Early Careers Catalyst

Saray: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, "Early Careers Catalyst." My name is Saray Lopez, and I will be your moderator today. And joining me today are Finn, Deneen, and Noah. So I'll introduce myself first, and then we'll all go through a bit of our introductions.

So my name is Saray Lopez. I use she/her pronouns. I'm a talent acquisition partner here at CSC. I've been with the company since December of 2021. And fun fact about me is that I love to run, and I signed up for my first 10 mile race that I'll be running in November. And I'll kick it over to Finn.

Finn: Thanks, Saray, for the intro. I'm Finn. I work in the Capital Markets team. And my fun fact is that I'm dialing in from one of the European offices today in Jersey. I'll kick it over to Deneen. Thank you.

Deneen: Hello. My name is Deneen Johnson. I am a customer service specialist with CSC. I work in the Document Recording Services Department and have been a part of that particular team since November of 2017. A fun fact about myself, I enjoy binge watching TV shows on Netflix. So that's a bit about me. Turning it over to Noah.

Noah: Hey, everybody. My name is Noah. I've been with CSC since October of 2020. I work in our Digital Brand Services Business Unit. And a fun fact about me is that I've run the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia six different times. And I'll throw you back over to Saray.

Saray: Thank you, everybody. And to get started here, just a brief overview on what we'll cover today. We'll share a bit about CSC. We'll be going over the Internship and Graduate Talent Programs here. We'll also highlight entry-level positions and paths. We'll also be sharing some tips to prepare to enter the workforce. And then last, but not least, the favorite questions and answers that you will have submitted.

So to start out, just a bit of some background on CSC. So we are the world's leading provider in business administration and compliance solutions. We recently celebrated our 125th anniversary as a company. And we've won multiple awards, as you can see on the screen here. But one of my personal favorites is that we are ranked in National Top Workplace.

So I'll open it up to the team here. What are some things that you all would say that you love the most about CSC, or that you'd like to highlight about the company?

Noah: I just love how flexible and supportive the work culture is at CSC. Especially coming in as an entry-level employee, it really makes you feel welcomed and like you belong at CSC right off the bat.

Deneen: I would say that working for CSC has been a rewarding experience for me, working with like-minded individuals like myself that is there to achieve one goal, which is to deliver on the customer promise and to ensure that our customers are happy.

Finn: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I really enjoy how customer focused we are, and no two days are the same. So it's a really enjoyable place to work.

Saray: [inaudible 00:04:03] And to kick it over to talking about the Internship Program here, this is for I'd say if you're currently enrolled in school, or you're close to graduating and you're looking for that additional opportunity to learn more about [inaudible 00:04:26]. We do have a 10-week paid program here. The program runs from June through August. We have internship opportunities in different locations worldwide. And what I love about the program is that it truly gives you that hands-on experience in a specific role. So with the department that you choose to intern with, you also have a mentor as well. And if you are looking for an internship, our applications are opening up in late November through mid-January. So keep an eye out for those.

And Finn, or sorry, I apologize, Noah, who was actually an intern here with us, he's going to share a bit about his experience through the Internship Program.

Noah: Yeah, thanks, Saray. As you mentioned, I started off at CSC as an intern back in 2020. Some of the things I really loved about being an internship here at CSC and what ultimately kept me here was that, you know, we are assigned to specific teams within DBS, but that doesn't mean that you are pigeonholed to just exploring that team. And you're really encouraged to look all throughout the company and talk to whoever you can to explore all the different job functions that we have here at CSC, which really serve to keep me interested the whole time as I was able to follow my intuition as we went along.

I did also enjoy being able to make an immediate impact on the teams that I worked with. Like we were not just brought in to just sit in training sessions all day or just walk around the office, or to even just make connections, but to actually contribute meaningfully to the teams that we work with. Even, for instance, my team had an intern last summer who created a database for us, and we still use that every day today. So you can definitely make a lasting impact on the teams here.

