Jessica, a Retail MT, gives her best piece of advice for differentiating yourself at interview or assessment centre stage and drums home a key message from the Leadership theme – take every opportunity to take the lead!
Leaders can take many different forms, including those on the HSBC graduate scheme. A leader is described as someone who can get all to follow a common task for some common goals. So what can you do to be prepared for leadership within our schemes? More...
In the first of our ‘You Ask, We Answer’ monthly features, the Graduate Blog Team answers all the questions that have been sent into us over the last few weeks. If you have got a question about HSBC, or graduate applications in general, and would like to have it answered by our team then simply email it to graduate.blog@hsbc.com and we’ll feature it in next month’s ‘You Ask, We Answer’.
If you do have any questions about the application process, be sure to check out the FAQ page on the graduate careers website (http://jobs.hsbc.co.uk/graduates/faqs.aspx) for answers to many of the most frequently asked recruitment questions!
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In this blog, Sean from the Operations Leadership program looks to the World of football for clarity on what makes a great leader. An Arsenal fan who declares Sir Alex the best manager and puts light praise towards a Tottenham star, the key message is to look to lead in every situation you find yourself and not wait for somebody else to take the reigns.
Who are football’s great leaders? Who is football’s greatest leader? What is a leader?
It is easy when looking at leadership to think of the boss, the manager the decision maker, but looking into something such as football, it becomes less clear who the leader is and furthermore if such a role specifically exists. More...
In this post we are continuing our series on employability; and we invited Danyal to share his thoughts and experiences with us. Danyal is a current graduate on the Executive Management Trainee programme, currently based in Manchester Corporate Centre on his second placement.
Danyal shares some really key points about improving your employability, including effectively using the careers service at your university to your benefit. Also, as has been highlighted throughout our employability series, Danyal stresses the importance of gaining relevant work experience; explaining how the year long work placement he completed helped him to secure a job offer.
The key message from Danyal is to always remember that your fate is in your own hands; you can make yourself more employable and you can be successful in securing your ideal graduate job.
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Employability is a truly global concept. Job markets are no longer restrained to one country; they are now global. Therefore, businesses now have the opportunity to attract the best talent from around the world. It is important to remember that we can learn a huge amount from how different countries view employability and indeed what these countries view as the best ways to make yourself more employable.
To help achieve this, the Graduate Blog has asked Susan to give us her views on employability from a Chinese perspective. Susan works within Global Banking and Markets for HSBC China, and has been with the bank for just over 3 years. For Susan, the key to making yourself more employable is all about ensuring you have got the right experience to get the job. If you want to make yourself more employable then you need to think: experience, experience, experience.
When I was asked to think of what advice I would like to share with you regarding improving your employability, I immediately thought of one thing: experience. For me there is simply no better way to make yourself more attractive to potential employers then by gaining useful experience. The easiest way to prove to an employer all the skills and talents that you hold is to show them that you have used these skills and talents to great benefit in a previous role. If you can show that you've been able to function effectively in a relevant previous role, then employers will be more confident in your abilities and more willing to offer you the job you want. The key thing to understand is that everyone applying for a job can say that they have the right skills for the job and they can say that their skills will make them successful. But if you have got good previous experience then you can prove that you have got the right skills for the job and you can prove that your skills and experience will make you successful. More...
Employability. It’s a word you are likely to hear on a daily basis during your time at university. But what is employability? What makes us more employable? How can you use your experience and skills to prove to an employer that you have the employability they are looking for?
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Jonathan from the Retail Banking and Wealth Management graduate scheme continues our Employability theme. Jonathan talks about understanding What is employability and How can it be achieved.
What is Employability and How Do I Get it?
When I first started thinking about my career, as I counted down the months to the end of my student days, I used to hear the word ‘employability’ and ask ‘what actually is it?' I knew it was something desirable; something I wanted to achieve; but how to go about becoming employable - I wasn’t entirely sure! Here’s a short insight into why it’s so important to improve your employability and my personal reflections on how to achieve this. More...
Since joining the Operational Leadership scheme in September it is clear there is a lot of value in seeking out and embracing opportunities within the bank, something I have expressed elsewhere on the grad blog; in this blog though I want to share 3 challenges new graduates face and how we can make the most of them. This will hopefully provide some useful insight and a flavour of grad life at HSBC!More...
If you are filling out your very first application to a graduate programme you are probably going to have it rejected. You may believe that you are perfect for the advertised role and hence you might have pored over your responses to the questions for hours trying to get the responses just right. But you will still probably face rejection.
Rest assured that this is no reflection on your ability to function in a business environment or your qualifications. It is simply the case that the majority of candidates will fall at several hurdles before receiving that all important offer letter. More...