MG408 The Graduate Challenge: A Skills Development Reflection

This report reflects on the skills developed through the MG408 Graduate Challenge, focusing on three key challenges: the apprentice challenge, the presentation challenge, and the T-shirt challenge. It analyzes how these challenges enhance communication, teamwork, time management, and ...Read More

MG408 THE GRADUATE
CHALLENGE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
The analysis of challenge............................................................................................................3
Reflection in the challenges performed.......................................................................................4
Action plan..................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Challenges are always meant for creating hurdles or issues for individuals while attaining
the desired goals and aim. In the same way, students also faces many challenges throughout their
academic and university career which may sometime leads to failure and legging behind while
sometime it provides a way to lead on the ladder of success (Andreoni and et.al., 2021). The
challenges are designed for the purpose of developing core skills that is necessary to get succeed
at university. Besides gaining knowledge of various business processes, students are required to
gain or improvise their emotional intelligence, communication skills, time management, meeting
skills or teamwork skills. In the present report, the reflection will be thrown on taking up of three
challenges that is, the apprentice challenges, the presentation challenge and the T – shirt
challenge. The reflection will also include how different skills such as communication, time
management, teamwork, etc, has improved or developed with these challenges along with
carrying out an action plan for how these skills will be developed within the next 3 years at
university.
MAIN BODY
The analysis of challenge
There are three challenges that has been taken by me at university, which are as follows:
The apprentice challenge: This challenge is meant for enhancing the communication skills and
inspiration of the team members participating in this challenge who came up with different ideas
which is also helpful in increasing creativity. The activities within this challenge is suitable for
the staff at all the levels where tasks are tailored in such a way to ensure that the specific
objectives of the business can be attained. I have performed this challenges at university, where
we undertake to interview the employees or those who applying for jobs in Nando (a fast food
chain based in South Africa) (Mahboubi and Busby, 2017). We divided ourselves into group of
3, where of us acts as an employer and the other two acts as an employees who are giving
interview for the job. There are four common questions that have been asked during the
interview. It is group presentation and the aim of taking this challenge is to inculcate or develop
employability and academic skills among the students at university.
The presentation challenge: Presentation means appearance of someone or something. The
challenge involves takes that is quite unique or difficult to perform which requires determination
& great efforts of those who are undertaking it. The performance of this challenge requires the
preparation of PowerPoint presentation which includes many slides and on these slides the
content that is required to be presented has been written with pictures and quotes (Sullivan and
Bandaranaike, 2017). When I have performed this challenge of presentation, I have prepared a
PowerPoint presentation in a team on the topic of “Tesco” where the presentation include the
current trends in supermarket industry, past five-year performance of Tesco and its rivals that is
ALDI and Lidl’s current financial performance internal and external analysis through SWOT and
PESTEL model and accordingly, recommendations has been put on the last slide to indicate what
should be done by Tesco improve its performance and regain its market share. In a team of 5, we
have prepared a 10 minutes PowerPoint presentation on these areas. The purpose of presentation

challenge is that to develop or improve communication skills, team work skills, time
management skills and creative thinking skills.
The T – Shirt challenge: This challenge involves designing a logo of the company to be printed
on T – shirts and sweatshirts. It is a kind of marketing tactic which allows for promoting a brand
through printing its logo on T – shirts and sweatshirts which is meant for creating awareness
about the existence of brand and its offerings among the target audience. While performing this
challenge at university, I have ordered many T – shirts and sweatshirts after creating a budget of
£200 which includes both variable cost of printing T – shirts and sweatshirts of two types that is,
mono print and full color. Also, a budgeted profit and loss account has been developed to
indicate how the overall budget will be utilized and it would be ensured that the challenge should
be performed within the set budget. Before finalizing the design of the logo, the potential target
audience has been identified to ensure that the marketing efforts are in alignment with the main
goals of this challenge or the whole organisational goals (Camiré and Santos, 2019). The t – shirt
challenge was also based on designing a logo for Tesco to target its audience. The purpose of this
challenge is to enhance creativity, numeracy skills, and marketing skills along with developing
self – confidence among the students taking up this challenge.
Reflection in the challenges performed
Here the reflection will be done to indicate the different skills that have been demonstrated by
me during the performance of the three challenges that is, the apprentice challenge, the
presentation challenge and the t – shirt challenge. The set of skills and their improvement or
development that take place with the performance of these challenges are as follows:
Communication skills: Communication skills are one of the most important skills that is being
demanded by employers at workplace and also needed to get succeed at university.
Communication may be verbal or non – verbal both. When I took three different challenges, I
have successfully able to improve my communication skills. Firstly, while performing apprentice
challenge, we interviewed the employees of Nando, which allows us to communicate among
ourselves while deciding upon who will play what kind of role. Also, initiating interview allows
for interacting with each other and I was able to improve my communication skills through this
along with building confidence for facing future interviews at workplace (Malone, 2019). I was
able to work upon my communication skills also when I undertook the presentation challenge
where while working in a team, I communicate with my team members to put forward my
opinions and ideas to make the presentation more creative and useful. Also, while presenting it
among the public, good communication skills is crucial and this helped me in developing my
communication skills in terms of how our views can be presented among others to ensure better
understandability and avoid miscommunication. Therefore, all the three challenges are useful for
developing good communication skills as it involves working with colleagues.
Teamwork skills: All the three challenges require good teamwork skills as where I understood
how to respect and communicate with other team members. I learnt that how to resolve problems
while working in a team to listen to others opinions and avoiding conflict of interests. Listening,
collaboration and problem solving is core of teamwork and I successfully able to demonstrate
these skills while performing the three challenges due to which my end goal of gaining
knowledge and developing a set of new skills has been achieved (Ismail, Nopiah and Rasul,