And like you mentioned, you do have a mentor during the internship. And this I felt coupled with the generally supportive culture at CSC really made me feel supported and helped keep me focused on my own interests and how I was able to make an impact on the teams around me. Any questions that I had, I knew where to go, I knew who to ask. And it minimized the amount of training that was necessary to get me on the ground, the amount of training that that was necessary to allow me to hit the ground running right off the bat. So I really appreciated that.

And ultimately, I chose to stay here at CSC because I already felt like I had established great relationships with a number of my colleagues. I felt like my soon-to-be boss actively wanted me on the team and was rooting for my success. And I knew that there was going to be a lot more to learn because every day I had been there had been something completely new. That was mostly about my experience. Thanks, Saray.

Saray: Great, Noah, and thank you so much for sharing about the specifics here of the opportunity that you had. And you touched upon a good point where your leader was an advocate for you. And I think that our internships here are, of course, great for that hands-on experience. But I think also highlighting that there's the opportunity to join full-time, which Noah was able to take advantage of here. So again, be on the lookout for those applications that will open up soon.

And then we also have a Graduate Talent Program here. So this is typically for locations that we have outside of the U.S., and this is for a 12-month paid program. You'll have three four-month rotations. You'll have exposure to different business areas, different business units, work with many clients that we have here. We also have various trainings that will include, again, that hands-on experience, learning more about our business here, and of course the opportunity to network, meeting a lot of different individuals within our organization. We also have applications that go out throughout the year.

But handing it over to Finn to share about his experience in the Graduate Talent Program now.

Finn: Thank you very much for the intro. Yeah, as discussed before, I'm Finn. I've been on the Graduate Program for a year now, and I'd just like to talk you through my experience.

So I had such great interaction from the first day with CSC. This was I think down to the culture of the company. From my first sort of interaction with the company in my interview, I got a really good sense of the culture. It feels very supportive. On my first day, I had a buddy/mentor, as well as my manager, who was able to bring me onto the team really quickly and get me up to speed within a number of days, maybe not even that long. So I felt like I was able to contribute to the team very quickly. And I was always able to touch base with my manager or my buddy in order to discuss anything I might be finding challenging, which I found really helpful.

And as a result of this, my development was really quick with CSC. I was able to complete client-based work from the outset, which I found really positive. And in the day-to-day role, I'd say there's a really good mixture of administration, numbers-based work, communication. And ultimately it's all very client driven, which I found very inspiring. And it feels really hands-on from the get-go.

Some of the key areas that I get to work on include board meetings, accounting, and exciting merges and acquisitions. My favorite part, as I said before, is the fact that no two days are the same, which is always a huge advantage. It really keeps me motivated and means that you never really know what's coming. And it keeps you on the ball. And I've really enjoyed that, and as a result I'm going to be staying with the Capital Markets team permanently.

The Graduate Program really set me up well I think. So over the past year, the skills I've learned have been really constructive to my development, which has led to my first promotion after a year, which I'm really pleased to have achieved. And I think a lot of that is down to the training and the support that I received on the Grad Program. I definitely recommend the Graduate Program to other people. But also I'd like to add there are other junior and entry-level roles available.

Some of the things that I found really useful were like the soft and the hard skills training. This can include sort of communication training, teamwork, how to work effectively, but also in terms of the hard skills, audit liaison, accounts preparation skills, minute writing, which I felt I had no experience of before the job. So that was really helpful.

I came from a graduate background in the sciences. However, I'd like to add that I found that there were a lot of transferable skills, and CSC was really good to get the most out of my skill set. So yeah, I definitely recommend it to anyone who's looking to apply for either the Graduate Program or any junior roles in the European area. I'll hand it back over to Saray now.

Saray: Great, and thank you so much, Finn, for sharing and congratulations. We're so lucky to have you joining us full-time now. So it's always great to hear about positive experience that you had, and I definitely want to highlight the support that you mentioned and also Noah mentioned this as well. But I can definitely say I am the type of person that has questions. I love learning new things. So I love that CSC opens that up across all levels, you know, peer-to-peer, different leaders that we have here. So thank you so much for those details.

And we'll now highlight a few entry-level positions here. So we'll talk about the client service representative positions and our associates. So I would say that these roles are great if somebody has said that you're a people person, or you enjoy solving puzzles or solving problems, because in this opportunity you'll truly get to build relationships with clients and assisting them with their business needs.

