Khalid Alfahaid

The College Experience

Throughout the college experience many of us have received a lot of opportunities

to explore different career paths. Finding the perfect career which suits our values,

personality, and interests is very hard but not impossible. First, we need to determine our

interests, skills, and values. Second, we need to research possible career paths that suits

our skills and values. Third, we need to plan career goals and ways to accomplish these

goals.

Determining our values, personality, and personal skills is particularly important

when choosing a career path, as it will help us choose the career path that is good for us.

Thinking about our values, personality, and skills when choosing the major. Because I am

a sociable, positive realist and emotionally intelligent. Also, because I prefer to work in

group settings, and I prefer to work with computers too. Moreover, I like to focus on one

task at hand rather than multi-tasking, and I prefer to work with an analytical career.

Additionally, I determined my personal strengths which are that I am good at

communication, good with analytical work, and I am good with problem-solving

exercises. Based on the skills I have; I chose finance as my major which is a personal

choice. Furthermore, I am interested in private equity, macroeconomics, and risk

management which are related to finance. In finance students will be taught about macro

and microeconomics, different types of risk capital risk management. Moreover, Finance

students will learn about how to invest in public and private companies.

Every university student should have a plan to purse a career path that they want.

I plan to work in a private equity as an analyst after I graduate from prince sultan

university (PSU) with a degree in finance and become partner at a big private equity firm

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in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Private equity analyst has an average salary of 100k-150k

dollars base salary in a year with an annual bonus. Also, private equity analyst works

around sixty to eighty hours a week, and private equity firms are known for crushing their

analyst to the bone. Furthermore, private equity jobs are very competitive and extremely

stressful. Although it is a competitive job, but it opens a lot of pathways to any private

equity analyst to go to different industries and many more opportunities too.

Additionally, a private equity analyst does a lot of research due to the diligence of its

privacy. Also, their job allows them to mange private companies investment funds or

portfolios. I know that private equity analyst job is a very stressful job, but it will be very

rewarding at the end.

Setting up a plan for the career goals and creating the steps to how accomplish

them are very important because they will keep a person on the track of progression. My

personal career goal is to be a partner at big private equity firm in Saudi Arabia in 2040.

Therefore, the steps that I need to take in order to reach my goal is to first graduate from

prince sultan university (PSU) in 4 years and receive an overall 3.6 out 4 in GPA.

Secondly, I need to pass all Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exams levels one, two,

and three in three years. Thirdly, I need to also pass the Financial Risk Manager (FRM)

exams levels one and two in two years. Fourthly, I need to get a reputable mentor that can

help me in the private equity industry. Fifthly, I need to have a master’s degree in

business administration in six years. Finally I need to have a a doctor of philosophy

degree (PhD) in finance in ten years.

To sum up, finding a career path that suits any person’s interests is very hard, but

it is not impossible. Furthermore, anyone that needs to discover about their personality

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traits, values, and skills need to find a career that suits them. So, everyone needs very

careful research on their personal goals in order for them to find the suitable career. Also,

they need to make plans on how to accomplish their career.