Individual Report: Evaluating Skills in BM562 Consultancy in Practice

This individual report reflects on a student's experience working on a consultancy project for Regent College London, undertaken by the consultancy group 'Top Boys.' The report details the project's background, including the client's goal to increase student enrollment and the challenges faced, such as a limited budget and time constraints. It highlights the skills improved, such as interpersonal skills, flexibility, communication, and problem-solving. The student also discusses the learnings from the project, including time management, the importance of brand image, and the development of confidence. The report identifies skill gaps in teamwork, communication, and problem-solving, and outlines an action plan to address these gaps. The student describes their growth and enhanced ability to interact with clients. The report concludes by emphasizing how the acquired skills and experiences will be valuable for future career endeavors.

CW2 INDIVIDUAL
REPORT

Table of Contents
Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Background.................................................................................................................................1
Skills that I improved while working on this project..................................................................1
Communication...........................................................................................................................2
Problem solving..........................................................................................................................2
learnings from project.................................................................................................................2
Improvement in level of confidence...........................................................................................3
Use of learnings for future purpose.............................................................................................3
Skill gaps.....................................................................................................................................4
Action plan..................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Consultancy is a business practice of giving expert advice to its customers who are working
in a specific field. Consultant is a person who give advice or suggestions to people or group of
people. A consultant has expertise in specific field so people pay fees to use his expertise. When
people want to attain something, become something or change something they seek for expert
advice from expert of specific field and they pay for services which they receive from a
consultant. So basically when people want to change their current self with desired self but they
do not know how to do it or achieve it then they reach to someone who can provide guidance in
reaching or attaining to goal they desired for. This is an individual report in which I am going to
describe evaluation of my learning and skills development which I gained while working on a
team project named campaign for regent college. How this project helped me identifying my
skill gaps and how should I address these gaps. finally, in this report I shall demonstrate action
plan to address these gaps.
Background
I work for a consultancy group named Top boys and there are four members in it Bob,
Adrian, Asin and Costin. We got a project named ‘campaign for regent college’ from Regent
College London which is a part of Regent Group. This group is also a part of education system in
UK, it has an effective brand image with 20 years of experience. College has a big name in the
community but there is lot of competition in London between educational institutes. So client
have a goal to increase number of students to 5000 in next 2 years in 5 campuses of college.
Client gave a time period of 2 years which is not sufficient to reduce completion also she had
limited budget so plan of action was framed after taking these points into consideration.
Skills that I improved while working on this project
This project was a learning experience for me as it was my first team project so while
working on this project some of my skills got improved which are required for my profession.
These skills are explained below.
Interpersonal skills: These skills are very necessary for a consultant because these are qualities
which we use and represent while having interacting with other people. Interaction can be verbal
or nonverbal (Henry, and et. al. 2021). I improved basic qualities of interaction such as body
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language and attitude towards other which can affect my chances at excelling at my work of
consultancy.
Flexibility: I learnt flexibility skills while working on this project because we had to
transform ourselves according to demand of customer for completing his project. This skill
taught us the ability to overcome stress. We learned to adept and change according to conditions
of market.
Communication
Communication is a way to connect people and sending information from one participant of
communication to another person. There can be 4 types of communication verbal, non-verbal,
written and visual. In this project we communicated with various members who were relevant to
this project and understood that how effective communication can help in achieving your
objectives (Altheide, 2020). With help of effective communication, we consulted students how
they could explore career opportunities in Regent college London. For that we communicated
with students and convinced them about how this college could be best option for their career
opportunities and why they should opt for it, thus communication is essential to interconnect
with others.
Problem solving
Problem solving is a step process in which problem is identified, then defined, cause of problem
is detected and finally solution of problem is find by initiating required action for solution
(Yuliati, Riantoni, and Mufti, 2018). While working on this project we had to face various
challenges such as limited budget and lack of time to execute the plan relevant to colleges
