Career Design / Strategy with Daniel Porot

Daniel Porot has quite a unique teaching style~ he makes Microsoft Paint sexy again!

I had completely low to no expectations for last Thursday's Career Design / Strategy session. My previous experiences with HR-related seminars were that they were dry, monotonous or simply un-engaging. Dead wrong.

On Thursday I attended a workshop with Daniel Porot~ an expert at Career Design... who happens to be one of Europe's leading pioneers of Career Design and Job Hunting. He previous took his MBA in INSEAD, has taught there, has written a number of books and has trained over 77,000 individuals (like wow~ really).

In the movie Jerry Maguire, a povital scene involved the main female character saying "You had me at hello.". In the case of Daniel Porot, the magic happened the moment at the start of the class. He randomly asked people what their goals / ambitions in life were. And through his vast years of experience, he answered them... one-by-one. He made diagrams via Microsoft Paint... but yet it was personal. During this entire time, I looked at the expressions of the people he was talking to. You could see the change in their faces... because these things meant a lot to them. It was their dilemma. It was something that bothered them or something that they really cared about. After all, it was their future at stake.

And true enough, our facilitator shared what he knew best. It was awesome to see and experience him in action~ to share his collective experience and provide tailored feedback. It was enriching.

Zsofia shares her expectations of the workshop~ can she identify which industry to go to?

I took the initiative to ask a question~ after all, he's an excellent resource speaker and he surely must know his stuff! I asked about my own career path / target (working in the global office of my company) and how I can achieve it. His answer was clear and concise~ and it totally made the path for me much clearer.

Additionally, in another instance, I asked him how I could learn more about the video game industry (because it's just something that genuinely interests me). He threw the question back to class and asked people if they knew anyone in that industry... suddenly 5 people raised their hands (Rachel, Zsofia, Gwenn, Michael and Shalab). I was personally surprised. I was pessimistic that people in IE worked in this industry... and that I threw the idea away after I learned nobody worked in that field. But apparently, people in my school did know people who worked there~ and as it turns out, they know those people quite well. Like wow! And this method that our facilitator executed~ he managed to get me 5 contacts in less than 3mins. Amazing.

Gwenn asks Mr. Porot a question~

The session consisted of many different sharings on tactics on how to get your dream job and steps you can do to make it more achievable. I guess what made it really interesting was that some of the things he mentioned were pretty obvious. But for some reason, he had real clarity on such things~ that even people like us couldn't figure out even if it was something just below our noses.

A classmate of mine asked why was it that he always got offers for jobs he didn't like... but got rejected for jobs he really liked. The facilitator replied, "Maybe you are two different persons when you do your interviews. Maybe what you need to do is change your style from one interview and apply it to the other.". As vague as that sounded, it did make plenty of sense. Sometimes we'd realize that the best advice is honest and also an honest assessment of who we really are.

Marcelo assesses whether he really thinks the item he wrote truly makes him unique~

KS jotting down his answer. By the way, that's some muscular arm flexing goin' on bro!!!

Svenja casts her vote too~~~ 

Take 2~ Zsofia asks another question while, Anar and Michael, pay more attention to the camera! lol

We magically had 1.5 hours to have lunch... and so we have pintxos for lunch at La Barra~ just over at General Oraa!

"To get to the princess, you can go through the front. Or take the back door!"

One of the more interesting things I learned from Mr. Porot's session was "back-tracking" in order to achieve your goal. He was sharing that he once had a participant who was a professional golf player. He asked him his secret and how he managed to always score well in games.

The pro golf player told him that he would often start from hole 18~ then work his way to hole 1. He would always start from where the hole was... and try to figure out the path where his ball should come from. He shared that it was a useful way to see through the obstacles and take out any unnecessary steps in your approach.

Rita, Ulrich, Jan and Dominik discuss stuff as a group~

Getting a job is the same thing, he said. He stressed on the importance of how you can get to your goals by forging your path from the end. From there, we went through an exercise in which he asked groups to think of activities that you needed to think about the end, in order for you to figure out how to begin (some mentioned traveling, sailing or even marriage).

Honestly speaking, this workshop turned out better than I ever imagined. It essentially lasted from 9am - 5pm... but I barely felt time pass by. In fact, it passed by so fast. I must say, it was an interesting experience.

After the session, I approached Mr Porot and thanked him for his session. He asked me where I was from. When I said the Philippines, he shared that he once conducted a seminar in Tagaytay over 3 days. He mentioned he liked the place a lot (a classmate of mine was there beside me~ and I quickly explained what Tagaytay was like: the scenery, environment, food, etc). Anyway, that was an interesting Thursday.