was younger.