Importance of Excellent Communication Skills
This project is designed to give you experience interacting with professionals, delving into their leadership experience, and helps reinforce the importance of communication skills in real-world contexts.
The idea behind this project is to get you talking with 3 real-world professionals about their workplace experiences. These will be simple interviews that you will document in detail.
This project has several different parts, with different due dates. They are as follows:
Professional Interviews: You will identify and interview three professionals who work in careers that stem from the degree you currently pursue regarding their experiences in their respective careers. This assignment is designed to have you explore avenues you might pursue with your degree, as well as get advice from seasoned professionals about how you might prepare for such a career. These professionals may be from the same or different career paths (e.g., advertising, marketing, public relations, management, human relations, corporate sales, organizational consulting, entrepreneurship, etc.). After identifying careers of special interest to you, you will then identify and approach individuals currently employed in those fields, asking if they would be willing to speak with you about their experiences and career. A list of resources is listed in Step 2 below.
Conducting Interviews: You will conduct interviews with the professionals of your choice. There interviews shouldn’t last more than 30 minutes. They should be recorded and you will be required to take notes to ensure that you capture the professional’s responses to your questions. I have provided questions for you to ask below. However, you will need to come up with 2 additional questions of your own.
o Secondary Analysis: You will conduct research identifying and examining the skill sets companies in your field of interest look for in their hiring candidates. You can explore business journals, websites of particular companies, bios and job postings for directors, vice-presidents and other employees. These skills should be outside of what you have learned from your interviews. You will report these as key takeaways in your Strategic Guide.
o Final Report - Strategic Guide: Lastly, you will summarize in a series of key findings what you learned from your primary data collection (interviews). You then will summarize the key take away points from the interviews and secondary analysis.
o Submission DUE 12/9/2022: You will then submit your final report with the results of your initial interviews and secondary analysis to UBLearns.
STEPS TO COMPLETION
Step 1: Identify career paths of special interest to you. This can be done through the Career Center, speaking with your professors, your personal network, and the like.
Step 2: After you have identified fields of interest, you then must identify professionals who work in these fields. This can be done via professional contacts (e.g., through your department), through your personal network (e.g., friend of the family or a relative who works in an area of interest to you), or personal outreach (i.e., you identify organizations that house such individuals and you reach out to them, including cold-calling). Be nice and ask politely. Most people and even companies will say yes. Please introduce yourself and explain the purpose of the email. We will practice this in class.
Step 3: Set up an opportunity to speak with each individual in real-time. Due to COVID I expect that most of your interviews will be done via virtual connection or phone. I have provided the list of questions below. You will need to develop two additional questions that you will ask. Do not be afraid to ask clarifying (probing) questions while interviewing.
Step 4: When people are providing answers to your questions, your job is to write out their answers in as detailed account as possible. You may even wish to record your conversation and listen to it later to ensure that you’re getting every bit of the conversation correct. Be sure that you are taking notes and telling the stories EXACTLY as the person says it.
Step 5: Next, I want you to think about what you learned from your interviews. You will examine the interviews that underscore skills, experiences, and knowledge these employers think you should acquire before entering their field. You will then create a report and list of key findings. These present the thematic and core takeaway messages from your two data sets.
Step 6: You will create a "Strategic Guide" for how to undertake your program to hit the job market in the best possible shape. We will discuss specifics for formatting below.
Email to Professional
Subject: Career Conversation
Hello my name is XXXXX (insert name). I am a student at the University of New York at Buffalo in the School of Management. In my Communication Literacy for Business course, we’re asking people to share their experiences and perspectives on how best to prepare for entering their field of work. I, personally, am interested in XXXXX (insert the field/career of the person you’re interviewing).
I only have a few questions for you and should only need about 20 to 30 minutes of your time. I’m genuinely interested in what you have to say. Afterwards, I’ll be discussing your feedback with my classmates and create a report that can help to prepare for our future careers. Please let me know if this something that you can assist with.
I appreciate any time and advice you can offer me. Thank you. Sincerely, (insert your name)
Interview Questions
Questions:
1. What core skill sets, knowledge, or experiences do you feel will best prepare a current college student interested in pursuing work in your field?
2. Are there specific experiences, training, content you wish you received in college that you think could have helped further your career?
3. What problems, frustrations, or concerns do you see with recent college graduates entering your field these days?
4. If you were in a position to design a college program from the ground up specifically to prepare students to enter your field, what would you ensure was included (specific training, course content, experiences, etc.)?
5. What role does effective writing skills play in this field?
Remember to add 2 questions of your own.Strategic Guide FormatFormat details:Cover Sheet12-point fontNo double spacing Cover sheetUse heading for new sections
Section 1: Summary of thoughts (at the least 2 pages)
Tell me how you plan to implement the information you learned through your professional interviews and secondary analysis during the rest of your time here at UB. Also, explain what you found to be important to focus on and why. Finally, reflect
Section 2: Key Takeaways (at least 10 takeaways)
Here you will write the points that you found to be important (this list will encompass what you learned through the interviews and secondary analysis). List them with bullets and write a short definition of what that skill/concept means in your own words.
Example• Communication – Write your definition based on what you’ve learned from the interview and secondary analysis.
Reference List (APA Format)
You need a reference list for your secondary analysis.
Make sure to include a cover page with your name and the following:
Strategic Guide
Name:
Date:
MGG303
Section 1: Summary (at least two pages)
Tell me how you plan to implement the information you learned through your professional interviews and secondary Analysis during the rest of your time here at UB. Also, explain what you found to be essential to focus on and why. Finally, reflect on explaining what this assignment meant for you. Specifically, how you felt starting the assignment, and how different did you feel at the end of the assignment?
Understanding how to put theory into practice is essential for any professional. It does not only allow him to bridge the gap between knowledge and real-life experience but also learn more about how to apply these skills for the benefit of his organization. Accordingly, one of the most important things that I have learned from the professional interviews and secondary Analysis is the importance of excellent communication skills for success in the business field. This includes communication with your higher-ups, peers, and, most importantly, clients. In the succeeding sections of this article, I will discuss some of the main reasons communication is essential for success in both the university and my future desire to become a marketing professional.
Importance of Excellent Communication Skills
Upon conducting the interview with various business professionals, one of the essential characteristics that were recurrent from their responses was communication skills. This communication refers to verbal, nonverbal, and written communication, which are heavily utilized in the business world. The following sections will discuss in more detail why these skills as essential for success.
Practical communication skills are already required as soon as the time for job application. After college, we have to build and start our careers by choosing the right workplace, whether based on our needs or interests. Regardless of our intention, my interview has shown that our chances of landing our dream job depend on how we communicate with the employment team through email, oral interviews, and other forms of communication. In one article written by Moore (2016), the author noted that about "73% of employers want candidates with strong writing skills", which is just behind the ability to work with others and leadership skills. Additionally, effective communication skills are also critical in face-to-face interviews, whether in terms of verbal or nonverbal communication. This is supported by another study done by Eastman (n.d.), which showed that only our verbal comprises only 7% of our interaction with others.
In comparison, our non-verbal composition is about 93% the same. In turn, these nonverbal cues are some of the things that recruiters tend to observe during the interview process. In other words, both the interview that I conducted and these studies support the essential nature of effective communication as early as the hiring process.
Accordingly, the professionals I interviewed also emphasized the importance of establishing my career in any field. In one of my interviews with a digital marketer, he noted that honest, open, and humorous communication between you and your colleagues is essential for creating a positive work environment. This is also why recruiters tend to find individuals who are easy to converse with and are "culture fit" to create a more positive and light working environment. However, one important takeaway I had was th...