So there's multiple things that go on day-to-day in this department. Not only are you working on more of the back office data entry, document filing, retrieval, but you're also working on the research and analysis of documents, where we truly have to problem solve and think through every single scenario and situation we encounter. And also going back to what Finn said, every day is a little different, and that's what I love about the opportunities here is that we're always learning. That never truly stops. It's great that we work with many different not only clients but different locations.

So this is great if you would enjoy that type of environment. It's a great role to get started with your career. And, of course, there's also that career progression. We included a couple here on the screen. So you can move into a senior role, also move from an associate to a representative. But you are not limited to these roles. You can, of course, pursue opportunities in other areas. But I'll kick it over to Deneen to share a bit about her experience in this department.

Deneen: Thank you so much, Saray. So yeah, my experience with working in my particular department, Document Recording Services, which is a customer service division of CSC, has been very rewarding. I've learned a great deal from my colleagues. I've learned a great deal from my team leaders. Even those that have acted as mentors and coaches for me, they have helped me to expand my mind because when I came into CSC, I had no knowledge of real estate at all. But as time went on, through learning, going through the learning modules, going through the trainings, going through the hands-on trainings, and also getting my hands on the documents and auditing them so that they comply with whatever the state requires as well as at the county level, it serves as a means for me to be able to do my job well.

I'm so pleased that I went through those experiences. They were challenging at times, but they serve as a purpose of helping me to grow, and that it's one of the things I appreciate about working with CSC is that they want to see you grow. They want to see you do well and exceed in all your goals as you go along the journey with CSC. So I'm thankful for that, that I did have people around me and had those resources and tools available to me that served me well in my experience with CSC.

So that's what I would say about working with client services, that you will learn a lot. You will be challenged. You will be stretched beyond what you think you could do, and it's all serving the purpose, which is to help you to be the best you can be and do the best that you can do in every aspect of your experience with CSC.

So I would definitely recommend CSC as a great company because it's definitely changed my life. It's made me stronger. It's made me more adept to do things that I didn't even dream I could do. So that's my experience, and I would definitely say you will experience the same thing as I have experienced. Kicking it back over to Saray.

Saray: Thank you so much, Deneen. Appreciate you sharing those details here, and I'm glad that you've had such a great experience and have had the opportunity to continue learning as you're going through your current role here.

And the next area we want to talk about another full-time, entry-level position here is with our fulfillment teams. This could be in our technology space. We also have our Global Internet Branding teams. So these opportunities are great if you are more of that person that enjoys that back office work, more analytical, using the research skills because you will be providing solutions and providing great customer experience to various clients in managing their portfolios, so making sure that we're in compliance with the locations where they're working out of, ensuring the security and accuracy of our clients' domain names. So definitely a role where you're more of that person that enjoys the research, analyzing data, and making sure that we're able to communicate that to our clients in a clear and concise way.

I would definitely say this is a great role to get started. We have seen progression from starting in a fulfillment role, moving into say our training team, vendor operations, various projects teams. But really there's different opportunities that you could explore, and you can work with your leader to make sure that you get to that right area. And Noah is currently in a similar space here, so I'll kick it over to him so he can share about his experience.

Noah: Sure. Thanks, Saray. So after my internship, which we spoke about a few slides ago, my full-time position was within fulfillment. I think fulfillment is an amazing entry-level opportunity here, especially at CSC. So many of our teams here in the Digital Brand Service Business Unit, or DBS for short, split between two different, two broad job functions.

On the one side, you have our service teams, who work directly with our clients to manage their domain portfolios and provide CSC products and services. On the operations side, where fulfillment is located, we actually carry out those orders and projects from service and maintain the third-party relationships and internal systems that allow us to do so. I like to think of fulfillment as the foundation of operations as they really perform the groundwork of the business by fulfilling the client orders.

