Second Semester 2021-2022 Work Immersion / Culminating Activity
Career Plan JOURNAL Third Quarter Performance Task
Lou Marcial M. Cuesta HUMSS 12-B
PATR
EVAN
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IA IC
ISTA, 2
with the awareness that even if we’re afraid, we don’t tell our stories alone. 02
1
RESUME
APPLICATION LETTER
INTERVIEW
with a
MEE L TE I
Professional Name of the Interviewee: Elias M. Cuesta III Age: 26 years old Profession: Medical Delegate / Territory Manager (Supervisor Level) at Nestlé Philippines Years of Service: 2 years and 6 months
1. How did you get in this position? Connection. A really good friend from college got hired first at Nestlé, and when a job opening appeared to be Bacolod-based, he referred me to his superiors.
2. Do you do any professional development? Yes, the company would always encourage us to enroll in skill classes, both business and personal trainings. These classes are expensive, with instructors hailing from Ateneo De Manila University’s Graduate School of Business. It is part of the company’s perks to enroll us into these development classes for free.
3. What skills did you develop early in your career? Early on in my career in territory management I learned how to specialize in budgeting and finance, time blockings, and routing. Alongside these, my communication skills were really pushed to the limit as I had to face a diverse set of clients in the medical field.
4. What’s the best thing about your job? I get to do what I love and get paid for it such as talking non-stop, eating out, traveling, and conducting events. Not to mention, the perks of having a company-paid car and great benefits for my family.
5. What advice do you have for someone new to the industry? “Rome was not built in a day.” The industry I am in is all about building partnerships and maintaining relationships. This entails networking that would have to marinate over long periods of time with consistent efforts, and I have to keep up with the progress I’m making towards my clients. These types of outcomes simply do not happen overnight.
6. Who and what inspires you to continue your work? Cliché as it may sound, it is my family. At the end of the day, I want to provide a good life for them. Additionally, I have my personal goals like investing on a house. All of this inspiration is fueled by the thought that I am part of a very prestigious company.
7. What organizational challenges have you faced at your company/work? One particular challenge I have to face in my line of work is the constant change in the ways of working. There are always new adjustments and approaches that needs me to be flexible enough, depending on the trend of the market and the sales output. This is more so heightened when the pandemic struck.
8. How do you maintain work-life balance? The best advice I got from one of my clients is to “always put a period at the end of your day, not a comma”. With this advice, I got to mentally build boundaries between work and life, and how to manage them without overstepping between each other. Personally, I always reward myself first in any way I can, and with the mentioned boundaries, I also remind myself to be professional when work calls for me.
9. How do you do handle workplace disappointment? Honestly, I work best when I am challenged and pressured because I know I can use it as a leverage for myself to attain higher roles in the workplace. I simply remind myself that all the tough breaks were given for a purpose, and that these were specifically gifted to me to make be better and to give myself a chance on redemption.
10. What is your greatest success while you are working? My personal successes include making new friends, having a wider perspective of things, building new connections, and being more mature.
Insights from the Interview While conducting this interview, knowing this is my brother whom I’m talking to, I had to objectively see his responses. With that, I gained knowledge on how much mental tenacity it takes to be in a world of business, especially one that requires highly competent interpersonal skills. In his line of work, Mr. Elias really knew how to play his cards well by utilizing his big-worded mouth as a weapon to be more efficient with his outputs. This enlightened me to do same, and with that I have to learn how to separate my strengths and weaknesses, and to use the former as a tool in my future line of work in economics and developmental work. Additionally, I also learned that Mr. Elias always had a good grasp on his needs and wants, and that prompts him to be wise in dealing with his goals. He simply never let go of taking care of himself, and he had time to reward his good work as well as, his family. With all the said, I aspire to become a good working man like my brother who always envisioned a big, bold future for himself.
