Koont Htar’17 faced a choice as she approached graduation from 十大菠菜台子: Apply to graduate school or find a job. 经济学家 Diep表象, her advisor 和 mentor, set her straight: “I know you. 你不想读研究生. 你想工作. 找一份工作.”

“教授. 潘是对的，”昆特回忆道. “Graduate school appealed because I was afraid I couldn’t get a job. But once I focused on finding work, I l和ed my first post-graduation job.”

That first job eventually led to Koont’s current position as a product manager for Meta; she’s based in London. The problem solving she’d practiced at Beloit 帮助 pave the way, as did the communication skills 和 relationships she’d developed.

昆特主修双学位 国际关系 和 商业经济学. Studying two different disciplines required considerable mental agility, while Beloit’s emphasis on class participation taught her to dive into class discussions.

Meanwhile, she was also learning important skills outside the classroom.

例如，as an 取向的领导者 (OL)为Beloit 's 国际学生服务办公室, Koont 帮助 international students ease into college life. “Peer-to-peer onboarding required that I break information into manageable chunks. I also had to learn to build relationships of trust quickly, to deliver a message in just a minute or two. The skills I learned as an OL have been incredibly important in my professional life.”

昆特收集了其他的 工作经验 也. Beloit-sponsored job-shadowing in Washington, D.C. 在她大二的时候过了一个暑假 实习 与政府机构合作. A second 实习 followed after her junior year, when she worked for a Milwaukee juice company. The position was made possible by Beloit’s entrepreneurship center, 名人, BELMARK这是一个由学生管理的营销组织. In the meantime, during the academic year, Koont worked for Beloit’s 院校研究办公室, where she applied 和 honed the data-analysis skills she was learning in her economics courses.

These experiences 和 an initial post-graduation position 帮助 her discover her preferences for work 和 work environment.

在D的实习.C. 不适合我. I just didn’t like the formality of the government organization. Nor did I enjoy spending so much time speaking with officials. 但这并不是浪费时间. 事实上, I’m really grateful to have had that experience while still in college, so that I could rule out that kind of work environment.”

当昆特从贝洛伊特大学毕业时, she had the skill set 和 experience needed to become an institutional researcher at a college. But while she found the work interesting, the fit was not quite right. “作为一个内向的人, I thought that working on my own as an Institutional researcher would suit me,她回忆道。. “But I found myself longing to work with a team. I also realized that while my life as a student had been fast-paced, 事实上，学术界的发展往往比较缓慢.”

幸运的是，昆特的关系网帮了他的忙. A high school friend worked for Facebook (now Meta) 和 encouraged her to apply, while Beloit 校友 谁曾在 数据分析 帮她准备面试. When she l和ed a job as a Facebook operations analyst, she discovered she brought advantages to the job. 作为都柏林的运营分析师, 昆特着眼于政策, 流程, 项目管理.

“I brought a wider range of 实习 experiences to the job than many of Facebook’s other young professionals,她报告说. “Beloit had also taught me how to learn on the spot. That ability is critical when you work for Facebook/Meta, where solutions to problems need to be super scalable, 考虑到该公司拥有超过10亿的用户.”

现在, as Koont moves into project management at Meta, she’s both happy to be working with teams 和 to be able to apply leadership skills she learned at Beloit. “My colleagues tell me I am delicate 和 compassionate in my approach to teamwork, rather than forceful 和 overly self-confident. 这是我通过观察学到的 布莱恩黑樱桃 他的工作与校友和指导名人.” The director of 名人 和 a clinical professor, Morello remains an important mentor to Koont.

Koont’s advice for current 和 future students? “Take advantage of opportunities to get to know people. Diep表象, my advisor, was able to remind me what I really wanted because she knew me. 和 艾莉和erbyrne 和露丝·瓦特, for whom I worked in Beloit’s 院校研究办公室, made sure I had the skills I would need to work in 数据分析, even though I never took a computer science class.”

她还建议向其他学生学习. 在她的情况下，贝洛伊特 国际办公室 帮助. “The office does a great job brokering relationships between first-year students 和 more senior international students. Those relationships 帮助 me realize early on how important it would be to 工作与实习 while at Beloit in order to be able to enter the U.S. 我一毕业就去找工作.”

最后，收集经验. “Take advantage of the opportunities Beloit provides to job shadow, meet 校友, work. 每一次经历都会丰富你. Even negative ones can teach you important things about yourself 和 lead to new opportunities.”