To do this, fulfillment team members are given orders of varying urgency assigned to their work list on a daily or even weekly basis. Now, within that framework, you do get to have the freedom to prioritize and organize your workload as you like. I really appreciated this, having an overall structure that kept me on track, but while having the freedom to pick and choose the orders that I would work on, on any given day. And I get that on the face of this, it can sound like it gets monotonous, but I promise that there really is something new popping up every day, like Finn and Deneen had mentioned as well. And there's always something new to learn.

On fulfillment, yeah, you work as part of a team while managing your own personal work list, like I mentioned. But you can make it as collaborative an experience as you like. If you're an introvert and it takes you a while to get used to people, you can still succeed in this role. And if you're an extrovert, you would just as well find the space to engage with your teammates and others in DBS on a daily basis.

And another nice thing about fulfillment is that there's a really well-developed training program. So you won't be given any responsibilities that you aren't prepared for, which I appreciated especially during the first few months of my stint there.

In my experience, people who do well on fulfillment have great problem-solving skills, are naturally detail oriented, are able to learn new material quickly, and are good at following and improving processes. And like Saray mentioned, from fulfillment, there's a few different next stops in your career that you could take. I like to say that after a year of fulfillment, after you've finished your training, you are immediately more valuable to every other team in the business unit because you understand the backbone of the business, and not a lot of people have that expertise, especially coming from the outside.

So I've seen people move into basically every other team in DBS, whether it be like projects, which is working on more long-term projects there, TLD ops, which is where I currently am, which deals with more external relationships with third parties. And even you could hop over to the service side and embrace maybe something closer to what Deneen described earlier.

So there's definitely a whole lot of opportunities here, and I couldn't recommend it enough. Thanks, Saray.

Saray: Great. Thank you so much, Noah, for sharing a couple details there. And I love that you mentioned that, of course, after a year of fulfillment, you provide so much value to other units. And it's a good amount of our positions we fill internally, which I love hearing that growth. I love hearing those stories from team members. So thank you so much for highlighting that here in that section.

Another full-time, entry-level position here that we want to highlight is our administrators and administrative assistant roles. So I love that CSC we're open to different types of backgrounds, different types of individuals. So I would say that if you come from retail, hospitality, some type of service background, this is a great role to start out with. Or even if you're a people person in general and enjoy building those relationships, this is a great opportunity for you.

You'll have that opportunity to work with clients, work with internal clients here, that's what we call our internal team members, and making sure that we're on track to meet any of their goals and managing all the information in the system. So you'll have a unique opportunity to circulate meeting minutes for different meetings that you'll be joining, setting up those meetings, setting up agreements for them. And there's many different opportunities that you could also explore as you go into other units, or if you want to grow into other opportunities. There's, of course, the client service representative roles that we already touched upon here. But I'd say in this role you truly get to use both those interactions skills and also more of the back office skills that we have here and making sure that you are able to provide the best service here to our clients.

And we are going to highlight a couple tips here for you all that are about to enter the workforce. Or even if you are already in the workforce, these are great tips. So I'll hand it over to Finn to share a couple here with you.

Finn: Thank you. Yeah, so what I'd like to say first off is when you're preparing your application, I'd definitely say one of the areas that is best to tease out with your prior experience is what skills you gained from that and how you think you could potentially apply it to a role at CSC. So I came from a background of scientific education, and I had a little bit of work experience. But when you actually delve deeper into what you were doing on the sort of day-to-day or what project work you were doing, there's a lot of things that can definitely be transferred into a role at CSC. So that's something I would definitely recommend. And also definitely check on CSCGlobal.com/careers, as there's some great tips in terms of what skills they're looking for. But one of the things I'd definitely say is that CSC values, when they're looking at potential candidates, is having an open mind to learning and having the right mindset because I definitely think that goes a long way.

In terms of network, I'm a massive advocate for using LinkedIn. I found it really invaluable in terms of finding the job and also understanding what would be expected from me at CSC because I was able to look at different job roles and understand a little bit more about the company. And I was lucky enough that I had a friend who worked at CSC, who I was able to contact through LinkedIn, and helped me understand a little bit more about the business. And I'd definitely recommend that if you're in a position to.

