Victoria University: Personal Values and Skills for Career Success

This assignment presents a self-assessment of a student's personal values and professional skills, focusing on their career aspirations in financial risk and compliance management. The student identifies core values such as respect, wisdom, accountability, integrity, and leadership, which guide their career choices and decision-making. They also conduct a skills audit, highlighting communication, team management, organizational and administrative abilities, customer service, and project management skills developed through academic and professional experiences at BMW bank and a financial service provider company. The assignment includes a 'Graduate Elevator Pitch' summarizing the student's qualifications and career objectives, referencing relevant work experience and academic achievements to showcase their suitability for a role in the finance sector. The student also includes a SWOT analysis of their skills and experience in the appendix.

Running head: PERSONAL VALUES AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
PERSONAL VALUES AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1PERSONAL VALUES AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
Value Audit:
According to me, I hold the following values with high regard that have assisted me with my
performance in my undergraduate degree.
Respect entails the valuing of the opinion and voice of others, high self-esteem and cherishing
the contribution and values of others.
Wisdom refers to the possession of intuition, intelligence, inclusive vision, experience, and
rational judgment quality.
Accountability is the capabilities and honesty of taking responsibility of own mistakes and
accepting all kind of criticism.
Integrity signifies the strong and high ethical sense and honesty to have decency and
commitment in serving certain purpose.
Leadership is taking responsibilities and becoming example for others.
While considering the personal values, it must be noted that the personal values is one of
the essentials for making the career choice (Robles 2012). Personal values add additional points
to the potential of mine along with the soft and hard skills (Kyllonen 2013). In addition, my
personal values act as the guide in making my career decisions. In regard to my personal values
and my interests, I desire to pursue my career in the field of financial risk and compliance
management. The hard skills that I hold are construction and management of the investment
portfolios, preparation, evaluation and interpretation of the financial reports, auditing

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process, financial planning, risk and mitigation planning. These skills, I believe will be helpful
and effective in guiding me in my chosen career (Gustavsson and Hallin 2014).
Capability Audit:
Communication skill is one of the major requirements of the employers that they seek
while choosing a graduate candidate for certain post. The capacity of communicating effectively
can result into the better and profitable outcome for the company. However, the professional
experience also to certain extent determines the effective and better communication of the
graduate (DeKay 2012). Working as a Customer Service Manager in the BMW bank, I have
developed my professional communication skill, as I had to interact with various customers daily
to solve their issues. I strongly believe that I have the ability to communicate with people
effectively, which is one of the prior requirement criteria by the employers.
Team management is another major requirement criterion that employers seek while
selecting a graduate. While doing my graduate degree from Victoria University, I worked
collaboratively with other students in a mandatory program called Professional Development,
where we cohesively solved business problems, made business proposal and other works related
to business. In addition, working as the Customer Service Manager in BMW, I had to manage
team in of 20 people in the customer service department. Apart from this, before working in the
BMW bank, I worked in a small financial service provider company for six months as the
Assistant Quality Manager where also I managed a team of 12 people. Hence, I believe I have
gained proper team management skill that involves coaching, training, managing and assisting
the team in difficulties to achieve the organizational goals (Arnold 2016).

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In the financial service provider company was promoted to the post of Risk Manager.
Here my task was to do the strategic planning, execute the planning, reducing the cause and
chances of risk in the organization, development off the organization by reducing the risk
hazards and ensuring the proper operational activities of the organization with other 4 managers
in the group. To perform my role I had to have proper knowledge and skill of organization and
administration. Therefore, I strongly believe that the organizational and administrative skills are
high in me, which is capable of fulfilling the demands and requirements of the employers for the
selection of graduate candidate (Neubert et al. 2015).
In many of the organizations, the employers seek the skills and ability of the candidate in
handling the customer service issue effectively and perfectly (Carnevale and Smith 2013).
However, this skill is completely based on the professional experience in the specific domain.
Fortunately, I have the experience in the said domain as I have worked as the Customer Service
Manger in the BMW bank. My customer service skills cover resolving of the customers’ issues,
providing them with proper solution for their issues, showing empathy to them, guiding them in
the right direction, providing them with satisfaction, demonstrating genuine interests in their
problems and concerns and others (Lee, Lee and Kang 2012). I hope this range of experience in
the context of customer service skills is adequate for the employers to choose me as their
employee for the required post.
One of the additional but major requirement criteria is the project management skills
that the employers ask for while selecting a graduate candidate for the required job (Musa et al.
2012). Being the Assistant Quality Manager in the financial service provider company, I had to
manage and guide the team in difficult project completion. As the Assistant Quality Manager, I
worked on the quality framework, which incorporated risk along with compliance as well as the

