Transferable Skills and Employment

2 Different Academic Areas with Potential to Soft Skills

Oral Presentation

Oral presentations refers to events in which students in a classroom have to present a specially assigned topic before their classmates. The activity is done to create confidence amongst the students and to let them face their fear of public speaking. A cozy environment is created in initial years of college in order to encourage students to come and talk before their colleagues. This activity is later ensured through regulations that are made tough with the passage of time and by the time the students reached their final years of college, the activity is often an exact replica of a professional situation. The activity has the ability of create communication skills within the students that are transferable to the professional environment (Verderber, et al., 2007). The ability of oral presentation to build confidence in communication is vital and there is no denial of the fact that this skills possess a strong value at the workplace. Employers love to recruit people that are confident in their communication and know the rules and manners of doing that in a professional place. These skills are vital for the employers before their customers and that is why a person having such skill is likely improve with great pace in a workplace. The skill is an enabling tool to communicate with the colleagues within the workplace in order to create a strong bond (Keyton, et al., 2013). It will also help to present ideas, concepts and reports before the higher management in a professional way which proposer the chances of workplace progress as compared to others. Not only is that, the fear of public speaking once removed is likely to make the person likable in any gathering especially a professional one.

2.2 Lectures/Tutorials

Lectures ad tutorials are activities focused on transferring knowledge to the students in a classroom about a particular topic. There is a difference between the lectures and tutorials. Lectures often refer to as pre-written or pre-arranged script that professor delivers before the class. The lecture is more about direct sermon given to the student about a particular topic. On a slightly different node comes tutorials that is a set of different activities related to a particular topic. Tutorials include interactive activities, videos and knowledge through examples targeted to transfer knowledge to the students (Walton, 2012). It works through visuals, interesting examples to offer direct and indirect understanding about the topic and its complexities. Lectures and Tutorials are significant in incorporation of multiple transferrable skills that include analytical skills to understand topics through lectures and tutorials. In a professional workplace, complex market, customer or an organization’s internal situations are shown to the managers to help them understand what is going on and what can be done to avoid the situation or get advantage of that situation (Whiley, et al., 2015). For proper understanding, it is important that a person listens to the knowledge with complete attention and greater presence. This is something that takes a lot of practice as it may seems ordinary to sit and listen in order to understand, it is often a challenging task to do especially when it gets complex. Employees with better analytical skills are likely to survive in tough environment as they better understand what is going on at the workplace and why it is going on? The possible solution to the problem and the time it will take to vanish. These understandings when communicated through verbal and non-verbal skills help employees to gain employer’s attention.

2.3 Group Work

Group work is an activity in which the whole class is divided into different groups in order to perform a presentation or a particular task together. The purpose of this activity is to incorporate a deep sense of working together in different situations in order to gain collective profits. Group work is highly linked to success at the workplace. There is a lot to do when it comes to group work as the cultural, communicational and personality differences often prolongs and eventually creates a sense of chaos in the group. This chaos makes the group ineffective and literally takes everyone down with it that results in a loss for everyone. Though, a person did the best to secure his/her interest the failure to follow the group work and collective goals will ensure loss of personal interest too. This is an important skill transferrable to the workplace as it helps in creation of an attitude amongst the student to work in coordination by setting aside the differences in order to achieve common goals. It makes them learn how to be a tea player and what strategies should be employed to keep the group interest ahead of personal interest. The benefit of this in the workplace will be seen in the attitude of the employee who will be more likable and comfortable to work with than others. That employee will gain the attention of the employers as they prefer people looking to achieve organizational goals over personal achievements. The skill is likely to take a person’s progress in the workplace to another level as that person creates a healthy and effective environment around him/herself in the workplace that is essential for effective performance.

