As I have been aiming to pursue a career in the field of Human Resources, I have developed some transferable skills that I believe are an essential for success in this field. As of this week, I will have completed my first year of studies in the Business-Human Resources program at Fleming College. Throughout this semester, I have reflected some communication skills that will be required as I pursue my career.
The most challenging assignment that I have faced this semester was the Marketing Plan Written Report. This assignment required us to work collaboratively as a team to research, analyse and make the decision of what information would help us with our pitch. The end result was a formal written report including all aspects of the market of Coca-Cola and our objectives of what we believed would make the company more successful with their Coke product. The process was difficult because to be collaborative, we had to be extensive with our time in and out of class. Throughout this experience I learned why it is important to be clear and direct with communication, use time effectively and have effective group dynamics. These skills transfer to any situation where I will be working closely with others.
A few other assignments that I worked on were requirements in Communications 202. One of the requirements were writing five discussions over the course of the semester and then responding back in depth about the topic that someone else wrote. This requirement gave an opportunity to practice my writing and also my feedback skills. These skills are valuable in the field that I am pursuing because you always have to analyse peoples work and solve conflict that may occur. The other assignment we worked on in Communications 202 was Discourse Communities Analysis Assignment. This assignment helped me develop my skills in analyzing. With this assignment I had to choose three of John Swales: Six Characteristics of Discourse Communities. To help me choose three of the six, I had to analyze all of the parts of Human Resources (Background, Goals, Etc.). Overall, the skills I have developed in Communications 202 are all transferable to my future career in Human Resources to help me complete tasks and be successful.
I recommend that you take a look at the following examples of my work, which you will see are the writing samples I have mentions above. You will be reading examples from my Marketing Plan, Online Discussions and Discourse Communities Assignment. For each entry, you will see that I wrote a short introduction that briefly describes how the example contains a transferable skill.
Writing Sample One (from MKTG-14)
The following is a writing sample from my Marketing Plan Written Report in MKTG-14. I chose this sample to be part of my portfolio because it demonstrates my ability to work collaboratively as a teammate. To an employer, this shows that I collaborate effectively with others to complete tasks. Our Objectives of our pitch shows that we worked together to conclude how we would market our product if we were part of the Coca-Cola Company based on the information we found together.
Positioning Statement:
Coca Cola Classic will refresh you with a pick me up when your hit with the afternoon lulls. One sip of our product will instantly give you that oh so familiar refreshing taste and won’t let you down throughout your hard-working day.
Coca Cola Classic out beats all the others with a family comfort grandfathers around the world drank to give them the pick me up to build our countries that exist today!
Target Market:
We are focusing on all genders, the looking to the 20-40 age group. People who do live a healthy lifestyle and others who may not so much. We are looking into the daily 9-5 office (behind the desk) business world, of often younger mature adults who have very busy lives and get very tired during their day. The afternoon crashes!
Budget:
We are looking for a budget of $10 million to give a makeover to our marketing for our Coca Cola Classic product 2020.
By giving our Tv, Radio and Social media ads a new look as a “Energy Drink” and providing it with a new image to target the business sector with as a great way to reduce stress and give a pick me up feel, we are forecasting a financial increase of 10% by 2020-year end.
-Tv Ads – $123,000 with an exception for super bowl air time of $4 million
-Radio Ads- $1000 a week
-Social Media Ads- varies $1000 to $20 thousand a month
Writing Sample Two (from COMM202)
The second writing sample is my feedback I provided back to a fellow class mate who wrote his discussion about The Environment Community in COMM202. I have included this into my portfolio because it demonstrates my ability to understand what a person is talking about and connect with them through feedback and questions. I enjoyed doing this because I was able to practice writing and critical thinking to give feedback to a peer on how to improve the next time.
This is a very interesting discourse community, especially since so much is changing in our environment! Also, with how you describe the goals of this discourse community it is clear that you are passionate about it. Although is it clear to me of the Swale characteristics it falls under, maybe others aren’t sure. So, what are the two characteristics of Swales you have chosen?
Writing Sample Three (from COMM202)
My last writing sample is from the “Discourse Communities Analysis” in COMM202. Our assignment was to analyze our Discourse Communities and provide background, Research and analysis and relate it to three of John Swales: Six characteristics of Discourse communities. I chose this to be part of my portfolio because it provides an employer with information that I know how to analyze an objective, which is a huge task in human resources because to help the organization achieve goals, I would analyze workers on how they perform.
According to John Swales, that “A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.” (COMM202-Communications II. (2019) Para 1) This statement is true about this community of Human Resources. One of the primary goals in this community is to help an organization reach the goal they have to run an effective business. The community can reach this goal by hiring well- motivated workers, as well as training them effectively for the proper job.
Now, it isn’t really a surprise that to make this community effective to reach their goals they use information and feedback to help. Another one of Swales statements is “A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.” (COMM202-Communications II. (2019) Para 3) This meaning, a discourse community uses techniques to help them to receive and give information and feedback from and to jobholders in this company. Danita Brown has been a member of the Human Resources community for 20 years. In an interview, she spoke about the different techniques she uses to drive results in the company she works for to improve what they look for while hiring, “Our most popular strategic technique we use is interviewing, it gives the best results because we ask questions that we want to improve and learn more about” (D.Brown, personal Communications, January 23, 2019) Also, other techniques that are also used are questionnaires, observations and participant diary/logs to help analysis what the worker does, how the worker does it, why the worker does it and the worker qualifications. These strategies help them write job descriptions and how to improve their methods of training and recruiting to reach their goals.
Swale also discusses that “A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.” (COMM202-Communications II. (2019) Para 6) Not from my own experience, but the Business-Human Resources at Fleming college offers a co-op experiences, where they can work under the wing of expert Human resource workers. I believe that this experience would happen at other work places, because it provides the newcomers with knowledge that they did not have before.
