Career Plan for International Student - Personal Statement Example

Student Name: Tutor: Title: Career Plan for International Student Course: Part 1 After completing my skills audit and action audit I have not added any other professional training on any specific subject. On my own volition and interaction I have enhanced my interpersonal skills through working with other people at campus in teams and social places. I have grown my confidence and I am particularly impressed with my ability to work under pressure and anticipate positive results. I am more enduring and accommodating that before and I look forward to being a more accomplished team player in future. From the MBTI session I had with Mac I discovered there are other areas about my personality that I have not fully contemplated about and hence not worked on their development. Particularly, when it comes to decision making there are many approaches that be applied in different situations to attain the desired results. I also learn that I judge strongly as opposed to using my emotions and feelings. I learned that I have developed by intuitive ability and able to judge certain situation without necessarily being privy to the extensive details. I acknowledge that some of my answers may not have been a true representation of what I would have done in a real situation. However, they are honest answers and consider the MBTI results as true reflection of my personality. It was wonderful to have participated in the MBTI session. My MBTI result was 11% for extravert, 50% intuitive, thinking 1% and judging 89%. I showed a light preference of extraversion as compared to introversion. I am moderately rated on intuition as compared to sensing registering a value of 50%. I have a strong preference for judging as opposed to perceiving which I scored 89%. I have considered myself an extravert but the MBTI results indicated otherwise. I have to evaluate my interpersonal skills and my conduct in social situation to avoid being considered as a snob. The MBTI session also made me realize that there are other places about decisions making where I have to differentiate between reasoning, feelings and emotions and merely employing intuition. I did not know that my sense of perception is very low and I highly judge many situations instead of perceiving them. I plan to work on my perception skills through assessing different kinds of situations that require conceptualization skills (Kroth & Christensen, 2009). Although I consider myself as a social person with great interpersonal skills I realized that I scored very low on the extrovert scale according to the MBTI results. I have to rethink my perception or is the manner that I answered the question that gave me low score on being an extravert. The MBTI session was exciting and interesting and I look forward to using the session to test other areas not related to career growth but aimed at improving my personality. The MBTI session was not easy as I thought and it took me some seconds before giving an answer to some questions. It required reasoning out and putting myself in a situation that enabled me to figure out what I would have done. Part 2 I learned a lot from completing my CV. The whole task required conceptualization skills and presenting a personality that is likeable and sellable. I had to imagine myself as a brand that needs to be sold in a highly competitive market. It is a wonderful chance of self-reflection and evaluating myself as an individual without basing on other people’s opinion. I realized it is important to have a chronological recording of any volunteer or professional activities that are involved in. It was not easy to document some of the activities that I had not recorded properly or where the relevant certificate was missing. It also came to my notice that I have to explore more professional short-time courses that will complement my main area of specialization. Having to provide, names, addresses and phone numbers of referees emphasized the need to have good relationships with other people and leave a lasting legacy wherever I go. I still room of improving myself to be a better person that who is admired by employers who need my expertise. Disagreements in the team were about other things and not about the budget after my suggestion. Part 3 Planning, implementing and achieving results There was a time when I had to accomplish some task of stock evaluation in my father’s company. I was really pressed for time and my further badly wanted this work done so that he could forward the report for preparation of the income statement and evaluation of any replenishment needed. At the same time my colleagues and I had organized volunteer activities that we had planned to do in the local hospital when not studying. I neither wanted to disappoint my further nor my colleagues who were eagerly waiting for me to join then because we had planned for a long time. I went over to my colleagues and explained my situation to them and they had to bear with my absence at the beginning of the volunteer program (Pope, 2009) Surprisingly they all agreed to help me out on my father’s assignment as an extension of our volunteer activity! I was happy at the proposal and excitedly explained my father who was happy with me for having such considerate friends. The challenge was how to tackle the task ahead. Working individually could have resulted in errors and double work of cross-checking each other’s amount in terms of stock items. I decided to split ourselves in groups of three and concentrate on one item for each group. At the end of the exercise we all brought our figures together to find the final tally of the stock. Our objective was to finish the work within the shortest time possible and have some time to participate in the pre-planned volunteer program in the hospital. We forced to abandon the original plan of trying to work together all of us as group which would have been slower and time consuming. Splitting ourselves in smaller groups made the work effective and we were able to accomplish the task within three days and proceed to the volunteer program for the remaining time. It was a success because we did the stock evaluation and gave my father the figures in time for preparation of other company’s statements. My father commended us for a good job and even gave us some money to share amongst ourselves. I was impressed with the time we took to accomplish the task and even spared more time to continue with our volunteer program at the hospital. My friends were happy to help at my father’s company and some really learned a lot about stock-taking and expressed their joy of experiencing a new thing in their life. Influencing, communication and teamwork I was working as an intern in a hospitality company where we worked in teams. Our team was in charge of organizing and budgeting for outside events and workshops. At one given time there was a heated debate about the budget and the influence that the team leader had in the final budget. Many team members