Chosen Career Before anything else, full disclaimer, that I am the type of person who dreams big and dreams a lot. For the longest I could remember, I never really had one, solid answer whenever my peers or teachers brought up the cliched, “What would you like to be when you grow up?”. When I was seven years old, I told my parents I wanted to be the person who stood by the grocery door and greeted people a good morning. When I was in 2nd grade, my brother had a book about architecture and I was highly fascinated by the intricate drawings of beautiful houses, and I decided that was for me. When I was in 4th grade, I got elected as our class mayor, and from there on, I never really thought of my future career, because I had been sucked into the school spirit. I simply didn’t have the time. Luckily, with the pressures of college looming over me and the opportunity of reflection posed by a year in lockdown, I had finally dwindled down my future prospects into two paths—each overlapping with each other but at the same time, distinct and unique. Join me in this mini article as I lay down my future roadmaps.
ON BEING AN ECONOMIST A little background on this path would take us back to the factual item that I was never good at math, and until now I simply am not the best when it comes to numbers and equations. Hence, for a student like myself, to sit down in my 9th grade economics class, faced with numbers but thrive off of it, was more or less life-changing. During my time learning the most basic concepts in this social science field, for the first time, I wasn’t daunted by numbers because the data we worked with had stories. The implications of inflation, the power of the peso, and how the agricultural sector would be affected by a certain fiscal policy, all of these were numberbased dilemmas that I lived through or seen day-to-day, and that lived experience made me fall in love with economics. To be able to empirically solve issues ranging from a small household to a whole new nation made me giddy because as a leader—9 years in the making—I felt I discovered an avenue to concretize my vision of a better Philippines. To become a professional economist, may it be
through research work, becoming part of the legislative body, or being a published author, surprisingly made sense for a guy like me who disliked numbers. With this career path I am able to challenge myself constantly to see beyond the numbers and to help in development work. I am inspired to aim for a better nation, for the people by the margins—to use my knowledge to create concrete solutions towards existing, systemic problems. ON BECOMING A LAWYER This profession has always seemed to be the default among my peers’ recommendations. As a student I’m always the type to be comfortable enough with public speaking and debating, the one whose opinions always had to be heard with enough conviction. This is why pursuing law, specifically human rights law, is also a plausible dream of mine. Just like how my years as a student leader developed me to want to work in the discipline of economics, so is law. On top of that, my time as a campus journalist really enabled me to be highly aware of various social issues rampant in our country, and my opinions were always valued
CONTINUTATION
WHY NOT BOTH? To be quite honest, this is the hidden third path that I am willfully driving head first into. As a person, I’ve always prided myself to be a jack of all trades, but this time I want to be a master of two. The concrete
and logical steps on achieving both becoming an economist and a lawyer would be in my undergraduate course because I’m planning to take up a double degree in both political science and economics. After college, I aspire to work at NEDA or any government agency that requires an economic specialist. In the same vein, I do not mind spending a chunk of my post-college years trying out being a journalist in companies like Rappler to produce analytical pieces made
Perhaps, that is enough of my plan at this tender age of 18. I simply am still open to the multiple possibilities of where my professional life could take me, but for all I know, I am highly excited to land where I belong. I am ready for this road map I’ve paved for myself.
GE TO F SA
URE H U M
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for the newsroom. All the while, I plan to earn enough to be able to sustain myself in the proceeding steps which is to go to law school.
UT
Hey There, Humanista
ISTAS AN
in the written pieces I put up. So for me, should becoming an economist suddenly get lost in the way, practicing law would always feel second nature to me as a person.
