Doing the extras gets you the job

14 April 2016

Doing the extras gets you the job

For Jess Howse, it was the internships and extra-curricular activities she had under her belt that gave her an edge when she was applying for a job.

The former kickboxing Sir Edmund Hillary Scholar and Cambridge High student has started in the graduate intake at EY in Auckland as part of the business advisory team. She graduates this month from the University of Waikato with a Bachelor of Management Studies with First Class Honours, majoring in marketing and strategic management.

During her four years at Waikato, Jess interned at EY, Fonterra, NetValue and Construction Advantage, and tutored classes from second-year. She travelled to Japan to compete in a case competition, and her team came second out of 500 entries in a Microsoft app building competition.

At the end of her third year she started her internship with EY where she gained skills and experience in risk mitigation, and worked with a variety of clients to assess systems and procedure and policy compliance.

Jess says the workload of her internship gave her a better work ethic, which was put to good use in her final year, where she had straight As and placed first in three of her papers and second in two papers.

She says a big part of her new job is being able to assess different situations and adapt the right knowledge accordingly.

“Having done papers like STMG391 [strategic management case competition] I’ve been able to hit the ground running,” she says. “And as a BMS student, you get access to lots of knowledge on a variety of business subjects, rather than having to decide what your specialisation is early on in your studies.

“And a great thing about being a Waikato graduate, I’ve noticed, is that we’re really good at talking to people from different backgrounds. I’ve found it quite easy to build some good professional relationships and I’m more confident in offering my thoughts and ideas.”

A couple of months in to her job, Jess is enjoying the challenge of carving out a career for herself and the feeling she’s making a positive difference to her clients’ business.

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