2018). In a team, I successfully able to design a logo, prepare PowerPoint presentation and
undertake interviews of Nando’s employees with the help of the demonstration of teamwork
skills only.
Time management and meeting skills: All the three challenges require a good time
management skills which has been demonstrated by me through applying Eisenhower technique
of time management while performing all of the three challenges. With the application of this
technique, I was able to divide all the tasks associated with these challenges into different
categories such as do, delegate, delay or delete on the basis of their urgency and importance. In
this way, I have demonstrated good sort of time management skills. Also meeting skills such as
punctuality and discipline have been demonstrated by me where I confirmed that each tasks
associated with the challenge should be accomplished within the set timeline and I do respect the
views and opinions of other team members while making decisions for the accomplishment of
set goals behind the performance of these challenges.
Business skills: I have demonstrated my business skills during presentation and t-shirt challenge
performance (Kuzminov, Sorokin and Froumin, 2019). The skills are demonstrated in terms of
designing a logo for the company, preparing budgets through excel which is based on accounting
for the t-shirt challenge, marketing or advertising or identifying target market for the purpose of
accomplishing t-shirt challenge. In this way, various business skills have been demonstrated
while performing for the t-shirt challenge.
Action plan
Skills Resources to improve or
develop the skills
Time required for
improvement or development
Communication Skills Practicing public speaking
every alternative day, taking
notes, taking more group
activities and presentation.
Next year-1 year
Teamwork skills Taking guidance from
experienced leaders, allowing
for two way communication
while working in a team and
taking up more challenges in a
group.
Within 6 months
Time management skills Prioritizing tasks, using tools
to control the wastage of time
like alexa, scheduling tasks
and deadlines before initiating
any project.
2 years
Business skills Taking more excel based 2.5 year

projects, looking at tutorials
teaching marketing and
accounting, attaining
promotional events,
workshops, etc.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that by taking up various challenges such as
presentation, t-shirt and apprentice challenge, one can improvise or develop various skills that is
needed for succeeding at both workplace and university. In the above report, the analysis of
different challenges has been done to indicate why these challenges are performed, what is
includes and how it has been performed. Also, different skills such as time management,
business, communication and teamwork skills demonstrated during these challenges has been
reflected upon. Further, an action plan has been developed to indicate how these skills can be
improved or developed with the duration of next three years.

REFERENCES
Andreoni, A., and et.al., 2021. Digitalization, industrialization, and skills development:
Opportunities and challenges for middle-income countries.
Camiré, M. and Santos, F., 2019. Promoting positive youth development and life skills in youth
sport: Challenges and opportunities amidst increased professionalization. Journal of
Sport Pedagogy and Research, 5(1), pp.27-34.
Ismail, K., Nopiah, Z. M. and Rasul, M. S., 2018. Challenges faced by vocational teachers in
public skills training institutions: a reality in Malaysia. Journal of Technical Education
and Training, 10(2).
Kuzminov, Y., Sorokin, P. and Froumin, I., 2019. Generic and specific skills as components of
human capital: New challenges for education theory and practice. Форсайт, 13(2
(eng)).
Mahboubi, P. and Busby, C., 2017. Closing the divide: Progress and challenges in adult skills
development among indigenous peoples (No. 264). CD Howe Institute.
Malone, E., 2019. Challenges & Issues: Evidence-Based Clinical Skills Teaching and Learning:
What Do We Really Know?. Journal of veterinary medical education, 46(3), pp.379-
398.
Sullivan, M. E. L. I. S. S. A. and Bandaranaike, S. U. N. I. T. I., 2017. Challenges of the new
work order: A work skills development approach. In Proceedings of the 20th World
Conference on Cooperative and Work Integrated Learning.