BarrazaCarlos.com Digital Marketing, Entrepreneurship & Professional Development Carlos Alberto Barraza Lopez

When searching for a job, either if it is for the first time, to find another one, or to get a new beginning in the professional journey, the resume ends up being the tool for professionals.

Honestly, I am not really passionate about creating a Resume.

At university there were guide courses that can help you to fill out a resume.

For the first time, I was kind of lost of where to start, if I didn't have any work experience.

So it was recommended to add any extra activities that I have done.

I faced writing resumes for the university to apply to international exchange programs, as well as for internships.

I remember that I tried a little when I was in Pforzheim to apply for internships.

Coming back to Mexico that time, I needed to find one so I sit down again to try to fill the resume.

What skills to I have to fill out my own resume?

As a student, I had experience with student groups, the international exchange participation and the extra languages.

So that was a start.

But to be "professional", of course there are companies who might look for a professional experience in the department that it is being searched.

And the eternal question arise for the new ones, how I will get experience if I don't get a job, and how I will get a job if I don't have experience.

I eventually got a non-paid internship that helped out to gain at least 5 months of experience.

It was a part-time internship, but it did helped to learn more about a consulting business.

When I aimed to go back to Germany, I needed to create a resume for the Hochschule Heilbronn.

So I did a simple resume.

Then, when doing my master studies, I eventually needed to find a job to be able to earn some money while living in Germany, of course.

So I went again back to the adventure and created a resume in German.

Quite a challenge, isn't?

Find here the Resume Examples.

Either at the start of the career or after some years on the same job position, some people might start thinking what would be the steps that I should take for my future.

And it is normal that when finishing the university or when a professional has the feeling of a career change, the unknown of the future comes by.

Why are people getting anxious about the future?

I also had the same anxiety of what decision to take when I finished my career.

In that time, I had the questions of either searching for a job at Monterrey, or coming back home and work at the family business.

Of course as a 24 year old, we are supposed to be a bit more mature, but the thing is that we actually are not.

And we might never really mature more than usual.

But as we get older, and different professional ways start to come out, we deal we the uncertainity.

Do we really have to decide what to do for our rest of our lives when we finish university?

Or if we back a bit more, does deciding what we will study will define ourselves?

Certainly, not.

That is why change exist.

But some might have the feeling that they have to decide now in order to follow a perfect career.

Unless you are fully aware of the future that you want at 18, then go ahead.

But as I have seen and lived by myself, change is a constant in people’s life.

And for me it is perfectly fine to decide a drastical change when you feel you need to make a change.

Sometimes it may be scary to take an unknown path on a professional level, but sometimes it is also a way where you can further develop yourself in new skills.

For some people who search for how to create a professional development plan, my recommendation is easy.

Visualize what are the things that you want and move forward to it.

If you want to be a writer, just start writing anything.

In my opinion, nobody has to tell you what are you meant to be.

But if you start working, behaving and developing yourself as if you are in the position that you want, you will slowly build up yourself to be who you want to become.

If you find obstacles on your way, either keep trying or go around.

Your inner person already knows what type of professional career you want.

It might be at certain industry, or a specific job position, or as well an entrepreneur.

Remember that a plan is worthless if there is no action.

So, when I graduated I didn’t knew that I was going to end up having experience in one of the top 50 companies in Germany.

But my actions of desiring having again an international experience, working at the family business and saving up money, applying for 3 masters, beind accepted in 1 and then landing in a student job where the ones who made possible to achieve one of the greatest proffesional experiences I had.

Another advice: yes, you can give up one day, but don’t wake up the next day giving up on the dreams that you have.

Life brings up changes, and we never know what the future brings.

How about now to aim into being an international entrepreneur.

That could be one of my new desires.

Work, faith and patience.

Read more on: Professional Development Plan.

One taco dinner with a friend who works at a college, we were discussing about the whole pandemic situation and how it turned out to be a driver of technology.

Certainly, external situations could be strong drivers of change, and educational technology was not left behind.

As we kept discussing during dinner, she told me her experience about the youngsters having plenty experience creating Tik Toks, Snapchats, and Instastories, but when it come out to educational technology, they were behind.

So, does the coming generations are really being digital native.

Knowing the social media platforms is for sure not a certificate that people actually know how to use technology.

As technology keeps improving, and it becomes the major collaboration and working tool for businesses, it should also be properly taught at schools.

The current discussion if universities are actually properly teaching what businesses are requiring shows that probably universities should adopt the use of business technologies.

In my experience, the main and most common software that was used was Office.

At university, we all have used Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

But certainly, there are businesses that require advanced Excel skills that actually students don’t know.

If we start going further on more advanced systems such as ERPs, CRMs, POS, and more management software, then this ones are mainly only experienced when working at a company.

And in developer languages, then probably we don’t have to talk about Python, R, PHP and other programming languages that will turn out more difficult for non techies.

So, which technology should be taught at least in schools?

Certainly, I am in favor that universities should stop having too much theory, and start developing more tech skills in any kind of career.