4PERSONAL VALUES AND PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
customer experience (Goetsch and Davis 2014). I managed another projects on the finance and
logistics that came from another partner company. I enhanced my abilities and skills in the
project management in this way, where I not only managed the projects but also guided my team
in the doing the same. Hence, I affirm that I am capable of managing projects and guiding the
team for the same, which I feel fulfill the requirement criteria for an employer in selecting the
graduate candidate.
Graduate ‘Elevator Pitch’:
Job: Risk and Compliance Manager – ABC Company Limited
Hello, my name is and I have recently completed my graduation from
Victoria University in Business. I have range of experience in risk and compliance, customer
service and risk management and presently looking for n opportunity in Sydney’s metropolitan
area amongst major finance companies. I have developed my professional skills and abilities
from my work experience. In addition, I have strong academic results that add values to my
resume. As the former Risk Manager of a financial company, I have gained experience in the
field of financial risk management and compliance. Moreover, the port of Assistant Quality
Manager has enriched my experience in the domain of administrative activities. I have deep
understanding of risk and compliance for the company growth as well as organizational and
administrative functions as well as the skills in resolving administrative issues. In addition, my
experience as the Customer Service Manager in BMW has enriched me with skills and abilities
to solve difficult issues in customer service.
Apart from the professional skills gained from different work experience, I have fixed
mindset that determines the holding of my personal values with high regard. My personal values

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being respect, wisdom, accountability, integrity and leadership proves to be my pillar of
strengths and achievements in both the undergraduate degree and in the professional field. Each
of the values, in accordance to me affects on my character as well as on my professional abilities
to achieve the organizational and personal goals in life. Therefore, I hope my experience and
interests are sufficiently intriguing for meeting you, as I am confident to add values to your
organization. Thank you!

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Reference:
Arnold, J., 2016. Coaching Skills for Leaders in the Workplace, Revised Edition: How to unlock
potential and maximise performance. Hachette UK.
Carnevale, A.P. and Smith, N., 2013. Workplace basics: the skills employees need and
employers want.
DeKay, S.H., 2012. Interpersonal communication in the workplace: A largely unexplored
region. Business Communication Quarterly, 75(4), pp.449-452.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Gustavsson, T.K. and Hallin, A., 2014. Rethinking dichotomization: A critical perspective on the
use of “hard” and “soft” in project management research. International Journal of Project
Management, 32(4), pp.568-577.
Kyllonen, P.C., 2013. Soft skills for the workplace. Change: The Magazine of Higher
Learning, 45(6), pp.16-23.
Lee, S.M., Lee, D. and Kang, C.Y., 2012. The impact of high-performance work systems in the
health-care industry: employee reactions, service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer
loyalty. The Service Industries Journal, 32(1), pp.17-36.
Musa, F., Mufti, N., Latiff, R.A. and Amin, M.M., 2012. Project-based learning (PjBL):
inculcating soft skills in 21st century workplace. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 59,
pp.565-573.

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Neubert, J.C., Mainert, J., Kretzschmar, A. and Greiff, S., 2015. The assessment of 21st century
skills in industrial and organizational psychology: Complex and collaborative problem
solving. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8(2), pp.238-268.
Robles, M.M., 2012. Executive perceptions of the top 10 soft skills needed in today’s
workplace. Business Communication Quarterly, 75(4), pp.453-465.

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Appendix:
Career SWOT Analysis