Finding Her Treasure: Philasande's Graduate Journey
“I know where my treasure lies and I know who I am.”
That's what Philasande said when she reflected on her year in the KPI Graduate Programme.
What struck me was how she chose to tell her story.
She referred to The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho's novel about a young shepherd who travels in search of treasure. He goes a long way, meets people who influence his journey and eventually discovers that the treasure he was looking for was back where he started.
Philasande saw something of herself in that story.
Over the course of the programme, she'd been exposed to new skills, people and experiences that challenged her thinking. But when she stood up to reflect on the year, it wasn't a particular technical achievement that she chose to talk about.
It was what she'd learned about herself.
What she learned along the way
Philasande spoke about learning Excel, developing her presentation skills, understanding leadership and gaining exposure to financial planning and analysis (FP&A).
She also spoke about working with people from different parts of the world and how much she'd learned from those interactions.
These are valuable experiences. We want graduates to leave the programme with practical skills they can apply in the workplace, and we put a lot of effort into giving them opportunities to learn and practise.
But there was something else in Philasande's speech that interested me.
She spoke about learning “how to tap into my potential.”
That's quite a different thing from learning a new tool.
You can teach someone how to build a spreadsheet or present a report. Working out what you want to do with those skills is another challenge entirely.
The people who shape the journey
Like the shepherd in The Alchemist, Philasande found that the people she met along the way mattered.
She spoke about the relationships she'd built, the people she'd learned from and what being part of the group had meant to her.
I think this is an important part of graduate development that we sometimes underestimate.
A graduate can learn a great deal from formal training. But some of the most useful learning happens while working alongside other people, seeing how they approach problems, listening to different perspectives and being challenged to think differently.
Those experiences don't always fit neatly into a training plan, but they can influence the decisions people make about their futures.
Knowing where you want to go
Towards the end of her speech, Philasande said:
“I know what I want out of life. I know what I want to do.”
At the beginning of a graduate programme, many young people are still working out what interests them, where their strengths lie and what kind of work they want to pursue.
They may have qualifications and plenty of ability, but that doesn't necessarily mean they know which direction to take.
Exposure to new kinds of work, people and challenges can help them make those decisions.
In Philasande's case, the experience gave her a clearer sense of where she wanted to go.
A different measure of success
We often talk about graduate programmes in terms of employment outcomes. How many graduates were placed? What skills did they gain? Where did they go afterwards?
Those are important questions, and we should be asking them.
But listening to Philasande made me think about another question.
Does a graduate leave the programme with a better understanding of the direction they want their life and career to take?
For someone at the beginning of their working life, that's no small thing.
You can spend years studying towards a qualification without having much opportunity to see how that knowledge applies in the workplace. It's one thing to know a subject academically and another to find out whether you actually enjoy working in that field.
That's part of what practical experience can offer. It allows people to test their interests rather than make career decisions based entirely on what they've studied.
What I liked about Philasande's reference to The Alchemist was that the journey itself mattered.
The shepherd had to travel all the way to Egypt before he understood where the treasure was. Without that journey, he wouldn't have known where to look.
Philasande's year gave her experiences and perspectives that helped her see the path ahead more clearly.
Sometimes the most valuable thing a young professional gains from a development programme is knowing which direction to take next.
And that's why her opening words stayed with me:
“I know where my treasure lies and I know who I am.”
Watch Philasande's story
Hear Philasande reflect on her experience, the people she learned from and what the journey meant to her.
