Reflective Report: Skills Development through Graduate Challenges

This report provides a reflective analysis of a graduate's participation in three challenges: Apprentice Challenge, T-Shirt Challenge, and Presentation Challenge. It highlights the skills demonstrated during these challenges, including teamwork, communication, marketing, and presentation skills. The report details the experiences and lessons learned from each challenge, emphasizing the application of business knowledge and skill development. Furthermore, it includes a comprehensive action plan for the next three years at university, focusing on specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals for improving communication, marketing, and presentation skills. The action plan outlines strategies for enhancing these skills through various activities such as active listening exercises, marketing seminars, and presentation preparation, ultimately aiming to improve performance and career prospects. Desklib offers more solved assignments and study resources for students.

The Graduate Challenge

Contents
Contents...........................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
The Challenges............................................................................................................................1
The Skills.....................................................................................................................................2
Action plan...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Graduates are individual who are studying higher degree at university. Graduate period
provides ample opportunities to learners in which they are able to capitalise on prevailing
challenges in addition to combat issues for building higher proficiency levels (Sandri,
Holdsworth and Thomas, 2018). In this, students gain business knowledge and improve set of
skills to achieve personal and professional goals. the aim of the report is to summarise angle of
each challenge addition to reflect on personal skill development together with potential areas for
ongoing improvement.
The individual reflective report covers analysis of each challenge that emphasis on business
angle. It further includes reflection on skills that are being demonstrated during the challenges.
At last, it comprises an action plan for development of skills over upcoming 3 years at university.
MAIN BODY
The Challenges
Challenges are situations faced by an individual that require great efforts for successfully
achieving end outcomes (Henderson, Ryan and Phillips, 2019). As a graduate, I participated in
three challenges that required for success at University. My active involvement in challenges are
as analysed:
Apprentice Challenge: It provided me opportunity to learn from best as well as test my
business skills. It enabled me to apply for ample number of internships along with job profiles. In
this, I worked in a bread factory wherein I was required to perform operational practices and
tasks in sincere, disciplined and effective manner to raise organisational productivity level. I
performed well in stressful situation as the environment wherein I worked as team member
included different job. I coped up with stress or pressure through making friends along with
sharing duties so to complete working in peak period. It permitted me to build interpersonal
relationship with members and handle a stressful organisational environment adaptably so to
achieve progress in career.
T-Shirt Challenge: The challenge provided me a platform to showcase my level of
creativity and exploring new dimensions for coming with something that is out of box. In the T-
Shirt challenge, I and members of the team tried to come with attractive design of T-Shirt that
could be worn by anyone, ranging from infants to adults. We came with unique concept of
1

designing logo for T-Shirt through collecting motivation for national currency of Romania. I and
my team members made efforts to target people belonging to all generation as it will elevate
profitability for the T-Shirt. The T-Shirt which we designed could be ordered online and will be
available at out shops, will come in all sizes, non-allergic and in different colours. By
considering all these, we have successfully completed the challenge and achieved estimated
profit.
Presentation Challenge: A presentation needs an individual to get message across to
listeners as well as contains persuasive element (Tillapaugh and Catalano, 2019). My purpose to
participate in the presentation is to provide information, encourage audience to take action and
persuade them to accept my viewpoints on an organisation that is Tesco. I as well as my group
members were allotted a task to prepare a presentation about supermarket industry and
performance of specific retailer within the marketplace. In this challenge, I was provided
working to prepare introduction, current trends in the industry, performance of Tesco since 2015
and existing financial performance of rivals that includes Aldi, Lidl, etc. I gathered information
about by part accurately and further prepared the content along with presentation. I found it a
learning challenge as with this, I gained insights to learn about how to prepare and present pool
of thoughts in proper manner.
The Skills
Skills are learned potentials that help an individual to carry out any kind of action with
desired outcomes within specific time and efforts (Muneer, Batool and Zehra, 2020). Some of
skills that I demonstrated in the challenges are as follows:
 Teamwork skill: In the challenges such as T-Shirt, Presentation and Apprenticeship, I
demonstrated my teamwork skill through working well with others so to attain common
objectives. As a team player in all the challenges, I always prioritise goals of teams over
my individual interests. My team work skill allowed me to work in the challenges during
conversations, practices, professional collaborations and many more. For instance, in
apprenticeship challenge, I worked with team members to cope with stress and share
duties to attain success. Also, in T-Shirt Challenge, I learned that my teamwork skill
helped me to come with creative logo and achieving desired profitability.
 Communication skill: It was my potential for exchanging variant types of information
during the challenges. It entails listening, speaking, empathising along with observing. T-
2