And then, finally, in terms of upskilling, again I found LinkedIn really valuable as they have some really good little courses on there. So one of the courses I did before I joined was Excel, which I found very useful on the day-to-day. It's definitely useful to be able to organize your spreadsheets and the data, and it makes you a little bit quicker to learn the role. But also there's other skills out there, including Outlook and things like that, which might help you organize your day and get you off to a good start in your new role at CSC.

And with that, I'll hand it back over to Saray. Thank you.

Saray: Thank you so much, Finn, for sharing those details. Just want to highlight one tip here is the networking piece. I think that that's very, very important I think at any stage in your life. But similar to Finn, I actually came to know CSC through a current friend that still works here at CSC. So I'd say that's not uncommon and not something that doesn't happen. It happens a lot here at CSC. That's how we're able to bring in the great talent. So I'd say that please use your network if you are looking for positions, or even if you see somebody on LinkedIn. Or I know that you've seen our profiles, so feel free to connect and reach out with any specific details that you might be looking for.

But I just want to thank everybody here for a great presentation. So Deneen, Noah, Finn, thank you so much for walking through those details here. We are now going to be opening up the Q&A session, so please continue to submit your questions. I know you've been submitting them here.

But before we start with the Q&A, we do have a poll question. So please click on one of the options on your screen that most interests you so that we can learn more about topics to talk about in our future webinars.

And with that being said, we will now take some questions from the audience because I know that we've all been waiting for this. So we'll wait for the first question to come in here.

So I do already have a question that was submitted. It looks like the question is, "What is the best way to stand out when interviewing and submitting a résumé to a job?

Deneen: I can take that one.

Saray: Oh, you can go ahead.

Deneen: I can take that one. Sorry to interrupt if I did. I would say the best thing to do is to showcase your gifts, your skills, your prior experiences. Make that a priority when you're going into this interview. That way the interviewer, the hiring manager is looking at these different things, and you're discussing it with them, because it's one thing to say this is what I do on paper, but it's another thing to actually express it and be confident in the fact that you have these different skill sets and these type of experiences and so forth.

Noah: Yeah, I would recommend saying that you want to come in with having examples of situations that you've encountered in your professional or academic life, that you think might apply to the role that you're interviewing or applying for. And tailoring, that can even happen before the interview process. That can happen at the application step, where you're submitting a résumé and you want to tailor that résumé to the particular role that you're applying for. I know that you probably hear that a lot. But I think what I've found helpful is to tweak the responsibilities and tasks that you list in your résumé to be comprehensible to the hiring manager. And really read through that job description.

And I know that we talk about networking a lot, and one of the things that networking can do, that people don't talk about often, is if you do know somebody at the company that you're applying for, like CSC, it's even helpful just to get inside advice about what the hiring manager might be looking for specifically, and include that in your application. It's not like your connection needs to get you the job outright, but it can help you even in small things like that.

Saray: Great. And just one last thing that I had to add to that is I would definitely say just making sure that you are highlighting and providing the best view of yourself. So this is a time to brag, so feel free to brag about yourself. You're speaking on what you know, and you're the expert in your experiences.

Well, we did actually get another question. So the question is, "How is CSC inclusive of international or remote employees?" Finn, I don’t know…

Finn: I think will be well placed . . . You beat me to it.

Saray: Thank you. I was going to call you.

Finn: Yeah. So since joining CSC from one of their European offices, I felt that the company's culture has been really inclusive, and they really understand the differences in the way that we work. And there might be changes to the way that the local culture works. And I'd say that they're very flexible as well. I found it a really positive experience so far.

As for the remote working, I'm not so sure because we're very lucky in Jersey that we've got a really nice office that I come into every day. But yeah, in terms of international work, I'd say they're definitely a very inclusive work employer.

Saray: Great.

Noah: Yeah, definitely I think . . .

Saray: I can see . . .

Noah: Sorry, Sarah.

Saray: You can go ahead, Noah. It's okay, you can go.

Noah: Yeah. I was just going to say that I currently work on a team that is international, and we have three of our team members that work in London and three that work here in the U.S. on the East Coast. So even small teams of less than 10 people can be internationalized here. And I know that Saray is probably about to go into this, but I think we are on a hybrid basis now. So we also have a lovely office in Wilmington that we love going into, but are allowed to be remote some days.

