Importance of Employability Skills: A Reflection Using Gibbs Reflective Cycle

This essay reflects on the importance of employability skills through applying Gibbs reflective cycle. It discusses the key skills set required for a student to enable growth in future and provides own experience on team building, problem solving, communication and time management.

Reflective Journal

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
Gibbs reflective cycle..................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERNCES:..................................................................................................................................7
Books and Journals:....................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
This essay aims to identify the employability and study skills which are required for a
student to enable growth In future. A student learns many skills from their university which
makes them capable to achieve success and fulfil career aims. Communication, time
management, team building, problem solving are the key skills set which makes a student
capable to cope up with workplace challenges and be an inspiration for others (Adeani, Febriani,
and Syafryadin, 2020). This report is going to discuss about the importance of employability
skills through providing own experience. It will be provided through applying Gibbs reflective
cycle.
MAIN BODY
TASK
Gibbs reflective cycle
This model is a best tool to analyse an experience in both positive and negative manner.
It is an effective framework for reflecting upon self working activities which shows whether it
went well or require improvements. It gives step by step evaluation of the whole experience that
includes description, feeling, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan. The main purpose
of applying this cycle is to learn from the experiences and apply it in future growth. For the
students, there are many experiences takes place during the studies like team building, group
presentations, class room activities and other work criteria that showcase own skills. It gives rise
to further learning and development activities which did not went well.
Description: This stage evaluates a whole description about the experiences. It includes
events, programmes and practices took place, who are the people involved and what happened
in overall situation. It gives an insight about the whole activity to drive a better conclusion. In
my own experience of university lectures and programmes, we were a part of green house group
in which, there were 6 members in each group in which work is divided among all the 3 group. I
was the group leader to assist and support my team members. We were handling a task for
preparing presentations, preparing research on Eco-friendly environment issues and how it could
be minimises (Ezezika, and Johnston, 2022). We were working on a team presentation in which
I need to know about each individuals capability and strength. It was a huge project that is going
to represent in inter college competition. So we wanted to make it success. We had decided to

think about new ideas and each one of the group member must come up with the individual
strength to work on the task. I found that this way will be helpful to maintain coordination but
ended up in confusions and delays. The team members researched and wrote on the same topics
which results in unnecessary content. This leads to create confusion and miss management of
work. It happened because of less communication and unprepared plans and our presentation was
not seemed to be complete before time. I and my team members gets settled and decided to
prepare an effective working criteria. But it not seemed to be happened due to disputes and
communication barriers.
Feeling: In this stage, an individual showcase their feeling while involving in some
experience. May be the experience could be so good and worst also. It involves how was the
feeling while being a part of activities of group presentations in the university. These are the
thoughts and ides come at the time of being apart of it. Therefore, in my own experience as a
group lead to green house. I was feeling excited to communicate and coordinate with new
people. I felt energetic and confident as the topic seemed interesting to us. As soon as we got
deep down in our presentation and research topic, I also felt frustrated and confused. My team
members were not getting any relevant material or content to write about and found difficulty in
writing own ideas (Tanaka, Okamoto, and Koide, 2018). I was also busy in analysing best
themes and presentation material due to which, I got too tired. Then we came across to our
deadlines and teachers were putting pressure to complete the work as soon as possible for final
review. Therefore, it made us so pressurize that everyone started loosing hopes to provide best
presentation. I felt guilty that I have not spoken to my group clearly but they are very much
supportive which gave me a positive insight about re-working. Then I felt that, I need to manage
my time properly and give priorities to the main components of presentation. This way, I could
solve problems of each team members. It really helped me in our work. My team members had
to cancels their other plans and miss classes to give their best efforts in the presentation. I felt
satisfied as everyone was ready for it.
Evaluation: In this stage, a whole evaluation of the experience gets provided. It could be
both in terms of positive and negative which shows what things went well and what things gone
wrong as per the situation. Therefore, it needs to be analysed all the outcomes of the experience.
While working in university presentation, it has evaluated that the tasks was quite interesting and
separated groups are made which resulted in producing good quality work. I and my team

