14th November 2011 - Common Career Competences

Finishing off with my research in various job sites and finding the best jobs on 3 Job Advertisement, 3 Job Description and 3 Person Specification, I had to create a common set of common or generic competences and requirement within the career path I chose. This means that I have to look at the researched work and then choose common skills and competences, Experience, Qualification, Personality and attitude.

By doing this it enabled me to know exactly what is required by an employee to work in an HR field. This also allowed me to research more on why is competence important where I came across this website which gives some useful information which acknowledges me to know more about this topic. (CIPD)

I believe this session really helped me as in the previous sessions; I just had to research and find the 9 best possible jobs that fits in the 3 categories and by doing this I had little knowledge as I only knew little about the experience and responsibility that is needed in an employee. But by doing the common career competences, it allowed me to know exactly the main common competences skills that are necessary to have with each employee and also the qualification and experience that are essential in an HR field.

7th November 2011 - Research on Job Description and Person Specification

This session allowed me to gain more knowledge and understanding about what an employer is needed to have from an employee when applying for an HR Job. I had to research 3 appropriate Job Descriptions and 3 Person Specification for graduate jobs in my career area. I found this to be very interesting as I not only got to research on various job sites but also came across researching on the professional bodies in charge of these fields.

Before I start to research into different job sites, I first have to understand the difference between Job description and person specification. For that I came across this website which explains quite a lot about these two categories (ehow) differ. Job description, however, gives details about the jobs such as responsibility needed in a person applying for the job and person specification determine what a person need to essentially have in order to apply for the job. I also came across this you tube video which explains more about what is person specification and why is it important in business organisation.

By researching into different websites and finding 3 Job Description and 3 Person Specification, it helped me a lot as I came across the different skills and responsibility which is needed by the employer in an HR field.  This also helped me in knowing more on this field which will be useful for me once I become graduated.

31st October 2011 – Research on Job Advertisement

In this session, we were told to research and find three best Job Advertisements that would fit best on my selected field. A Job Advertisement is however “placed when a vacancy arises within a company or organization” (ehow.com). It is very effective as it helps the organisation or recruiter agency to select the best person for a particular job role.  A good advertisement enables a sufficient number of applicants to apply for the role. This session helped me improve on my research skills as we had to research a lot and then select the three best Jobs Adverts in our sector.

It was quite challenging in a way as there was so many areas to choose from in Human Resources. This made me think a lot about the specific sector which I really want to go in as there were various options such as HR Manager, Assistant HR Manager, HR advisor, and Recruitment officer and so on. This enabled me to gain quite a lot of knowledge about this field in elements I was unaware of.

It also showed me the key core competence that the employers may need such as experience, skills and qualification that graduates need to have in order to apply for the job. After choosing the three best Job Adverts, we had to give reasons as to why we choose that advert and why we thought that those adverts were the best of all other advert.

We had to do this using ‘Google Document’ and had to save our work before uploading it to ‘Livebinders’. This session was very useful and very helpful for me as now I not only know which field I want to go to but also know which area I want to be in after graduating.

17th October 2011 – Introduction to Career Path

This session was the most important session for me as it allowed me to think carefully which field I would like to pursue after my graduation. Before we all started, we were told that the research period would last up to 3 weeks providing us enough time to research on the field which might interest us the most.

We were given four choices in which we can research on, which were HR Jobs, Marketing, Finance and Management. By giving these choices it enabled me to choose which career path I want to go to. I find it to be really useful as I always wanted to work as an HR Manager but didn’t really know if I could work once I am graduated. So this really helped as it made me realise that studying business would not only give me a single option to work for but also have several other options as well.

Then I spent most of the session researching and finding out more information about HR where I came across this website which I found to be very useful (HR website). By looking at this website it gave me more insight knowledge about the field, what experience, skills, qualification is needed to work in that field and also what training and opportunity is there that can be beneficial for me to get in that field.

I also came across another website that I found to be very useful as it shows the different career path that HR has and also talks about what each path is responsible to do (Career Path). This improved my understanding and knowledge and also allowed me to know exactly what path I want to go to.