Saray: No, I was just going to touch upon the remote part for a bit. So I actually started out in the office, and then I relocated. So I'm now fully remote. But I will say my experience hasn't changed at all. I still feel very much connected to my team. I know if I have questions, I can reach out. So I would say that it's very inclusive. And as Noah said, some team members are hybrid. As Finn said, some are fully in the office, in an office in Jersey, which is definitely a great office, a great location to be in. So I'd say that there's team members all over the globe here, but we definitely make sure that you have the support that you need.

So we do have another question here that was submitted. "Are there any supplementary courses or learning opportunities that you would recommend for people interested in joining CSC to help them continue to upskill?"

I might need a quick minute to think about this one. Oh, but you can go ahead, Noah.

Noah: Yeah, I would say within CSC, once you are hired, there are a lot of . . . we do have programs that help, that encourage the upskilling, and provide training courses to get you familiar with the industry and even soft skills, like Excel or facilitating meetings or project management. We partner with LinkedIn Learning I believe. And I've taken a few courses like that during the first portion of my full-time position. And I found it really helpful. And even if you're on the outside looking in, those kinds of things, those kinds of learning certifications I think can make a difference.

Finn: I'd love to jump in there, and I'm glad as well that one of the things I found really helpful is I did a very foundational level in financials and investments, which is definitely not required, but it probably helped make me stand out, and it's helped me a little bit in the job to understand certain terminology and different structures. So yeah, I'd recommend that as well.

Saray: You actually hit upon what I was thinking of too. I think it may also be specific to the job that you're applying to. So I would say, for example, you're applying to a job that is looking for someone who has experience in Salesforce, I would highly recommend taking even just a quick intro course into that specific program, or even Excel or something that's in the job description. I would really look into those so that you can then highlight that on your résumé so that when somebody is taking a look, they're able to see that there.

And also Noah mentioned a really good point is that even once you start with whether it be CSC or another organization, but quick plug in for CSC is that you do have access to the LinkedIn Learning modules. So at any point during the course of even your training or after training, you can log in and access those courses at any point. So again, the learning never truly stops here.

And we have one other question that was submitted as well. "So for someone with a computer science or software development background, is fulfillment a good choice? If not, what other paths would you recommend?" Noah, I'll kick this over to you if that's okay.

Noah: Yeah. It's not a bad choice I would say. Fulfillment doesn't deal directly with software development, but I know that one of my former teammates on fulfillment did come from a software development background and was eventually looking to get to a job role like that. And she found her place in fulfillment just as well and excelled. And I believe now recently she did just move to a new role that is closer to her software development background. So while it does not deal directly with that, it's certainly a skill that's valued, and you can certainly chart your path within CSC as you as you develop your interests. And that's true for everybody, and it's true for a software developer.

Saray: And we do have different opportunities highlighted on the CSC Careers page. So if you're interested in fulfillment, that's great. Of course, you can look into that. But there's also a search field in the Careers page. If you want to look for something technical, you can look up the technical openings there as well. But I'd say, as Noah said, we've had team members that have joined in a space that I guess somebody might think that doesn't really align with your background, but it does because it's transferable skills, that close attention to detail, that problem solving. You're already coming in with that skill set that could transfer over to this role. But we've really had team members join us from a variety of backgrounds that sometimes you might think it's not directly aligned, but the skills I'd say transfer over pretty well.

Finn and Deneen, I'm not sure if you guys wanted to share anything before I moved on to the next question.

Finn: Yeah. I'd probably echo your thoughts as well. There are definitely openings that might be a direct match for your educational or experience background. But also CSC is very open to people using transferable skills. So we've got many people in the office from a variety of different backgrounds. So if you're unsure, I would definitely advocate for applying anyway, and you never know. You might find a really good match.

Deneen: I would definitely 100% agree with you on that. Yeah, if you have transferable skills, it can definitely go to good use within CSC. There's always a room for you somewhere.

Saray: Yes. So thank you all for answering that question. We did receive another question here. "What does the onboarding process typically look like?" So I can jump in here and share a bit about . . .