expressed concerns that there overstatements in the final budgets that were represented to the chief finance officer. Many people wondered whether the team leader was inflating the budget for his personal gain. The team leader exonerated himself by saying that our budgets had not factored the prevailing market rates and he was forced to work it out by the CFO. Members countered that they were no standard market rates that could be used since events were organized different venues that charged differently. Moreover, the refreshments and food was not standardized across the country. It was much of debacle and members wondered if there were standard figures that could be used to develop tentative budget? At this juncture I suggested that members search online for various prices charged my various service providers and each member should keep track of at least one service provider in case there were changes in prices (Anyanwu, 2009). At every session of budgeting team members brought the current market rates of various service providers and a budget was prepared based on the high figure and also the lower figure and the different factored in as a variable. From that day hence forth there were no more arguments about budgets because the figure presented to the CFO was within the variable determined by the team and any reminder was carried forward to the next activity. The results of my suggestions were satisfactory because it changed our approach in the team towards budgeting and there were no more questions about figures presented to the chief finance officer. All the members of the team had a responsibility of keeping track of the market rates and hence members felt that the correct information was being used for budgeting. Having a variable figure enabled the team to budget for expensive and less expensive events without a problem or seeming to ask for too much from the budget controller. The time that we initially wasted haggling about the budget were dedicated for other constructive activities like visiting the events venues to ascertain suitability and the comfort of guest. We also able to allocate time for social activities like retreats and team building. Part 4 Analysis, problem-solving and creative thinking I was taking part in youth program that involved speaking to the youth about drug abuse and teenage pregnancy. I was in charge of a group that distributed reading materials to the youth about alcoholism and substance abuse. We worked well for a few weeks before it came to my notice that some of the members in my team were victims of substance abuse and they were living in denial. It was difficult confronting them because some of them would have abandoned the program and fell back to the habit without control. I really thought about helping them without appearing that I was judgmental since I did not want to lose any of them. The program was working well some of the victims were active members of the group. In order to have them confess and ask for help I found a found an former addict of hard drugs who gave as a session about coming clean and the effects of trying to pretend to be what you are not. The affected members were really touched by the testimony of the person I invited to the extent that they confessed to be living a lie and sought help. Meanwhile they continued assisting in the youth program. In the end they helped to restore other people’s lives as well as their own. It was wonderful seeing their faced illuminated by reassuring smiles after they had conquered their addictions completely and helped others come clean (O'Connell & Cuthbertson, 2009). I would have decided to discontinue the affected members from the group since they were a bad influence to the project. I chose to keep them and help them to come clean about their addictions. My approach was good since I managed to help the members to own up to their problems and also seek professional help. In the end the program was not interrupted and everyone was accounted for in the end. Part 5 The interview practice was every exciting and an eye-opener at the same time. I have learnt so many things that I took for granted initially or naively thought that they were not important. I have learned always to keep eye contact and avoid staring whenever possible. I have also learned to anticipate questions at interviews and remain at ease even where I am not familiar with the question. I realized that punctuality and presentation says a lot about a person and there it will always be my aim to reach the interview venue early enough and appear very presentable as sharp and focused. It is very important for me to continue engaging in interview practice to overcome my fear of interviews and understand how to tackle different situations during interviews (Kroth & Christensen, 2009). I have to polish my expression and have a clear grasp of the English language. I can achieve this through reading a lot and listening as well as watching people speak English. I also need to practice my speaking skills in order to be at ease at all times. The question I found easy to answer is the question about myself. I knew I had to explain who I was and what were my qualifications and suitability for the job. I had to paint a positive personality that resonates with the attributes required in the person to take up the job. I had previously rehearsed and memorized what to say if some asked me to tell him about myself. Consequently, it was not a big deal when I was meant with the similar question. I had prepared adequately and I felt comfortable to answer confidently. The question I found challenging is the question about the most difficult situation that I faced and how I tackled it. Although I have been faced with a number of difficult situations in my life I do not know exactly which were is relevant in the current situation. Is it supposed bring out my personality or my professionalism in tackling challenges. Moreover, it is difficult to figure out exactly whether the interview is really interested in the story or in the oratory skills that I possess. Besides, summarizing the incidents in few sentences was a challenge and the interview seemed to be eager to move on the next question. All in all I tried to be calm and explained myself to the best of my knowledge without faltering. I plan to rehearse more in order to improve my interview skills. I also need to have a good grasp of general knowledge and read a lot to improve both my spoken and written English. References Anyanwu, C. N. 2009, Creative Strategies for Conflict Management & Community Building, AuthorHouse, London. Kroth M.S., & Christensen, M. 2009, Career Development Basics, American Society for Training and Development, New York. O'Connell, T.S., & Cuthbertson. 2009, Brent Group Dynamics in Recreation and Leisure: Creating Conscious Groups through an Experiential Approach, Human Kinetics, New York. Pope, M. 2009, Jesse Buttrick Davis (1871-1955): Pioneer of vocational guidance in the schools, Career Development Quarterly, 57, 278-288. Read More