Things I didn’t say at grad

You may have heard that I’ve finally managed to graduate from university. You may also have heard that I got to make a speech at graduation. If you heard that speech, you may remember that it was only about three minutes long. The school set a strict time limit on how much I was allowed to talk, which is probably a good thing, because if they’d let me, I could’ve gone on for hours. Which would have been dreadfully dull for pretty much everyone except for me. And maybe my mom. She’d have eaten that shit up. Regardless, there are a few things I wish I could have gotten around to talking about. So even though I no longer have the stage and the definitely 100% rapt and not at all distracted attention of 3,500 people as I did earlier this week, I figured the next best thing would be to write those things down and put them on the internet.

Aight let’s do the damn thing.

If you’ve been following my instagram lately you’ll have noticed that I’ve been in Europe for the last month or so. If you thought, “Yuna what the fuck are you doing? You’re far too poor to travel this much”, you’d be absolutely right. (You may also think about me so seldom that you’re honestly kind of surprised to find yourself reading this post. That’s ok too.) But opportunity presented itself in the form of a job interview in Germany, round trip flights for which the company paid for. And I couldn’t help but extend my stay to do a quick little lap of some of my favourite cities and a couple more along the way.

This is how I found myself, sprawled on the buttery grass underneath the Eiffel Tower on a deliciously sunny day just a few short weeks ago, on the phone with the hiring manager, who proceeded to deliver some devastating news. I didn’t get the job. After months in the pipeline from application to screening to case submissions and finally, an on-site assessment centre all the way in fucking Bavaria, I didn’t get the job.

Past Yuna would have been reduced to tears, would have walked around with a melon-sized lump in her throat for the ensuing week, would have had her confidence so shattered you could have blown away the remnants like dust. But past Yuna was a lil bitch.

This isn’t the first time I’ve made it to the final round for a prestigious position, selected out of many hundreds of applicants, anticipation built with each interview round passed, only to be let down at the very last second (is it still a humble brag if it ends in failure? Discuss in the comments below). But it hurts a little less each time. If you’re reading this as a younger student (or like me, a fresh unemployed grad praying every time you run into someone that they don’t ask “so what’s the plan now?” because fuck, you haven’t got a fucking answer have you) currently deep in the throes of the job hunt, here’s what I’ll generously and gratuitously call my “wisdom” on the matter (if you’re an employed adult contributing member of society, feel free to click away now because you obviously have your shit far too together to be wasting your time reading this). First of all, I feel you. I know how much you want this and I know how hard you’ve worked. Because I’ve been there, so many times you’d think my nose would have been permanently bashed in from having fallen on my face so often. But know this – the farther you get in the process, the more the hiring manager is rooting for you. Because they’ve spent time and energy and resources getting to know you – they want that to not have been in vain. Why bother calling you for a phone screen if your resume was trash? Why interview you if your phone presence wasn’t great? Why sit you in front of managers or directors or partners or even the CEO if they didn’t truly have faith that you’d hold your own? By the final round, even if you don’t land the offer, even though the pain of rejection is far greater now than if you never heard back at all, you are good enough. I’ll say it again. You. Are. Good. Enough. At this stage, it’s not about how smart or qualified or charismatic you are. You are all of those things in spades, or you wouldn’t have made it this far in the first place. At this point, it’s about fit. It’s about the right person on the right team at the right time. And if they didn’t take you, that has no bearing whatsoever on your worth as a person. All it means is that it wasn’t the right fit at this very moment. Really, the company would be doing you a disservice by placing you in a position that wasn’t perfect. Their rejection isn’t about deeming you not good enough, or worse than the other candidates, or just an all-around failure, as past Yuna wholeheartedly believed; it’s deciding that you can add more value or be more fulfilled or pursue better opportunities – elsewhere.

Or so, I tell myself to numb the sting of rejection. Jk. Mostly.

In that vein, it is crucial to be authentic during your interview. I know the “just be yourself” line has been beaten to death but it’s actually so important. Companies are hiring for culture fit, and they’re hiring the person they interview. It’s like the best advice I’ve ever received on my portfolio. A few years ago I sat down with James White of Signalnoise , who makes his living drawing dope shit in iconic, signature styles. When I asked him about how he deals with balancing creative freedom with client briefs (a challenge I faced every day designing logos for Financial Advisors), he told me that he only puts work in his portfolio that he likes. Clients hire based on portfolios – if you only have work you enjoy in yours, they won’t ask you to do work you don’t. Likewise, if you put on some charade of what you think they want to see, that’s the person they’ll expect that they’ve hired. So even if you land the job, when you revert to your true self, you may find that you aren’t actually the right person for it. 