Shirt, Presentation addition to Apprenticeship challenges have raised my current
communication skills along with flow of communication with others. It permitted me to
share information in confident tone, style and command. Communication skills during
the challenges have permitted me to understand information quickly and accurately so to
combat misunderstanding and frustration.
 Marketing skill: In the T-Shirt and Presentation Challenge, I used marketing skill which
was applauded by others. With my marketing skills, I researched about supermarket
sector and performance of various businesses in the market. Also, I informed customers
about T-Shirt that will be offered to them. During the challenges, I gained insights about
varies wherein products or services requires segmentation, targeting and positioning. I
also learned different forms to advertise products so to generate awareness among target
audiences.
 Presentation skill: During the challenges, my presentation skill assisted me to deliver
effective content together with engage presentations to variants of people. I demonstrated
presentation skill in presentation challenge as my skill covers areas comprising
structuring presentation, designing slides, body language and voice tone that I conveyed.
It helped me to gain self-confidence for having to say, improving time management,
emphasising on key message and speaking at good pace.
Action plan
Action plan refers to a plan in which it makes focus on those actions that are needed in order
to achieve any goal in effective manner (Nankervis, Prikshat and Dhakal, 2019). It help
individual or company in order to make steps that help to improve their essential activities in
order to gain their future progress effectively. It help individual to improve its skills in order to
become more successful within three years and achieve their goals effectively and efficiently. By
creating an effective action plan provide clear direction in order to become effective. It also
motivates and committed individual towards his goals. My action plan to develop skills over next
three years at University are as follows:
Goals Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Time
Duration
Communicat Communication I can measure I can attain Communicat 3 months
3

ion Skills is a two-way
exercise
involves
transferring of
information
from one
person to other.
It aids me in
making strong
public relations
with other
members.
internal
communication
in organisation
effectively
through
focused
behaviours,
work
performance
and feedback
from superiors
and colleagues.
effective
communication
skills through active
listening, assertive
expressions, paying
attention to non
verbal signals such
as body language,
eye contact, tone of
speaker etc. of my
peers and superiors.
ion skills in
business is
relevant for
me as it aids
me in
achieving
improved
morale and
efficiency.
Marketing
Skills
This concerned
skill is specific
as it aids me in
increasing my
competencies in
marketing field
as I have
chosen this
subject for
further studying
in university.
I can
effectively
measure my
marketing skills
through long
and short term
revenue as well
as profitability
through
promotional
campaigns.
I can attain this skill
through organising
promotional
campaign,
participating in
marketing seminars,
enroll in specified
courses. Effective
application of those
learnings in real life
scenario also helped
me in excelling
marketing skills.
This skills
are
extensively
relevant to
me as it aids
me
generating
new and
innovative
ideas to
reach my
potential
customers
and also to
create their
experiences
memorable.
5 Months
Presentation Presentation My This specific skill is This 2 Months
4

Skills skills are
specific to me
as it aids me in
enhancing my
confidence and
personality
traits.
presentation
skills can be
measured by
assessing
audience
behaviour,
method and
style of my
delivery as well
as clarity in
thoughts.
attainable by
preparing relevant
content keeping
specified audience
in mind and
maintain great body
language.
concerned
skill is
relevant to
me as it
assists me
gaining
insights into
innovative
ideas and
boosting up
my
confidence
as a
presenter.
CONCLUSION
From the information, it is concluded that graduate challenge helps a student to learn more
advanced ways of completing studies in specialised discipline. It provides in-depth
understanding to student for becoming expert or professional for future career. Working in
graduate challenges facilitates enrichment addition to improvement in performance level of a
learner or student. Action plan shortens a path for desired results, makes an individual aware
about their competence and lessens their level of stresses.
5

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Henderson, M., Ryan, T. and Phillips, M., 2019. The challenges of feedback in higher
education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education.
Muneer, R., Batool, R. and Zehra, S., 2020. A Qualitative Study on Challenges that Post-
Graduate Students Face in Research Proposal Writing at University Level. International
Journal of Social Sciences: Current and Future Research Trends. 5(01). pp.1-6.
Nankervis, A., Prikshat, V. and Dhakal, S., 2019. Mapping stakeholders of graduate work-
readiness (GWR). In The transition from graduation to Work (pp. 31-42). Springer,
Singapore.
Sandri, O., Holdsworth, S. and Thomas, I., 2018. Assessing graduate sustainability capability
post-degree completion: Why is it important and what are the challenges?. International
Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.
Tillapaugh, D. and Catalano, D. C. J., 2019. Structural challenges affecting the experiences of
public university LGBT services graduate assistants. Journal of Diversity in Higher
Education. 12(2). p.126.
6