Eric currently works as a business analyst for Geneisis Financial Solutions (GFS) in Portland, Oregon. His work as a Business Analyst at GFS allows him to use and develop such skills as comparative testing, creating informative graphs and charts, working with vendors to negotiate deals, forecasting, modeling, as well as the use of a number of other tools he acquired through his past positions.
It took Eric a couple of years to find the career he enjoys today. Eric’s job experiences, before GFS, were diverse and ultimately not what he was looking to do for a career (i.e. 10 + yrs.). The jobs, as he described them, did not use the tools that he had studied as an economics and math major here at the University Of Oregon. After being released from his former company Eric decided that the next job he took would be something he would love. He researched a couple of possible avenues including: teaching and actuarial science. His search finally ended when an associate of his referred him to the company he works for now.
Eric gave current UO economics majors some great advice at a recent UO Economics Career Session. One of his most interesting points was that we should “always be building our resume.” This implied that a resume is never complete and everyday we should do something that we could put on it. He thought of it as the creation of a “master resume” that we could pick and choose out of depending on the criteria involved in the job we are applying for. He also told us to utilize the newspaper and internet sites, like monster.com, for possible leads to employment opportunities. Even more important, we should make a concerted effort to find and address the person who actually does the hiring, for they might be the lead that we need to acquire the position with the company we desire. To conclude his presentation he left us with a few recommendations as we search for our first job out of school. He reminds us that we are selling ourselves, and not our experience, so try to look “enthusiastic and determined.” He points out that we should target an entry-level position and not to be too picky with our first job because we, on average, will only be there a short while anyhow. We should always continue with building our respective resumes and try as hard as we can to get our name out there, for as he states, “it is not what you know but whom you know.”
Profile by Matthew Bayley (2003)