What I Learned from Career Prep

Pavel Sandoval, 2014 Career Prep Alum, is the Guest Experience Manager-Leadership Development for Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom. Pavel shares his journey through the early phases of Career Prep.

What did you do to create a winning application?

I focused on telling the story of how I had already leveraged and impacted the community and academic environment I had been a part of up to that point in my life. Not just promises that I finally would impart some sort of impact once I got into Career Prep.

Having gone through the entire program and even reviewing applications I’ve realized that Career Prep isn’t about checking off another box. It isn’t a capstone to success for your career. What it’s really about is recognizing where you are on the career readiness spectrum.

When I applied to Career Prep I was very concise with showcasing that despite the lack of resources, I had achieved the greatest possible success in the one avenue I had control over, my academics. At the time I applied, I was on track to complete an associate’s degree at 17 and had already been recognized as a Costco Diversity Scholar. However, I was self-aware enough to know I had huge gaps in my career readiness. Nevertheless, I expressed that if given the opportunity to be in Career Prep I would do the same if not more than what I had done with my early academic career.

That was my secret to a winning application. It boiled down to answering one question throughout the application: If given the opportunity to learn the bar of excellence, receive critical feedback from coaches, and join a network of established professionals, how will you leverage Career Prep based on how far you’ve been able to leverage previously available resources or even a lack there of, to turn them into opportunities?

What do you wish you would have known early on during Career Prep?

I truly wish I would have taken the self-awareness and exploration components of Career Prep more seriously in the beginning. I remember viewing my early career as simply the functional next step after college.

I spent a lot of time in the beginning of Career Prep pursuing investment banking as the functional option that made sense. While nothing was inherently wrong with the decision, in retrospect I know that I wasn’t honing in and recognizing the talents I had that were unique and I could foster to a game-changing level, not just applying skill sets that I had that were good enough.

This is where having a sense of vulnerability with the expert coaches and professionals in the MLT network are vital. When you have an honest conversation with people who know the industries well and are exceeding the bar of excellence you can self assess if the story your telling yourself is really true.

I recall in one of the monthly assignments I set up a call with an MLT investment banker at Morgan Stanley. While ultimately it was a cold call, thinking I would be the one asking all the hard and fast questions, he started to really probe my intentions. I personally wasn’t expecting it, but it really became a wake up call because I could tell he had done the self-assessment work. Even though banking wasn’t his end goal, it was a crucial part of the trajectory he needed to be on. For me it wasn’t and he knew. He could tell I was making a step to make a step and not the step in the right direction.

What did you learn from the coaching?

I learned that coaching is not a de facto method of having all your career and life aspirations answered. Coaching really is about enhancing your own self-awareness.

I remember when I was in Career Prep I had to make abrupt changes between the first and second seminars away from investment banking. Internally I knew the decision I had made to pursue banking was short-minded because I skimmed over the hard work of pinpointing what I was great at above all else, not just choosing something to choose.

I recall feeling frustrated that no one had called me out on the trajectory I was headed; nevertheless, it really never was anyone’s job but mine. If I kept feeding coach Andrea that I wanted to do investment banking, how would she ever know that I had locked potential elsewhere. In that time I realized that no matter how good of a coach she was, if I didn’t help myself discover the reality I wanted, she could only goes as far as helping the reality I was presenting her.

At the end of the day, coaching is about creating a joint reality. It’s about understanding where the bar is that the coach wants you to reach and helping them assess where they need to meet you at. That way you both are on the same page and can work on the same development track. Omitting details, intentions, or avoiding embarrassment is only going to lead you down a false reality. Creating a successful joint action plan with your coach requires pre-work just like any other development tool.

What is an invaluable lesson you learned from Career Prep?

Certainly an invaluable lesson that I’ve learned is that your personal development doesn’t stop once you’ve reached a certain point in your career. Whether it’s getting a full time role, internship, or even getting into Career Prep. There is no point where you can just default to cruise control; development and achievement don’t just happen after a certain point.

I remember having this illusion that once I had access to the resources of Career Prep, everything else would fall into place. Nevertheless, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. This is a point I stress highly, because often students see the outcomes of Career Prep and can assume that simply associating themselves to certain actions and then just holding out will lead them to success, the checking off the boxes mentality.

I remember completing the monthly assignments, going to the first seminar, having the coach calls, and then applying to internships thinking results would just happen. It was a very linear mentality. Yet, I had my wake up call after getting denied to multiple internships and arriving to the second seminar bare bones. It was a realization that at no point in this journey could I go on autopilot.

What piece of advice would you give to students starting Career Prep?

This is meant to be multi-dimensional. I would stress that there is no guaranteed success in Career Prep, but that there is all the right resources to help you reach your goals once you’ve mapped out what success means to you. You should look at Career Prep as literally constructing the foundation of your career. Just like with an actual building, you just don’t pour in the foundation, then design and construct the building you want to make, hoping the foundation will hold.

Dedicate the time in the beginning to analyze what you actually want out of a career, and if you feel like you need further exposure to make a decision, take the time and leverage the first seminar. It’s better to have the foundation laid out for the career you want than being into tenth internship application for the sake of action and progress.