I than looked at various job sites within the field and started researching on Job Advertisement especially into Job Descriptions and Person Specification that a graduate student need in order to get in the field. This made me realise that whenever I look at the Job Adverts, I need to look for the Job Description and also at the Job Specification in order to ensure that the job is suitable for me.

10th October 2011 – Finishing off with Core Competences

Finishing off the 10 core competences was not at all easy. It was kind of difficult as we had to think a lot about when we actually used the competencies in real life. This helped me gained a wider knowledge about the competencies and also helped me question myself in what I think should be done to gain and develop on each competences.

The session was helpful as it gave us clearer insight and time to think about where we have used our own skills and how we’ve used the skills in each competence. This also made us think about job interview as some of the skills are frequently asked by an employer in an interview. List of Jobs interview questions

This analysis also improved on my self-evaluation and self-development as now I know exactly how I am progressing at this stage and what I should do to progress in future. This improved our confidence level even more as it gave us an idea on each competence and will also help us be prepared when similar questions to this are asked in an interview. This will keep us a step ahead of our competitors as when asked similar questions, as I will know exactly what to answer and give real life examples when I have used these skills.

3rd October – Starting off with Competencies Analysis

Starting off in this session, we were informed that we’re going to learn about Competencies analysis which is quite different from SWAIN analysis. This analysis however, talks in much more details about ourselves and as to whether we can give real examples in each competency. This analysis itself consists of 10 main competences which includes Personal Management, Communication, Managing information, Research and analysis, Project, task and organisational skill, Teamwork, Commitment to quality Professional behaviour, Social responsibility and Continuous learning.

This allows us, and the employers to know more about ourselves rather than just knowing our strengths, weaknesses and aspirations. This also allows them to know exactly if they are selecting the correct candidate and whether or not the candidate has similar experience, motivation and interest in order to achieve a particular goal in that job.

I found this analysis to be very helpful for me as I can talk about my previous work experiences, skills, and can apply to each core analysis. This will help me as it will prepare me well in advance for an interview as I would know exactly what I have to speak and explain when the employer asks me about my real life examples.

26th September – SWAIN Analysis

In this session, I was asked to undertake SWAIN Analysis. At first I had no clue about what it is about as it was new to me, however later on I grasped onto the main key elements in which will reflect to what I want to achieve in future and what I need to do in order to remedy my weaknesses. SWAIN Analysis is shown as follows:

Performing this analysis helped me a lot, as it made me think as to what are my main strengths, weaknesses, aspirations, interests and needs. And also to make a note of areas in which I am good at and in which I need to work on and improve. Therefore, while doing this analysis I came across my 5 main Strengths, Aspirations and Priority needs and also made me think what my main ambitions are and how to plan and achieve my goals. It also pointed out my weaknesses and how will I overcome these weaknesses.

After doing this analysis, I had to then complete an action point for these 5 elements as to what have I planned in order to improve these elements.

After completing the SWAIN Analysis, we had to convert our document into PDF format and transfer it to our online portfolio (Livebinder). In livebinder, we had to change the text format to ‘small text media’ which then had to describe in short what the analysis was about.

I believe by doing the SWAIN Analysis, it has highlighted what my main strengths are in order to work towards my aspirations and achieve them.

19th September – Introduction to 2nd year

Coming back to learning after the long holiday was a bit difficult, but as we came to know about out new modules that we’re going to learn became exciting, as my main aim in my career is to work in an HR department and all the modules during this year will help me in gaining knowledge in that. It was exciting to have Jay Glover as a tutor as he taught us last year and himself introduced us to BUSINESS RESEARCH.

In this session, we had to create a new blog which will be used as a means to dicuss and provide overview of what we’ve done in the each session. The real title for the blog is a reflective journal and I’ll be using this to research the project each week in preparation for my research.

We also set up a live binder by visiting www.livebinder.com. This is where I will upload all the research that I will be carrying out during the tenure of this course. It has a number of sections such as my career documents, my career research and my online reflective journal. It also includes a number of “key career planning documents” such as SWAIN Analysis, my competences, common competences, career plan, research proposal and project. It also has a ‘setting up your live binder’ title in case if you’re stuck using the software.

Hopefully this reflective journey will be a regular account of what I am doing by way of research in order to achieve the best possible grade in my final project.