members have contributed positively in each work stage. At first, we got confused and lost from
the right track of work. But our coordination and my leadership quality had proved right for
working according to the plans. I was able to coordinate with my group in case of disputes and
miss management. These consequences had wasted a lot of time due to which, we managed to
pull out the work in pressure. This impacted negatively on the work performance and creates
hurdles among team member. Also, there were some misunderstandings happened during the
project as one members wrote on the same topic of other team member. It resulted in creating
conflicts that has impacted on our work quality (Sekarwinahyu, Rustaman, and Widodo, 2019).
It has also evaluated that, my poor communication skills caused trouble in preparing the
presentation. I was not able to regulate a specific plan among my team members due to being
involved in the other task. I gave authority to team members to divide the task among them
which resulted in negative issues. Therefore, the whole experience ended up by completing
presentation on time through solving all the problems.
Analysis: This stage analyse the whole experience in right or wrong way. It has analysed
from the experience that there are many key skills and experience required in order to manage a
team. It is not an easy task to cooperate with the different individuals who have different
perspective (Gratton, and Gratton, 2020). The reason behind the initial disputes and miss
management of work is that my communication skills was not well to influence the team in an
appropriate manner. Also, time become the major cause which had put a lot of pressure on us.
Everyone gets frustrated as no plans was prepared and task was divided. I thought that, the topic
is interesting so, the research could get conducted easily. But then I came to know that, it require
appropriate rephrasing and creative skills within the individuals (Kousar, Khanam, and Azhar,
2021). I took help from my teachers and other peers to get rid of miss management. Therefore, I
have learned that managing time is more required to eliminate pressure. It give rise to
employability skills like good team coordination, time management and problem solving. As
being a leader, I need to corporate with the individual to understand the strength and weak
criteria. Therefore, it will be beneficial for the me to easily divide task as per their interest. It
would have not created any situation of conflict.
Conclusion: The main purpose of giving a self reflection is to analyse the overall work.
From the presentation among the group, I have concluded that, some skills are required in every
point of time while at education or employment (Soundiraraj, and Babu, 2022). Communication,

time management, problem solving are most important skills that will result in better deal with
different people. Proper communication will avoid any gaps and informations and data will be
provided easily. Also, tasks are needs to be completed within set deadlines to achieve own goals
and objectives. So, in order to achieve highest score in our presentation, we required to submit
the presentation on time but we fails to give put best efforts.
Action plan: By analysing own experience, I will work on improving some of the
important skills. The prior skill which I need to work on is time management. I will start giving
time to priority areas and keep all the things updated (Hussein, 2018). The further skills which
needs to improve are communication and problem solving. These will be improvise through
working more on team projects and start taking part in sessions and debates. It will boost my
confidence.
CONCLUSION
The report has concluded that, reflection is an important procedure for an individual. It
gives insight about the whole experiences, it causes and pros in both positive and negative
manner. Therefore, the self experience shown that, there are many skills which are necessary for
the individuals like communication, time management and problem solving.

REFERNCES:
Books and Journals:
Adeani, I.S., Febriani, R.B. and Syafryadin, S., 2020. USING GIBBS’REFLECTIVE CYCLE
IN MAKING REFLECTIONS OF LITERARY ANALYSIS. Indonesian EFL
Journal, 6(2), pp.139-148.
Ezezika, O. and Johnston, N., 2022. Development and Implementation of a Reflective Writing
Assignment for Undergraduate Students in a Large Public Health Biology
Course. Pedagogy in Health Promotion, p.23733799211069993.
Tanaka, M., Okamoto, R. and Koide, K., 2018. Relationship between Reflective Practice Skills
and Volume of Writing in a Reflective Journal. Health, 10(3), pp.283-288.
Sekarwinahyu, M., Rustaman, N.Y. and Widodo, A., 2019, November. Problem-based learning
skills and reflection skills of biology education students through the problem-based
online tutorial. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1280, No. 3, p. 032004).
IOP Publishing.
Kousar, S., Khanam, A. and Azhar, H., 2021. Reflective Assessment of a Facebook Mediated
Course of Instructional Technology: A Case from a Women University. Journal of
Educational Research and Social Sciences Review (JERSSR), 1(4), pp.56-64.
Hussein, H., 2018. Examining the Effects of Reflective Journals on Students' Growth Mindset: A
Case Study of Tertiary Level EFL Students in the United Arab Emirates. IAFOR
Journal of Education, 6(2), pp.33-50.
Soundiraraj, S. and Babu, B.A., 2022. Reflective Practice for Teachers in the Post-Method
Era. Contemporary ELT Strategies in Engineering Pedagogy: Theory and Practice.
Gratton, P. and Gratton, G., 2020. Reflection. In Achieving Success with the Engineering
Dissertation (pp. 177-184). Springer, Cham.