Of course, this entire spiel is predicated on the highly specific scenario in which you did make it to a final or close to final round. In some cases, you honestly just aren’t ready yet. Note that I say “ready” and not “good enough”. If your dream is to be an investment banker but your excel skills are abysmal, take some time to work on that and try again when you’re a hotkeys genius. Ask for feedback from your interviewer whenever possible and then ask for tasks or projects at work that will help you improve on where you’re lacking. If you don’t yet have a job, do a free online course or an independent project. Figure it the fuck out, you’re a goddamn adult. Then get back out there and knock ‘em dead.

“If u suck just practice until u don’t suck anymore” is, of course, not particularly novel, ground-breaking advice. The problem is that people often forget this part. Oftentimes we are conditioned to only attempt things that we are good at, and to immediately discount our ability when no prodigious talent emerges on the first try. So remember that sometimes these things take time, and to actually take that time before leaping to the conclusion that you just aren’t “good enough”.

If you attend or have attended the UBC Sauder School of Business, you have been the recipient of an exceptional, world-class business education. If you went to some other business school I’m sure that’s great too but hey I’m not your valedictorian so I’m not gonna make any assumptions about you or your degree. But as a Sauderite, you are competitive and employable as fuck. You don’t need to marry yourself to the first company that looks in your direction. You have the luxury of choice. You can afford to wait, to hold out for the right fit. You don’t have to (nor should you) squeeze yourself into a mould that wasn’t cast in your shape. Keep your chin up, keep putting effort in a purposeful direction, and the right opportunity will present itself when you’re ready. Seriously, it will.

I used to think I was so lucky. So lucky to be selected to sit on a women’s advisory council for the CEO of BMO. So lucky to have my work exhibited at international art shows. So lucky to have landed this job, or travelled to that country, or to have met a particularly amazing human. And I am. I am very, very lucky. But what I’ve come to realize is that the good things that happen in my life, seemingly out of sheer chance, are actually the result of my concerted effort in other areas. Had I not spent the time and energy to be involved at school, I wouldn’t have made an impression on the faculty-member who nominated me for this or that award. Had I not consistently worked on my art and put it out there, I would not have closed the dope illustration contracts that enabled me to turn my passion into a revenue stream. Had I not taken a chance on myself to try something scary and new, I would not have found myself seated in a fancy hotel conference room next to a person who later would become a close friend and mentor. So you see, I am lucky. Very much so. But through all the little bits of effort I put into my life, some of it subconsciously, I am able to manufacture my own serendipity. And so, I promise, can you. 

Moving forward, it’s important to remember that every job has its ups and downs and it’s wildly unrealistic to expect maximum fun always and zero tedium ever in your day to day. Especially as interns and fresh grads, sometimes we have to do our time and pay our dues. So while you may roll your eyes at data entry or photocopying and think to yourself “I did not pay that expensive business school tuition premium so I could sit here and kill trees all day”, remember that well, someone has to do it, and it sure as fuck isn’t gonna be the SVP. As the prodigal ~youth~, we have fresh perspectives, yes. We’re smart and quick learners and comfortable with public speaking, yes. But remember to balance your ~millennial wisdom~ with your superiors’ literal lifetimes of experience. This is not to say that you ought to thoughtlessly carry out all traditional conventions. After all, they hired you to add value, so don’t be afraid to ask questions and pipe up where you see opportunity for improvement. Just don’t be too heartbroken when your suggestion to move all the files! To the cloud! Isn’t immediately implemented to enormous applause.

