Today I want to share with you whether joining a management training program
can help you to fast-track your career and what I mean by fast-track is being
promoted once every one to two years which is very fast and in this video I
want to give you a general idea to what extent management trainee program can
help you progress vastly in your career and how it is different from the regular
route or a normal entry-level job I want to share a bit with you about my
personal experience I started my career in banking as a management trainee and I
didn't plan to become a management trainee but it was rather a coincidence
so what happened was that after graduation basically my goal was to work
in a bank so I applied for several different banks and among others I
applied to this one management trainee program and I feel very lucky that I got
accepted into it because it really helped me to progress my career fast and
I want to share more about this with you so that you can make it an intentional
choice and most of it is based on my own personal experience as a management
trainee in total I got promoted three times over the course of five years and
granted there were many different factors that went into me being able to
progress that fast but I would say that being a management trainee definitely
helped if you click on this video then you might already have heard a lot of
great things about management trainee programs maybe you just graduated and
you're looking for a job or you want to change your career maybe you're still
trying to find out what a management training program is and if it's worth
going after if you're asking me whether it's really different or not or if it's
just another fancy name that a company came up with to attract fresh graduates
then I would tell you then in advance yes it does make a difference but at the
same time I do want to manage your expectations about what this program can
do for your career before I explain to you how a management training program
can help fast-track your career I want to give you some basics so what is a
management training program the problem is that there is no real standard
admission for this and in fact the name can vary from company to company but
what it basically is is a program where companies recruit fresh graduates or
people who are at the very beginning stages of their career who have certain
skills especially leadership potential so depending on the company the name
could be management trainee program graduate program graduate development
program there could be all sorts of different names because the name is not
protected it's like when you buy cereal it could be muesli with fruits and nuts
it could be oats with raisins it could be fruit loops and other things so
that's why you shouldn't get hung up on the name you have to research what the
program contains how it is structured and what it offers to you I will explain
to you in a different video how you can figure out exactly whether a program is
good and whether it can help you to fast-track your career so how does a
management trainee program work after you are recruited basically you start as
a trainee it could also be called junior manager or it could be a different name
a different title but the title doesn't really matter because you are basically
on probation which means that during the time during this management trainee
program you are being observed closely and at the end of it the company can
decide whether to let you stay or let you go and during this time you would
normally undergo a series of training and this would normally be a combination
of e-learning classroom training attachments workshops and others and you
will have the chance to get to know the different areas of the business and
learn how the business works the program that I was part of even included an
overseas training in the UK London for seven weeks and that was really awesome
but nowadays not all companies offer these kind of overseas trainings anymore
because they are very very expensive so you might be asking what is the
company's interest in fast tracking you and what are their goals the company is
investing a lot of time effort and especially
money into you the company has an interest to groom you to become a future
leader and this is the key they are indeed interested in fast tracking you
usually the program is geared and a way to allow fast promotion to happen so
what it does it offers the framework and I want to emphasize the word framework
here because what it means is that it allows all the possibilities to help you
progress fast but it doesn't guarantee anything so how can the program
fast-track you this is really different in every company and that is why it's so
important for you to ask how the program is structure and what it offers so for
some companies the promotion stages is built into the program itself which
means that as long as you perform within the program you are almost guaranteed at
least one promotion when I was a management trainee the promise was that
after eight months of being in the program I would be promoted from trainee
to manager and it also involved salary increase after every six months but
again it is really different for each company and that's why it's so important
that you asked about this and after I graduated and became a manager I believe
that I still benefited from my background as management trainee
although there were many other factors that led me to be promoted another two
times within the next three years I believe that the fact that I was a
management trainee also helped me in the process I want to tell you upfront that
a management trainee program does not guarantee a fast-track career it is
really up to you in the end what you make out of the program but what it does
is it definitely provides the framework and the support structure for you to
succeed during my time as trainee most of the management trainees succeeded and
they got a promotion in a very short time but there was this one girl who
never quite seemed to catch up with the others the program simply demanded too
much of her and what happened in the end is
she quit the program so do you have to be a management trainee if you want to
progress fast in your career the answer is clearly no there are many people who
started together with me in the bank who fast track their own career in fact
there was this one woman who started together with me and at that time she
was at a lower level in hierarchy than me I was manager and she was assistant
manager but after five years we ended up in the same place we were both vice
president so she fast-tracked her own career by excelling at her job by doing
all the right things by being smart and proactive about it and this is not an
exception I would say that a management trainee program is like a highway that
is ready for you to drive on at full speed and you don't have to build the
highway yourself by being in a management training program you will
mostly be given access to high-profile projects that allow you visibility and
there are usually a lot of chances to talk and meet with your skip level
manager and sometimes even have lunch sessions with the CEO there are also a
lot of additional perks and advantages that come with being in a management
training program and I will explain this to you in a different video basically a
lot of the work is already cut out for you and it's made easy for you when I
started as a management trainee on the first day I was immediately assigned to
a big international project so I had to work with a more senior people work
overseas and in the regional office and in the headquarters so many people knew
who I was and what I accomplished and the same happened also with other
management trainees so whenever there was a project that required a champion
from each department normally one of the management trainees would be assigned to
take this function and this way they had the possibility to work with more senior
people's and to gain visibility so it's being part of a management trainee
program the best way to fast-track your career I would say no but it is
definitely the easier way you can definitely fast-track your own career by
going through the regular route but you have to fight more for it but if you do
the right things can definitely be as fast if you are
already working and you are figuring out how to get a promotion then be sure to
check out my other video where I explain this in more detail now you might ask
yourself how can you possibly get into such a promising program like I
previously said not all management training programs are built the same way
so you really need to research what the program contains what it promises
whether it contains a salary increase of promotion and other things I hope this
video has given you more clarity on whether and how a management trainee
program can help you fast-track your career if you have any other questions
things that I haven't addressed yet please do ask them in the comments and I
will try to answer them I'm also curious to know what you are
trying to achieve in your career at this very moment if you have anything that
you'd like to share or ask please do this in the comments if you liked this
video please hit the like button and also don't forget to subscribe if you
don't want to miss out on any other videos like this in the future I will be
regularly posting more content related to work life and career and I am also
open to any suggestions from you on what you would like me to cover in future
thank you so much for watching all the best and see you again soon