Developing Career Prospects

This reflective essay is based on identifying the most essential as well as significant personal strengths over which my reflection will be focused. To do so, this essay will identify the main qualities of mine which have emerged from the various class activities. In addition, the paper will examine how the identified personal qualities can be demonstrated across a wide range of professional as well as personal activities and experiences.

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 0
Management
Developing Career Prospects
(Student Details :)
2/19/2019

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Contents
Developing Career prospects.....................................................................................................2
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
My Personal strengths................................................................................................................3
Analysis of my experience.........................................................................................................5
Analysis of my graduate employment qualities.........................................................................6
My Future career development actions......................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Developing Career prospects
Introduction
This reflective essay is based on identifying the most essential as well as significant personal
strengths over which my reflection will be focused. To do so, this essay will identify the main
qualities of mine which have emerged from the various class activities. In addition, the paper
will examine how the identified personal qualities can be demonstrated across a wide range
of professional as well as personal activities and experiences (Charlotte, 2014).
Employability skills are those essentially desired qualities in any person which make person
compatible for a job position in order to work efficiently. I chose my skills include team-
work, effective communication and willingness to learn for reflecting my experiences during
the employability workshop (Quain, 2019). I chose these above qualities to be considered as
my major strengths as well as explored these in depth because I felt like I am incomplete
without these strengths of mine. Furthermore, I will analyse my experience about my key
strengths along with doing an analysis of my graduate employment qualities in depth.
Moreover, with the help of this essay I will discuss my future career development actions
which will allow me to integrate entire learning acquired from the employability activities
and experiences. Finally, I will provide a summary of all key points covered in this critical
reflective essay so that readers can get the concepts of reflection as well as reflexivity.

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Source: (Bevacqua, 2018)
My Personal strengths
In this paragraph, I will explain my personal strengths with the help of important theories. In
addition, I will also evaluate the effectiveness of my quality strengths by using above
identified theories. First of all I would like to focus on the reflection and reflexivity concepts
which I have used to reflect upon my personal strengths identified through employability
activities as well as experiences. Based on (Hirsch & McKenna, 2008), in epistemology,
being the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity can be refers to spherical relationships amid
causes and effect, hence it is used specifically in human belief structures. While using these
concepts to reflect upon my learning and development through workshop, I have got the real
difference amid reflexivity and reflection. Hence, based on (Hirsch & McKenna, 2008),
reflection is usually based on the idea that we and reality are separated from reflection being
a mirror image. On the other hand, reflexivity refers as the socially build nature of the reality
means reflexivity is a kind of action (Berlin et al., 2012).
Source: (Charlotte, 2014)
Moreover, my first major strength is team-work, I possess this strength since my childhood
and hence it has been identified from my school-teachers, mother and father. Most of my
friends and peers often gave this compliment to me that I am an effective team-mate. Based

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on (Belbin, 2012), I will use Belbin’s teamwork theory to explain my strength of good team-
work. As per this theory there are basically 9 team-roles which are based on actions, people
as well as cerebral. In this way, I see myself a good team shaper, implementer, co-ordinator,
team-worker as well as finisher. Hence, out of 9 major team-roles of Belbin’s theory I am fit
into five important team-roles.
Apart from team-work quality, after attending employability workshop I realised that I
possess the quality of effective communication (Bersin, 2016). During workshop, I worked in
a team and then I observed that to be an effective team-mate one need to communicate with
their team-mates effectively so that a harmony can be maintained among all. Hence, my good
communication strength can be further illustrated through ‘The Five Ws’ theory of
communication given by Lasswell in the year 1948 (Health Knowledge, 2018). According to
this theory, addressing the '5 Ws' is very important for all communication events (Keller,
2013). In my views, getting these 5 Ws right should be the prior step in the communication
process and it teaches us what is exactly needed to be communicated at any time. In this way,
through learning Lasswell’s theory of good communication skills I realised that
communicating effectively in a team and organization is essential when managing change in
any organisation (Health Knowledge, 2018).
Source: (Belbin, 2012)

