During my first few months at UBC, I was intimidated by one group of people. It wasn’t the scary professors or the fourth-year students. It was my peers with LinkedIn profiles stacked from start to finish with accolades, prestigious internships, professional connections, and all-around put-together profiles that I found myself barely comparable to.
As I learned more throughout my first year of university, I was able to find some sense of security within my own accomplishments. This was the first step in noticing room for improvement on my resume. Opportunities within an institution like UBC are plentiful, and as I learned to make the most of the resources at my disposal as a student, I found that something like a stacked LinkedIn profile only comes from individual initiative.
Through the latter half of my first year, I found opportunities right underneath my nose with emails sent almost every day from campus services, my faculty’s career centre, and organizations putting out new roles. Following up with just one of these emails led me to begin a part-time Research Assistant role! There, I met an amazing group of driven, talented, and uplifting students with diverse experiences who were also looking to expand their professional backgrounds.
The connections I made from my Research Assistant role in my first year eventually led me to a work-learn position I hold currently, where I have met multiple professors from both across and outside the country with their own knowledge to share. Taking advantage of the services UBC provides, by just doing something as simple as following up on an email you would have ignored, can lead to opportunities aplenty. A standout LinkedIn profile thus doesn’t just come from luck, it comes from taking initiative.