The previous year, heading towards completion of my bachelors’ degree, did not only bring a certain levels of excitement, but it also triggered great concern on how I would ignite my career. Looking at the difficulty that thousands of new graduates face on getting their first experience and the overall unemployment rate within the country made me realize the intensity of a situation that lay ahead me. I kept on repeating the same question in my mind; “What is it that would make me different from other graduates?”.

That is when I decided to give myself a task, to get myself employed. More interestingly I saw myself as qualified, possessing sufficient knowledge and expertise to have an advantage. How is that so? I enrolled in a Corporate Communications degree; I took Information & Knowledge management (IKM) as one of my major courses. I then became more interested in it than my first major, developing an interest of pursuing a career within the field. As part of my IKM course, I got exposed to the study, or rather the practice, of Competitive Intelligence (CI) where I was taught and I myself realized how the skillful use of information could give you competitive advantage over your competitor.

According to my own understanding, the CI process includes realizing the intelligence needs of decision makers, gathering (research) relevant information from various sources and analyzing the information, upgrading it into feasible information (intelligence) to suit the needs of decision makers. That is when I thought; I am a decision maker myself, why not apply CI to my own advantage? I then started doing research on people and companies within my field of interest, gathered information from all various sources familiarizing myself with potential recruiters and made an effort to contact them.