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Now, coming to my third personal strength which is willingness to learn in any environment,
and it has been identified during employability related activities in workshop. I can evaluate
the effectiveness of my willingness to learn in any environment through cognitive
psychology, emotional intelligence as well as multiple intelligence theories. Thus, my skills
and curiosity for each and every useful concepts, framework, activity as well as theory
suggests that I am a highly active personality towards learning activities and experiences. I
can easily interact with new environment and people whenever I find an opportunity to learn
from those. Hence, my three personal strengths have been recognized during this workshop
classes and activities.
Analysis of my experience
From the analysis point of view my experiences can be analysed through the activities during
the workshop as well as challenges which I have faced during those activities in workshop.
For an example, my tutor has given an exercise of building a cone shape structure with the
help of waste newspapers just to test our team-work spirit. During that activity, I and my
team was initially worried regarding the task of creating a proper cone shape building
structure that too with newspapers where no strong substrate was found for the base of that
building. Later on, my team gathered together and discussed on the task where each and
every one provided their distinct views on how we can build it. I lead the team-working
activity by summarising all views of team-members in a single ides. Furthermore, I took
acceptance of all team-members over what I am thinking to implement for completing the
task. When task was completed by all of the teams present there then tutor as well as guest
faculty assessed our work and my team won the best work title. In this way, my personal
experience while working with a team during the workshop was very good and hence
provided life-learning for personal as well as professional development.

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Source: (Charlotte, 2014)
Moreover, I identified my key qualities during the workshop activities through facing
challenges in many incidents. Hence, when I tried to find the solution to all of those
challenges then I realised that these are my qualities that were unknown to me. In addition,
personal values, personal profiling, emotional intelligence, locus and control as well as self-
efficacy these were the challenging areas of my whole experience of employability
workshop. I came up with the solution to all of the above mentioned challenges through
applying multiple-intelligence, critical thinking, and problem-solving as well as self-
management skills of mine.
Analysis of my graduate employment qualities
There are some qualities which are essential to be a successful graduate employee of any
organization. These qualities which are valued through a graduate employee are as follows:
 Strong and effective communication skills
 Leadership potential
 Team-work
 Creative problem-solving
 Critical as well as analytical thinking
 Capabilities to use self-discipline, knowledge and basic concepts
Strong communication skills enable graduates to effectively and efficiently communicate
with the team-mates, co-workers, seniors, and supervisors so that there can be no
communication barriers and gap among all of the persons whom they interact with (Summers

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& Smith, 2010). Leadership is the most important quality of any graduate employee as it
allows him or her to demonstrate their key skills in front of the sub-ordinates for the
betterment of the company. Additionally, as per my experiences of workshop classes’ team-
work is the key to complete any small or big project for the company efficiently and
correctly. Graduate employees own a creative problem-solving skill due to which they get
hired by the big multi-national companies of the world. This skill or quality help them to
identify problems reside in companies’ functioning as well as resolve them efficiently and
creatively (Charlotte, 2014).
Source: (Connelly, 2010)
Moreover, my current qualities do match with the qualities of graduate employees as I
realized this thing during the workshop only. As I have already mentioned that I am having
strong communication skills as my key strength which has been assisted me a lot in past as
well as will continue to help in my future professional development. During a team-work
exercise in workshop I successfully demonstrated leadership potential as well as effective
team-work capabilities. In addition, I also utilised and demonstrated critical and analytical
thinking, self-discipline, knowledge application skills to complete tasks given in the
employability workshop. In this way, my current qualities are really matching with a graduate
employment qualities which will allow me to successfully exploit happenstance events at
future workplace.

