As Career Centre Coordinator Grace van den Boogaart says, the “EIT InnoEnergy Career Impact Programme is a year-long professional development programme designed to prepare our students for, and give them a smooth transition into, the competitive job market”.

Here’s how it works: before the start of the Master’s programme, each student takes the GC Index Assessment. Based on the results of this assessment alongside an initial counseling session, each student is matched up with a coach with whom they will work with for the coming year. Coaches may range from EIT InnoEnergy alumni or external professionals from industry, but their primary goal is to serve as a mentor during your time in the programme. They can also connect you with industry, opportunities, or simply people to talk to based on your common interests.

The GC Index is an organimetric (organisation metric) which describes people based on five proclivities, or ways they can make their biggest impact. They are: the strategist, the implementer, the polisher, the playmaker, and the game changer. By knowing your own and others’ GC Index profiles, it’s possible to boost your individual and/or organization’s performance. In fact, the Career Impact Challenges, a hackathon-style event solely for InnoEnergy students, were organized based on the GC Index.

It’s a simple framework, but with deep insights. My own GC Index profile showed me my strengths and weaknesses and taught me how to play to them. For example, my lowest score was in the strategist category; as such, it gave me some clear strategies on how to work more effectively in a team.

My coach – a professional leadership coach – and I were a perfect match: throughout the year, I grew in so many spheres. The goal of the programme is broad – to explore what you want from your career and what kind of organisations and environments help you flourish. However, it is up to every student and their coach to decide the direction they want the coaching to go.

Over the course of the year, my coach and I worked on various different things: we explored social styles and how I interact in a group; we analyzed the synergies and conflicts between different proclivities in my GC Index; we developed my decision-making skills; we worked on accelerating trust with new teams and colleagues; we built my brand; we mediated upon what I could do next.

Between our coaching sessions, I often reflected on our conversations or even had a little ‘homework’ assignment to do. For example, one time, I put together a Google Form and sent it to my friends and peers, to ascertain what they value in me and perceive as my strengths and weaknesses. Their feedback was invaluable in helping me become a better leader.

However, each student’s experience in the coaching programme is very individual and depends on the relationship with the coach. Others may prefer to work solely on more tactical leadership strategies or focus on exploring career options. It is what you make of it, or what you put into it.

For me, the coaching programme was a major added value to the EIT InnoEnergy Master’s programme. It is also one of the key features that differentiates the dual-degree EIT InnoEnergy Master’s programmes from programmes solely at one university, as those rarely have an analogous career coaching programme.

I believe it is increasingly critical in today’s society to be aware of, and play to, your strengths. There are so many opportunities out there in the world, and reflecting on where you can be most effective in making positive change adds an extra dimension to not only your CV, but value to yourself.

By Emilia Chojkiewicz, EIT InnoEnergy Master School student