Finn: Yeah, I'd be happy to take that.

Saray: Oh, sure, you can go ahead.

Finn: Yeah. So mine was probably the most recent, being only a year ago today. So I found my onboarding experience really smooth. So I had like internet learning modules and in-person skills classes with CSC, which helped bring me up to speed with what was expected from me, what sort skills I'll be looking to develop over the next few months. There's also sort of compliance elements in there to make sure that we're aware of the law and things like that because we work in a regulated industry.

But in addition to that, my manager and my mentor were really supportive in getting me off ground. They started to feed me bits of work from quite a basic level, and then brought me up to speed quite quickly and were really good at gauging if I was able to take on more, or if I needed a little bit more support here and there. So overall, I'd say it was really, really positive.

Noah: Yeah, just to echo that, on the Digital Brand Services side, I would describe it exactly as Finn just did. Pretty seamless onboarding process, starting out with internet training modules, and then given projects, starting off easy and eventually getting up to the standard job description.

So one of the things that I really appreciate about CSC is that your leaders are supportive, and they are very experienced. And they do not want to see you fail, and they are not going to set you up to fail. So you are going to be given tasks and responsibilities that you're very experienced and knowledgeable leaders believe that you can carry out. And I would trust them and believe in yourself.

Saray: Great. And thank you both for answering that question here. We've received another question. So the question is, "If I've never had an internship or work experience, is it okay to pull examples from school projects to show my transferable skills?"

I can jump in with this one. I would say that's not uncommon. I've been at that point in my experience as well, where I haven't had an internship. But I would say it's perfect that you can pull examples from school projects because, one, that shows the collaboration and the teamwork and how well you've worked in that environment. I would also say with different school projects, you always have a time frame or a timeline that you have to complete that by. So that shows, one, what steps you took and walking through that. So I would actually encourage you to use those examples, even if it's a school, say you play a sport, that's also a great example to pull from. So I think that's perfect. You're definitely on the right track here so far with pulling those examples.

But I would say what are other ways that you all would say, or do you think that that's also fine? Or anybody else have anything to chime in?

Noah: I would also say . . .

Finn: Go on, Noah.

Noah: Yeah, I would also say don't discount other types of jobs that you may have had. You mentioned that you didn't have an internship. But even if you've had literally any job ever or a volunteer experience, there's almost certainly going to be skills and responsibilities that you can apply to whatever role you're going for here at CSC. And I know for a fact that me including and other people that I know here at CSC have come from the restaurant industry and places like that. Just because it isn't corporate or it doesn't sound like it would be like CSC, it doesn't mean that the skills that you learned there aren't valuable.

Deneen: I'm definitely up with that as well because I did not come from a background of real estate. I came strictly from customer service, working in call centers, working in retail. But the skills I've learned from those experiences, prior to my tenure with CSC, have definitely served me well in terms of being able to show others what I've learned over the years and to apply it to our work experience and our job, within our job roles and responsibilities.

Finn: Yeah, I definitely say that again as well. At some point, everyone has to apply for their first job, right? So one of the things I did is I got some voluntary experience, and I've done little bits of work shadowing as well, just to bring my skills up to standard, and just so that you have something to add to your application. But yeah, I'd definitely say that it's not necessary to have an internship or anything similar to that in order to apply.

Saray: Great. Thank you all for answering that question. And we did get another question here. "Does applying for a role in an area that you don't live in reduce the chances of you being considered for a role?"

So I can answer this just from a talent acquisition perspective. So when we go to post positions or when we have opportunities that open up, we typically have a business need in that particular location. But I wouldn't say that they necessarily reduce your chance of being considered. I'd say it's more so a decision of can we have somebody based in another state or in another country that can perform the job responsibilities. I would also say sometimes we need someone who is in that specific office because we may receive documents or we may receive clients that need our support there. So I would say that all of our job descriptions now if you are interested in, if it's able to sit in multiple locations, we'll include that at the very top. And then if also the position is able to sit say remote or hybrid, we'll also include that. So I guess not able to answer that exactly, but I guess it depends on the team that is looking for that fill.

