DCU Executive MBA Career Skills Day

As part of the DCU Executive MBA (EMBA) personal and career development theme, a programme of activities was designed by the Programme Director to develop EMBA participants self-awareness, leadership competencies and career development competencies.

These activities include partaking in an assessment centre, coaching clinics with professional coaches, CV and Interview workshops. This culminates in a career and personal development day, which was organised and run by DCU Career Service in collaboration with DCU Business School and DCU Alumni Office. The result was a packed day consisting of 1:1 coaching sessions, mock panel interviewers, assessment centre feedback sessions, CV clinics and a keynote inspirational speaker.

DCU Career Service through Yvonne McLoughlin organised top calibre professionals to deliver each activity. Professional coaches provided excellent career or personal development advice to EMBA participants. DCU Alumni working in top calibre organisations in HR Director or recruitment or consultancy roles put our EMBA’s through their paces in challenging mock panel interviews and provided immediate feedback on their performance. HR and management professionals ran CV clinics to provide personalised advice on CV’s.

Our EMBA’s described the line-up of activities and the feedback obtained as ‘one of the highlights’ of their MBA journey thus far. The participants were very impressed with the extent of personalised feedback they received. They were grateful for the opportunity to be challenged by top professionals in a no-consequences context. This event is testament to the value to be obtained from collaboration between a Business School, Career Services and Alumni where each unit delivers on what it is best at.

The DCU Executive MBA programme is the capstone programme in the Business School and attracts a diversity of participants in terms of demographics, industry and professional expertise- participants must have at least a 2.1 degree and a minimum of 3 years management level experience. This calibre of EMBA participant and their organisations make a large commitment to completing an EMBA and they expect a professional offering of the highest international standard. The DCU Career Service delivered such an event this year as judged by our customers – the DCU Executive MBA’s.

“A timely and wonderful event that provides the skills to go out and progress your career. Professionally organised with highly talented interviewers and coaches, it has been a very positive experience and one that will help me secure the next phase of my career”.

“The day offered an opportunity to test yourself on not only your skill set for interviewing, but also in personal development. The CV clinic provided some real nuggets that may just prove the difference in getting selected for that next big interview”.

(Pictured: MBA2 class with Paralympic athlete, gold and silver medal winner Dave Malone)