2.4 Observation

Observation in a classroom is about keeping an eye on surroundings to silently monitor different situations about that event. In reality, it is seldom used but is very effective when it comes to the knowledge gained through watching a particular event. The students are often presented with different displays and situations either over the internet or in class and they are asked to offer their reflection on the event (Allwright, 2014). Critical observation include getting clues from non-verbal expressions or implied meanings hidden. This is important to enhance the sense of surrounding amongst the employees as they are likely to get benefitted in the professional workplace. To know what is going on without even being told is an important trait for success in professional life (Monk, et al., 2006). The observation also helps students to be employees with critical observation on any situation in a workplace and then their constructive feedback is likely to enhance the overall effectiveness of the organization. These employees are likely to flourish because they often comes up with constructive ideas with whom the organization can benefit in the longer run and eventually returns the favor by rewarding the employees for their critical analysis. The professional benefits of observation is different in different situation. However, it is a skill that ensures a person above waters even when it gets tough. Observation also leads to involvement of other employees of the organization and that creates an environment of success within the organization. This environment is highly liked by the professionals and such person gets the chance to be in a monitoring committee or any other group that is formed to create a strategy for wither a department or the whole organization.

2.5 Writing Task

Writing Task are projects, term papers and assignments given by the professors to ensure students learn to convert their ideas onto papers in a professional manner. It is important to understand that business communication often revolves around memos, business letters and other professional writings that are essential for the presentation of the organization before the corporate world. It is very important for an employer that his/her employee know how to write and what to write in different business paper keeping the relevant formalities and needs of that paper intact (Walton, 2012). This is hard to be done without proper knowledge of the writing requirements and that is what these writing projects meant to achieve. They led to the knowledge of appropriate writing and necessary skills to ensure a greater piece of writing that often helps to win great bids and highest possible orders for an organization. The writing tasks lead to effective conversion of ideas on to the paper and this is vital for businesses as they try to make an offer to their potential customer or make a report to present to their investor or try to market the product through flyers or other professional content. The knowledge will led the person to achieve greater position within the organization may be their spoke person or a representative before the client (Denicolo & Reeves, 2013). The employee may be attached to drafting of company’s proposals and other official document. The writing task given in the class also helps to research and create an information through set of data scattered over the internet. The better the practice, the more will be the benefit gained by the employee in the workplace. Research skills are essential to read the market and to estimate what will happen for the company if the perspective product will be launched successfully or not. The key is to search in a better that offers concert results.

Conclusion

Summing up all, transferable skills are important tools to learn in order to use in multiple situation that is likely to reward students in various fields of their lives and not limited to the professional one only. Out of these essential skills, the art of communication is learned through oral presentation while the sense of critical thinking is gained through lectures and tutorials. The other important task that offers team work is group work and that is one of the vital traits required to be successful in an origination. The last but not the least is writing tasks that helps to learn the art of business writings.

Reference:

Allwright, D., 2014. Observation in the Language Classroom. 1st ed. s.l.:Routledge .

Denicolo, P. & Reeves, J., 2013. Developing Transferable Skills: Enhancing Your Research and Employment Potential. 1st ed. s.l.:SAGE.

Keyton, J. et al., 2013. Investigating Verbal Workplace Communication Behaviors. International Journal of Business COmmunication , 50(2), pp. 152-169.

Monk, M., Swain, J. & Johnson, S., 2006. The Evaluation of Classroom Observation Activities. Journal of In-Service Education , p. 1367.

tcd.ie, 206. Making Transferable Skills Explicit in the Curricula. [Online]
Available at: https://www.tcd.ie/Careers/downloads/Transferable_Skiills_flyer.pdf
[Accessed 28 November 2017].

Verderber, R. F., Verderber, K. S. & Sellnow, D. D., 2007. The Challenge of Effective Speaking. 1st ed. s.l.:Cengage Brain.

Walton, A., 2012. Lectures, Tutorials and the Like: A Primer in the Techniques of Higher Scientific Education. 1st ed. s.l.:Springer Science & Business .

Whiley, D. et al., 2015. Enhancing critical thinking skills in first year environmental management students: a tale of curriculum design, application and reflection. Journal of Geography in Higher Education , 47(2), pp. 166-181.