Now is, however, the best time to be dumb and ask dumb questions. If you show up to your new job and are instantly killing it from day one, well congrats I guess, but chances are you won’t be challenging yourself, learning and growing as much as you could elsewhere. It’s not only ok, but highly normal, to fuck up in the beginning. Ask all the dumb questions you need to (after, of course, consulting any resources already at your disposal. Google is a great one). And ask for feedback from your managers regularly if that isn’t already an established practice. When I was at adidas, my manager was always abroad and busy being an important Senior Director or whatever. When I finally managed to sit down with him, he shed light on a whole host of things I was doing wrong that I hadn’t realized because I was just sending work out without hearing anything back. In my last few months I turned it around, worked hard on my weaknesses, and ultimately impressed the Global SVPs so much that they personally presented me with an obnoxiously large bouquet of flowers in front of the entire office at our year end town hall, unprecedented recognition for a lowly intern (this one is definitely a humble brag. Indulge me, it was a big moment. I cried and everything). Talk about a comeback. Today, they remember me for the effort I made to kill it in the end, not the stupid mistakes I made in the beginning.

If ultimately you find that you’re not learning and you’re not growing and you’re not being challenged in your current role, create opportunities for yourself. Ask for more responsibility, ask to run with an idea, advocate for yourself. At Holliswealth, I literally taught myself to code because logo design wasn’t filling my time and I saw a greater need for support in digital. Because of that initiative and the subsequent relationships I built, some of those Financial Advisors from four years ago are still my clients today. And if your superiors don’t bite, well at least you know what you’re specifically looking for in your next position and can watch out for red flags before you commit to something new.

And of course, there are many other kinds of failure that don’t involve employment or whatever. The point is, don’t let that discourage you. Treat every failure as a learning opportunity, take the time to reflect on why it happened (writing it down actually helps even though it feels kinda stupid at the time because what even is the difference between thoughts in your head and thoughts on paper but I promise it is different), and then make sure it never happens again. Yes, thank you, thank you, this has been Captain Obvious, and I’ll be here all week.

Alright well that has already been several thousand words too many so let’s slowly start to wrap this up, shall we? Last stretch – gratitude time.

I thanked some people in my speech but it was nowhere near close to the full extent of gratitude I have for the people without whom I wouldn’t be who I am, where I am today. There are many, many more than the following (you probably know who you are), but these people are extra special and deserve a public shoutout by name. If this were the Oscars the music would have come on to usher me offstage by now but this isn’t the Oscars it’s my damn blog so I’m gonna take my sweet time. In no particular order, thank you thank you thank you to:

Mrs. Forman for being the first person to ever give me constructive criticism instead of just blowing smoke up my precocious seven-year old ass like all the other elementary school teachers who were too thrilled that I understood math the first time they explained it to be bothered with any of my shortcomings.
Mme. Kippan, Mme. Grant for teaching me French. 
Anna and Rick for inspiring me every day (I am so so proud of you) and for giving me a reason to set a good example (though don’t follow too closely in my footsteps). 
Lan for standing beside me for 15 years (and many more to come). 
Marcus for, despite my many deep flaws, only ever seeing the best in me. 
Emily for reminding me to recycle. 
Olivia, Michelle, Darya for being my ride or dies since day one.
Mr. Callister for almost ruining my life by tricking me into thinking I wanted to go to med school.
Bob, Tim, Marie, Jay, Paul, Tony for making me excited to go to class.
Jess, Cole for being my biggest cheerleaders long before I learned to believe in myself. 
Grace, Daniel, Sunny for your unconditional love and support.
Chloe for taking me on my very first adventures around the world. 
Nicole, Alvin, Ollie, Alan, Cat, Gordon, Yena, Kimmie for making Hong Kong feel like home.
Al3x, Grazielle, Scott, Alex for making it fun to come home.
Kim, Renée, Jack, Pak Lun for being the best managers I could ask for, for showing me the kind of people I want to work with, and for reminding me to never settle for less.

And of course, Mom, for everything.

Well done everyone, we’ve made it to the end of this very long-winded rant. Thanks for sticking with me, kids, I know it’s been a trip. Sauder, it has been an immense honour and pleasure to walk the halls and finally, the stage with you talented, funny, intelligent, and honestly, extremely attractive people. Like I said on that stage, we will make waves in organisations and communities. We will shift entire industries. Some of us will even change the world. And I can’t wait to watch us do it.

Congratulations, Class of 2018.

P.S. If you missed my speech and for some reason have so aggressive an amount of time on your hands to waste that you figure you might spend it watching me talk, you can do so here, or here, or here (yes I had to do it three times for three separate ceremonies). I start roughly around the 40 minute mark.