problem of brand image and convincing students about Regent College London. Root cause of
problem was we had only three months to execute plan and most of students were not connected
to Facebook so we had to arrange face to face communication for improving market image and
brand image of college.
learnings from project
This project was a learning experience as I learned so many things from it and it enhanced
my personality as a consultant as well. We had to manage all deadlines patiently according to
deadlines customer gave so it improved our tolerance skills. I learned how effectively work can
be done with analytical skills, we collected all relevant information that could help improving
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brand image of Regent College London. After it we analysed and evaluate that information to
make efficient decisions for solving problem of client. It needed a lot of interaction with
employee so it enhanced my interpersonal skills and I learnt how an effective interaction can
play vital role in convincing someone. This project also helped in learning about time
management because we did not have enough time spread the campaign all over the required are.
We framed plans according to the time we had, this taught me how tasks can be done in an
appropriate way if sufficient time is not provided. I learnt that brand image is a very essential for
growth of organisation so it should be maintained very carefully. What factors can affect brand
image and how brand image can be established was also a part of learning outcomes from this
project.
Improvement in level of confidence
Confidence is not a set of skills; it comes from within thus it is a state of mind. But level of
confidence can be improved by positive, thinking, training, interacting with other people, and
knowledge. Self-confidence is a form of confidence that refers to having faith in yourself. By
working on this project, it not only boosted my self-confidence but overall confidence level. This
project was my first group project so I was lacking confidence but while working on this project
I learnt from my small mistakes and improved them and it increased my confidence level. I got
so many things to learn from this project which boosted my level of confidence and helped me in
developing my personality as a consultant. After handling this project successfully, I learnt that
with help of confidence I can handle other projects as well.
Use of learnings for future purpose
I learnt so many things and improved skills which are required for future. This project
provides me a good learning experience, knowledge, it enhanced my skills and I learnt from it as
well. This will help me in securing graduate level jobs because I have gained experience from
this project and it has increased my level of confidence as well. Various skills such as
interpersonal skills, analytical skills, communication skills and flexibility skills are improved by
working on this project I can use these skills in future to attain my individual goals. As I have
chosen consultant as my career option these skills can help me growing my career in particular
field. For doing any job communicating with people in an appropriate way is very necessary and
interpersonal or communication skills help you with that. So I can use my learnings of these
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skills in interacting with my clients and people. Increased confidence will also help me in
consulting people and convincing others about projects of company.
Skill gaps
Skill gap is known as lack of any skill in an individual (Oladokun, and Olaleye, 2018). As
I started working on this project it was my first group project as a consultant so when I started
working on this project, I was lacking few skills that were needed to improve. There were three
skills which I was lacking, team work skill, communication skills and problem solving skills.
Team work skill was necessary because we were working as a team and I was not a good listener
also I could not build rapport with people easily. Communicating with people was a little hard
for me because I did not have enough confidence for it. Problem solving skills are essential to
provide solution for any problem or conflict and I could not do that efficiently in the beginning
of the project.
Action plan
Action plan is a map or checklist of tasks that you need to do for achieving your objectives
(Sahill, 2018). When we began this project I was lacking three skills which were communication
skills, problem solving skills and team work skills. For improving my communication skills, I
started listening and understanding people, improved my body language also started having eye
contact while talking. I took personality development classes as well to improve my
communication and team work skills. I developed my listening skills so that I can understand
opinion and views of my team mates. To work in a team, you should be supportive and creative
as well to contribute your best efforts for success of your team, so I worked on these skills as
well. For improving problem solving skills, I started exercising methods that can improve my
problem solving skills. Thus all these steps helped me filling my skill gap and achieve success.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Altheide, D. L., 2020. Ecology of communication. Routledge.
Henry, B. W., and et. al. 2021. Development of the Teaching Interpersonal Skills for Telehealth
Checklist. Evaluation & the Health Professions, p.0163278721992831.
Oladokun, T. T. and Olaleye, A., 2018. Bridging skill gap in real estate education in Nigeria.
Pacific Rim Property Research Journal. 24(1). pp.17-34.
Sahill, P. H., 2018. The terror speaks: inside Pakistan's terrorism discourse and national action
plan. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. 41(4). pp.319-337.
Yuliati, L., Riantoni, C. and Mufti, N., 2018. Problem Solving Skills on Direct Current
Electricity through Inquiry-Based Learning with PhET Simulations. International Journal of
Instruction. 11(4). pp.123-138.
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