HU’s First Summer Career Academy for Professional Development of Rising Sophomores

Habib University’s Career Curation Program (HU CCP) is an initiative to develop symbiotic relationships with the industry leading to provide meaningful industry experience to students and market insights to HU while providing industry an access to future talent pool. Summer Career Academy – a foundational component of the Career Curation Program plays an integral role in introducing students to the elementary skills and knowledge required to excel in their professional career, build sustainable networks within their relevant career fields and develop a multidisciplinary approach towards exploring their future prospects.

The extensive and enriching experience of Habib University’s Summer Career Academy 2022, that ran from 6^th June 2022 till 23^rd June 2022, was a three-week journey where the participants were taken through the fundamentals of self-development and professional curation for their career aspirations.

Through three basic components of Skill Development Workshops, FutureYou Seminars and Industry Visits, students aimed to prepare the participants for a smooth transition from campus to careers through thoughtfully crafted interactions and experiences.

Enriching the Young Minds with Leading Examples: FutureYouSeries

With an excited group of 40 rising sophomores, HU’s First Summer Career Academy was launched with an insightful panel discussion with the industry experts talking to our students about their inspiring journeys and exploring dynamic career trajectories. The extensive and enriching experience of Habib University’s Summer Career Academy is a three-week journey where selected students of Class of 2025 are taken step by step through the fundamentals of self-development and professional curation for their career aspirations. The FutureYou Panel featured distinguished leaders from diverse walks of life: Mr. Parvez Ghias (CEO, Habib University Foundation), Mr. Jawwad Farid (Director, Chief Executive, Alchemy Technologies) and Ms. Khushbakht Jillani (Founder and CEO, Adal aur Sehat)

Throughout the three weeks, our FutureYou Seminars featured Key Professional Leaders such as Ms. Farwah Tapal, Co-Founder and COO of Oraan who shared key insights on self-branding through her 12 years of entrepreneurial experience. The insights span from trial-and-error processes to staying authentic. The participants also got the chance to ask intriguing questions from Mr. Aadil Saleh, GM Talent Strategy Lead & Head Talent Acquisition at Habib Bank Limited (HBL), who shared his career exploration experience, from being an architecture student to being a prominent figure in the finance sector now.

Sharpening the Saw: Skill Building and Career Development

This skill-based component of the Summer Career Academy focuses on strengthening relevant competencies of undergraduate students to facilitate their transition to a highly competitive and dynamic industry market. A balanced blend of technical and creative skills along with highly demanding soft and transferable skills enables students to excel in their interpersonal and professional goals as a long-term learning. These blended programs of Skill Development and Training included:

• A series of workshops on UI/UX where students developed prototypes of their own applications!
• One day Excel Workshop with Master Trainer Irfan Bakaly helping students build an organizational dashboard at the end
• Photoshop classes enhancing the aesthetic and creative development of students

Crucial to Career Development, interactive segments on pivotal soft skills that included Networking and Relationship Building, Personal Branding, Negotiation and Resilience and Storytelling with Data

At the end of Summer Career Academy, students presented their Ravish (write it in Urdu) where they interviewed and presented exceptional career journeys of professional leaders like Ms. Khushbakht Shah Jillani, Hasan Habib, Babar Khan and Azima Dhanjee!

Pehla Qadam: Envisioning the Ambitions and Aspirations:

A distinctive feature of HU Summer Career Academy was “Pehla Qadam” – the stepping stone for the undergraduate students to observe industries and their dynamic work up close with an aim to start understanding them. Students are provided with an opportunity to interact with the senior leadership of the organizations/corporates and explore the emerging diverse interdisciplinary roles in a conventional industry as well as the relevant skillsets that will help them thrive as an ideal employee via tools like informational interview. Throughout these three weeks, participants of SCA visited four distinguished and diverse industries and met their executive teams and employees:

At IAL Saatchi and Saatchi, students learnt about the Economic impact of Advertising in Pakistan.

At Designist, students from all majors explored how human centered design can influence and impact products and services.

During the Industry Expo visit to HBL, our students benefitted from the rare opportunity to engage with the higher management of HBL’s various functions.

• The also enjoyed the buffet networking lunch.
• The students got the platform to be inquisitive about FinTech
• directly with the leadership of one of the biggest and growing banking networks of Pakistan.

Visiting the leading start-up Qistbazaar helped students gain hands-on learning experience from the inspiring stories of a struggling startup to a full-time running business with more than 50 employees and their expansion into multiple facilitation centers is a testament to effective leadership, teamwork and entrepreneurial spirit at QistBazaar.

Summer Career Academy, in these three weeks, provided a holistic experience to the participants where they mapped out their professional journeys with engaging and thrilling activities, networking with exceptional minds and making countless memories with their peers inculcated with insightful learnings and fun!