Skills Audit

5 skills in which you feel you are most competent:

Presentation skills  -

As feedback for the 205MAPA presentation, I received the following, very encouraging comments:

“Jamie, you had a wonderful presentation style, clear, fluid and demonstrating full ownership of the project” as well as my speaking being described as ‘a pleasure’.

I feel incredibly confident when tasked with any kind of presentation work, this stems from my participation in on-stage productions. This also stems from family holidays where my father would point a camera in my face and ask me to give a documentary style run-down of the day’s events, history of our location, or otherwise. This taught me to think on the spot, and deliver my words confidently.

Problem Solving -

I can keep a calm head when things go wrong and observe the situation from an outside perspective.

For the most recent group project, I found at the last minute that many of my peers had in fact not done their work, either not having updated their research and input since the first weeks, or not having done the work at all. I went through the work with my group and made sure everyone was clear on what to submit. 
Earlier in the term when looking for industry professionals, one of my peers mentioned that her group was having trouble finding someone who worked in PR to talk to. I gave her the contact information of someone I know in that field to solve the problem. 

Assertiveness/ Self- Confidence-

When it comes to feeding back ideas we have in groups, I feel that I always fight my corner if I think I have the better idea. I have a lot of confidence in myself and my abilities which I think shows in my presenting style too.

At the recent careers fair we attended in Birmingham, I introduced myself to numerous companies and had conversations with them about potential career opportunities. If I did not have self-confidence, I do not think I could have done this.

At the start of this year, we had a lecturer who whistled at us like dogs to get our attention. As well as this being incredibly unpleasant to hear, it was plain rude, I did not feel like we were being respected and I didn't want it to continue. After a few rounds of being told to answer questions among ourselves and then being whistled at as a means of attaining silence, I had had enough. I was sitting at the back of the room, so I said quite loudly "Can you not whistle at us? It's rude." The lecturer then said "It's not rude!" and multiple peers responded "Yes it is" and he stopped whistling. I think it's important to be assertive otherwise nothing will change. As a person, I am sure of who I am: what I stand for, what I like and what I don’t like. I am not afraid to assert myself in any situation.


Creativity-
I feel that I am a very creative person which shows in university work. I find that when we produce artifacts or content, my ideas are well liked by my group members and often pursued. Below is a sketch I did as an idea for an advertisement. Beneath that, if my groups final submission which I edited on Photoshop.  

 

As well as this, I have started writing short films which I hope to produce over the coming months to add to my portfolio, choosing ‘screen writing’ as my Add-Vantage module to help along with this and further similar ventures.   

Leadership- 

I find that members of my groups often come to me when they have questions which signifies that I am seen by others as a leader.

In our most recent group work exercise, I was not group leader. I kept to the side-lines and worked on what I had to do and did not concern myself with others. The only input I had was organising meetings in the library so we could feedback to each other. When we were four days from the deadline and it turned out hardly anybody in the group had produced sufficient work, I stepped in as leader and helped everyone organise their research or offered different points for them to look into. In some instances, I had to walk my peers through what they needed to prepare step by step.

When I am in the position of leader, I organise my groups well, taking time to prepare schedules to outline our progress from week to week. I organise our time well and make sure to communicate with each member, just to make sure everyone is on track and confident.

Five skills it is most important to develop 

 

 Team work-
I am somewhat of a control freak. Because of this I seem to always think I know best when obviously that is not always the case. To improve upon my team work skills, I need to let go of the reigns and let other people be in charge. Even though my last experience of not being the leader of my group was somewhat of a disaster, I still need to learn to let go and not be so controlling of others.

Time-management- 

It is so easy to work for a deadline, and not just complete a task when you can. I need to begin my assignments earlier so that I can get proper feedback before I submit them. Also this way I can offer guidance to my peers and not feel stressed out in the week leading up to a submission date.

I find that because we are only in university two days a week, my sleep schedule gets all out of line for the other five days. Not so much a wish to improve upon the management of tasks over time but, I would still like to improve on being awake during the daytime and being asleep at night.

Flexability and Adaptability- 
I like to work to a set plan, so when this plan falls apart I can get quite easily annoyed. I need to be able to change my plans for other people: not everyone works the same way as me or has the same approach to work. I need to be flexible with how I view group work.  

Organisation-

In the first year I found that I would be frequently going back through reading assignments after the correlating lecture, finding the information a lot easier to consume with my ‘in-class’ knowledge.

This year, that is not the case. I need to get on top of completing readings before class so that I can ask questions when I do not understand something.  


Asking for help-
There have been a couple of times this year where I have not understood something. I went home and went back through the readings and acted independently so as to not waste anybody’s time, but if I had just asked for guidance I could have had a much firmer understanding of our topics a lot sooner.