And the next question, we did receive another one is, "What are the common challenges that new graduates or someone early in their career might face when starting their first job, and how can they overcome them?"

Finn: Yeah, I feel like I'd be well placed to answer that one as well. So I think some of the things that you might find difficult in your first job is getting used to sort of workplace norms and things like that. I'd say that CSC is really attractive, and they're very supportive in your transition from education to your career because they're so used to having people who are graduates or school leavers. So I definitely say that they support that. But that's one of the things I found quite difficult is picking up those additional skills that you wouldn't have during education. But like I say, I felt very supported during that process, so nothing to really worry about.

Noah: Yeah, I would say that maybe something that people early on in their careers find troubling or at least find an obstacle in it is that you go from learning a bunch of different subjects that's in college, and you enter into something, a company like CSC and you are responsible for specializing in something specific now and becoming an expert in a particular field, unless you are coming from a PhD program or maybe a master's. You're now delving into the minutia of a certain topic every day, which I found to be new, especially coming into the domain industry, which I knew nothing about.

But like Finn said, I think CSC is good at easing you into this process as much as possible. And I would recommend to people in a similar position to just keep an open mind and to find ways to be excited about the learning. And there are ways for making a game out of it, keeping your goals aligned, looking forward to the future where you will know all of these things. And trust me, that future is going to come if you stay down that road. So yeah, that was my thoughts.

Saray: Great. And one thing . . .

Deneen: I agree.

Saray: Sorry, Deneen, go ahead.

Deneen: I was going to add to what Noah just said. Yes, that is always a challenge of coming into a new environment. Trying to acclimate yourself to the work environment, learning people, learning the skills, going through the trainings is always challenging. But one thing I will always encourage people is don't count yourself out. Stay with the process. Trust the process. It will help you and benefit you in the end.

Saray: And just one last thing to add there is I would say ask questions if you're curious about something or if you're not understanding something. Everyone here and I believe Noah I mentioned this earlier, but everyone here wants to see you succeed. No one is setting you up to fail. We're here to help. Anyone is willing to help. And at least in my experience, everybody that I've asked, even if they don't know the answer, they'll find somebody who can find me or give me the answer that I need.

And just one last thing here for you all is that is there any final advice that you all would give to job seekers?

Finn: Yeah, I think my final piece of advice would be to definitely make the most of LinkedIn and the resources that CSC makes available. I definitely used that to tailor my application, and I even used some of the language that they use in the job descriptions and the adverts so that whoever's reviewing my application can understand which skills I think I'd be a good fit for and what I already have in terms of my education and how that might be transferable to the job that I'm applying for.

Noah: Yeah, I might steal a little bit of something from Deneen. But trust the process, keep at it. Apply early and keep an open mind. Don't close yourself off to a particular job role or something like that. You'd be surprised what is on the other side of some of these job openings.

Deneen: I would definitely agree with that. Just be open to whatever the journey takes you, whether it takes you from what you've been doing or what you're going to be doing.

Saray: Great. And one last thing here, and I think kind of to sum up what everyone said is that sometimes you may not get the right position that you were looking for the first time. But don't get discouraged. Continue applying to the roles that you're interested in. I know we had a question earlier about how can you prepare or what trainings could you opt into. I say just continue preparing yourself for the next interview. If anything, it's a great opportunity to practice or learning more about the interviewing process.

So thank you all for answering these questions here. And that's all the time that we have for today. If we didn't get to your question, we will contact you with a response after the webinar. And we want to thank everyone for joining us here.

But we do have a couple positions that we want to highlight. We are actively hiring for client service representatives in multiple offices. We have specifically a compliance role open in our Wilmington, Delaware office here in the U.S., document processor in our Tallahassee, Florida office, and an account manager in our Netherlands location as well. So all of our positions, and these are not the only ones, we have many openings on our CSCglobal.com/careers website if you'd like to take a look there.

And, of course, follow us on social media. We mentioned LinkedIn quite a bit here. We love LinkedIn. And you could also follow us on Facebook, The Muse, Glassdoor, and Built In.

But thank you, everybody, who joined us here today. We hope to see you next time, and hope you all have a great rest of the day.