At least the time invested during college or university, should not be spent to learn while already having a job or a business.

Technology in education is more than just file sharing softwares, it should build up collaboration between peers.

Read more on: Technology in Education.

And it happen to me, and probably to many people who have studied his or her degree at an university, and then the question appears, what to do after university?

Certainly, at a younger age some might think that we must have our lives resolved that we already know where to aim at.

And the thing, it is not true.

Life brings some many changes, that it will be impossible to define our whole future just the next day of our graduation day.

Would the first job be the dream job, or should I am for starting a business, studying abroad or go for a master?

We might not know until you decide.

And I think, people might be afraid of giving steps because it could be a mistake, and for me its not.

We can change decisions on our way, when we are feeling that we are not in the correct path.

The only one that should and could decide if its right or wrong, it is you.

Of course, eventually time will show you if you took the correct decision.

In my case when I finished university, I had the opportunity to either work at the family business or find a job in the city where I studied.

I actuall got an invitation to an interview in Monterrey, but i rejected it because I was not sure about what I wanted, and at the end I decided to come back home and work at the family business.

Certainly, if I have decided to stay at Monterrey, probably my story would be different.

In that time, coming back home open me the path of learning about the entrepreneurial process, even if I started a second branch store of the family business.

I learned how to register at the mexican tax authorities and learned more about starting up your own small business.

Of course, I have to say I had the advantage of having a close mentor, who was my mother, but the process gave me the knowledge to learn how to manage my own business.

Nevertheless, I had the desire of going back to Germany, so I appliead to a master degree.

Decisions came time to time.

And I changed when I feel that it was the time to start a new path.

Thanks God I had a wonderful experience in Germany, where I had the opportunity to meat amazing people from all around the world and also I had my first job outside the family business.

Working at an international company was a grateful experience, that also helped me to expand my network.

If you have told me, the day of my graduation, how my professional path would go, I probably would not believe you.

So as a tip, don't hesitate on what to do after university, enjoy the day and take the decisions as the moment to take one comes.

Read more on: What to do after university

If there is a resource that we all have counted, is time.

And time is a resource that we don’t know exactly how much we will have.

Time management could be a very subjective and complicated resource to have total control.

For sure, being in Germany had helped me to learn about a different cultural perspective about time.

If I compare between Mexico and Germany, time is a real significant difference between this two cultures.

Mexicans use the term “Ahorita”, which is a time adverb that can not specify actually at what time.

The normal adverb is “ahora”, which means right now, but saying “Ahorita” is were almost all foreigners will be confused, since there is no exact time to describe ahorita.

In contrast, german culture is more likely to be a more specific in time terms.

Although now different generations are having different aspects about time, specially in business, Germans are very good at planning their time.

I had plenty of german friends who actually had their Google Calendars fully scheduled, and sometimes setting up a get together with them had actually be considered with enough preparation.

Mexicans, and as well latin american cultures, might not be really specific when it comes out about time.

So is time a really crucial resource that countries like mine have to be more careful and really find a balance between the cultural “ahorita” and a specific agenda?

Personally, time management could be a useful skill to achieve any personal and professional goal.

Developing time management skills could be also a healthy aspect, to have the so called work-life balance, and know when to stop when you are a workaholic, or to know when to focus and be more productive if you are more of a distracted person.

Planning the perfect future would be impossible, but certainly following steps towards the main goal, could get you closer to become an achiever.

Read more in Time Management.

Since I started my times at ARP and Bechtle in 2017, the topics of Future of Work and Challenges of Mobility were almost my every day lectures.

And one of the questions that arised was, how technology can be a solution when the rent of offices and places to live are rising in highly populated cities?

It seems that the times when people have to leave their hometown to seek education or job opportunities are staying in the past.

The rush of adopting the “Home-Office Experience” for many become true.

And certainly for some people who are able to work remotely, also meant that they don’t have to travel or move around the city, therefore there is less traffic, and less cars on the street has also meant less pollution.

With the rise of remote work in the last year, the IT industry has shown that it is the leading industry when it comes to work from home.

IT outsourcing has been a practice that many worldwide corporations have incorporated as part as their human resourcing plans.

Technology advancements, far for being a threat, has shown to open up opportunities that decades ago were unthinkable.

Technology has also been a bridge builder when it comes to create jobs all around the world.

On my first series of Thought Leaders, I invited Karina Toral to share her master thesis work on IT Outsourcing.

I met Karina for the first time at the Hochschule Heilbronn cafeteria.

Karina studied the same master as me, International Business and Intercultural Management, one year before.

Personal traits that I could say about Karina are that she is friendly, reflective and enthusiastic.

Same spirit she showed around the Hochschule Heilbronn community.

On a professional level, Karina and I have had the same interests regarding to Digital Marketing and IT, where she currently works at Cobalt as Senior Business Development.

In this article, I share with you part of Karina’s Master Thesis related to the topic about IT outsourcing practices in German companies.