To you, who’s hopeful for humanity, I applaud your bravery to take up this strand. You’re standing now at one of the many crossroads of life. To choose where you feel you belong is a daunting task because how could we ever know at the age of 16/17? We’re barely grasping the fluxes of adolescence but here we are, forced to take a strand that would dictate, not only the next two years, but the remainder of college until your professional lives. In this little letter of mine, I’m not here to dictate reasons why you should choose Humanities and Social Sciences because when I was at your position, I barely knew what pushed me here. For all I know, I simply knew I was half-decent in writing and I couldn’t solve mathematics, so here I am. Instead, I’m here to spread a message of hope; a love letter I wish I would’ve given junior high school me about how being a Humanista changed my life one way or another. Being a Humanista means you enter this world on equal footing with the brightest, most outspoken minds. Everybody here has their advocacies and their hugots towards society from a national scale to something individualistic. You’ll meet kids your age who know more about geopolitics and the harms of capitalism, and pupils who can name all personality types and their implications. Yet here I was, and perhaps here you are, wondering where you would fit into this picture. But I tell you, you belong here. The work of a humanista does not start with the social sciences or with art appreciation but by loving people and all their faults. You’re here because of that, and you might not know it now, but eventually you will—just like I did. The charm of most humanistas is their drive to make situations better for other people, more than themselves. Look at the classmate sitting next to you, who probably has deep traumas but aspires to become a psychologist to help others first with theirs. To your right, you have the most argumentative lad who can spit bullet points in 7 minutes but not to make themselves feel good, but to ensure the sentiments of those who aren’t present in the room can at least be heard through their voices. Being a humanista made me fall in love with humanity all over again. It brought me a mind set wherein I was hopeful that things could still be better; for my community, for the Philippines, and for the rest of the global village. I am soon to graduate with the gravity of this strand. But beyond the expectations, there are simply enlightenments on my end: of learning how to listen, of understanding people by the margins, and of the powers of the self against all odds. Dear future humanista, you will learn all of these and more. And I can’t wait for you to fall in love with people and yourself all over again, as well.
HIN YT ER EV
UALLY CONNEC VENT TS . GE E VE R Y TH I NG HIN G
NG EVENTUALLY Y TH I C VER .E
ON NE C TS .
T EN V E
EV EN T
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CONNECTS. EVERYT
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CO LY Y LL A U
S. EVERYTHING EVE ECT NT N UA N O L C
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Career Talk RUNDOWN
Dr. Rowela Chiu
Whenever we’re faced with the dilemma of what’s the next step, our minds try to cheat its way through. However, Ms. Cruz reassures us that there are no shortcuts to the road map of life, and it is through sheer perseverance that we can move forward alongside our dreams. She sets out as a parental example that supporting us, adolescents, to take whatever we want as our future career is the healthiest way to approach the dilemma. Additionally, she highlights that to whatever path we intend to take, we must stick to it by hard work and determination. This would eventually lead us to make concrete outcomes from our wishful dreaming.
Opening our perspective is one of the most daring yet fulfilling things we could in prospect to our future chosen career. A lot of the times we think we’re out to fulfill some sort of predestined path but reality can surprise us. Just like Dr. Chiu’s experience, her leap of faith was fueled by passion to take a vocational path in teaching. This inspires me to discover first and foremost the interests and hobbies that fuel me to further my story, no matter what others might think, because after all, my future career has to be one I love doing.
Ms. Carlvina Cruz
Ms. Marijoy Gaduyon
Ms. Gaduyon’s story tells me that our future career life has no handbook, and that’s okay. When she was thrown into the deep end of taking up a course she has no idea about, and landing her first career in a setting she’s unfamiliar with, she took these adversities as opportunities to discover more of what her calling had been. This enlightens me to take a deep breath whenever planning my personal career map becomes overwhelming. The greatest lesson I learned from her talk was to take my time but no matter what, I have to keep moving and to keep my thirst to learn.
Dr. Ricver Ureta Loving your work makes it all worthwhile, especially in the ministry of education. This statement rings especially true with Dr. Ureta’s segment. With a special highlight towards education, he assures the group that becoming a teacher is a profession of eternal love. Ironically, it’s the type of career that enables us to become students all over again because
his teaching principle is that of a two-way street. Between these two points, I’ve become inspired to perhaps take a shot at working within the academe because it is a vocation that would last for a long while. The rewards do not merely come from monetary compensation, rather it’s in the vocational duty to touch hearts and transform lives.
Atty. Dorsey Caratao One of the major points I garnered from Atty. Caratao’s juncture was that of compassion and support, and while proceeding into law, these two attributes would be crucial to become effective in this legal profession. Personally, I was touched by this sentiment because I hold it dear in my heart that should I become a lawyer, I would want to be a lawyer
for the people. Atty. Carato advises us to become empathetic—learning how to support others’ situations and in return this system would support you back. This would translate very well in becoming a defender for human rights because it takes a great deal of heart and grit to pursue justice nowadays, and Atty. Caratao best exemplifies that.
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