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My Future career development actions
In spite of having many qualities as my key strengths which are desired in graduate
employees I still lag from all desired qualities. I feel that I need to develop self-management
as well as time-management skills to be successful at my future workplace. Hence, I will now
develop self-management skills so that my versatile skills can be managed to attain short-
term, medium-term as well as long-term career goals. Self-management quality is that
characteristic which can help an employee to feel motivation as well as be highly productive
at his or her workplace. There are some illustrative skills of self-management as problem-
solving, communicating clearly, resisting stress, managing time and strengthening memory.
From all of the above mentioned skills I carry most of them except stress management, time-
management and memory strength. Therefore, based on (Borrego et al., 2013), I will develop
all of these skills in my personality as a future career development action. I will become
determined person towards my life and career goals in order to become a better person. In
addition, I will evolve self-discipline quality in my personality as I have learnt in the
employability workshop that self-discipline is the key to integrate all existing skills in our
personality. Hence, through developing self-discipline I will utilise all of the learnt skills to
gain new skills in order to enrich my overall skill set. I also realized that skills and qualities
which are already present in me have been acquired through my active participation in all
teaching and learning events during school as well as graduation time. Moreover, I am an
active learner which makes me learning all the time even when I am interacting with the
social environment containing friends, family and relatives. In this way, this employability
workshop module helped me a lot to identify key strengths, challenges as well as skills of my
personality. Thus, I will utilise the learning which is acquired through the activities and
exercises during the classes so that it can reflect in my future career development actions
effectively.
Conclusion
In conclusion, with the help of this reflective journal I have successfully reflected upon my
key strengths which are desirable to work in an organization as graduate employee. I also
evaluated the effectiveness of my three major strengths include willingness to learn, team-
work and strong communication with the help of some important theories like Belbin’s team
roles, Lasswell’s 5 Ws as well as active learning. Furthermore, I analysed my experiences of
workshop activities like team-work exercise during the workshop so that I can extract the

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major learning from the employability experiences for preparing my future career
development action plans. In addition, a detailed discussion over graduate employment
qualities has been conducted that was emphasizing the viability of my existing qualities in
order to match with the desired requirements for a successful graduate employment. Finally,
on the basis of evaluation, reflection as well as critical self-assessment I generated an action
plan for the future career development which will enable me to easily exploit happenstance
event at the future workplace. In this way, I found that reflective practice is an essential tool
to express, analyse, evaluate, conclude as well as reflect ones learning experiences during an
important event or workshop.

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References
Belbin, R.M., 2012. Team roles at work. London: Routledge.
Berlin, J.M., Carlstrom, E.D. & Sandberg, H.S., 2012. Models of teamwork: ideal or not? A
critical study of theoretical team models. Team Performance Management: An International
Journal, 18(5), pp.328-40.
Bersin, J., 2016. New Research Shows Why Focus On Teams, Not Just Leaders, Is Key To
Business Performance. [Online] Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2016/03/03/why-a-focus-on-teams-not-just-leaders-
is-the-secret-to-business-performance/#6a294dea24d5.
Bevacqua, J., 2018. The Benefits of Team-Based Organizations and Faster Growth. [Online]
Available at: https://risepeople.com/blog/team-based-organizations/.
Borrego, M., Karlin, J., McNair, L.D. & Beddoes, K., 2013. Team effectiveness theory from
industrial and organizational psychology applied to engineering student project teams: A
research review. Journal of Engineering Education, 102(4), pp.472-512.
Charlotte, D., 2014. The importance of professional standards. Nursing Made Incredibly
Easy, 12(5), p.4.
Connelly, J., 2010. The study skills guide essential strategies for smart students. London:
Kogan Page.
Health Knowledge, 2018. Principles, theories and methods of effective communication
(written and oral) in general, and in a management context. [Online] Available at:
https://www.healthknowledge.org.uk/public-health-textbook/organisation-management/5a-
understanding-itd/effective-communication.
Hirsch, P.L. & McKenna, A.F., 2008. Using reflection to promote teamwork understanding in
engineering design education. International Journal of Engineering Education, 24(2), p.377.
Keller, , 2013. Social Media and Interpersonal Communication. Social Work Today, 13(3),
p.10.

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Quain, S., 2019. Advantages & Disadvantages of Team-Based Organizations. [Online]
Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-teambased-
organizations-25370.html.
Summers, J. & Smith, B., 2010. Communication skills handbook: How to succeed in written
and oral communication. Australia: John Wiley & Sons.