Being a Proficient Employee Is a Journey and Not a Destination - Coursework Example

COOP WORK TERM ANALYSIS REPORT of Employer Current s of Work Term of College Submitted To Table of Contents Introduction. 2 About the organization. 3 Scope of the work. 3 Personal objectives. 4 Career exploration/confirmation objective. 5 Responsibilities 6 Technical assignments. 6 Technical environment. 7 Accomplishments. 8 Positive experiences. 11 Conclusion. 11 Introduction. Students need to go out into real world working environment so that they can get to apply what they learn in class to practical activities. The opportunity enables students to understand and be able to apply theoretical knowledge into practical. Getting to apply class knowledge in real practical enables students to understand more what they have learned in class. This is a major requirement as part of my course and career as well. This document explains the duties and responsibilities as undertaken by me while working with BTO Inc. It aims at giving a full description of how I managed to accomplish my objectives, what I learned, challenges and how to socially interact with people in a working environment. About the organization. BTO Inc is a newly formed company. The company comprises six individuals. They include three web developers, one web designer, one server administrator and the manager. The company provides services which allow lawyers to get clients from other lawyers and also enable lawyers to expand their social career network. The company aims at expanding and growing their legal referral network. As one of the major step towards achieving this, BTO Inc is on the process of releasing its website in order for its clients to interact more with the company and also help in improving its service delivery. The website also will assist BTO Inc in marketing it brand and getting out to the outer world in order to get more client and a establish a larger market share. Scope of the work. My work in BTO Inc. majorly involved being part of the team which embarked in establishing a web-based platform to serve lawyers. BTO has more than 40 lawyers who are already signed to use its services. The company is co-owned by two UT students. BTO Inc is based in a small office located in downtown area. The company does not have any other departments. The web-based platform would enable registered members to search in the job log to look for available job opportunities posted by other lawyers. The web-based platform can also enable them to view the daily news related to the law. I was involved in providing and updating event information related to law in the web-based platform. I was also involved in developing user-friendly searching system to target registered lawyers. Personal objectives. Working with BTO Inc. was to help in better understanding of what really goes on in the real-world especially in the information technology and software development market. Having that in mind, I formulated the following objectives which were to guide me in accomplishing what I wanted to achieve at the end of the term work. My first personal objective was to improve my interpersonal skills. I had discovered that needed interpersonal skills since I lacked soft skills to relate to other people. These skills are important in work places and I required developing them in order to apply them in my daily work activities. In order to achieve this objective, I set out a positive mindset and sought positive things about my fellow colleagues. I sought to keep those positive aspects in my thoughts and decided that my co-workers were to appreciate the gained qualities. I also sought to assist myself to connect with others by encouraging myself to work with them together. I had the objective of showing respect to others’ ideas and ensuring that I am fair dealing with my colleagues. Eventually, I targeted that those individuals around me will build trust on me. My objective was to be attentive to others. By interacting with different people from all levels in my life, I had in mind that I was to notice their achievements and celebrate their milestones with them. I believed that, by gaining the above skills, I could be able to build a good relationship with other people and generate happiness at my present and future workplace. My objective was to acquire professional role models or mentors who will not only supervise me but also provide much required guidance, feedback, and support to enrich the experience. I knew that to be successful in achieving my goals and objectives, what people around me said and how my actions made them feel could determine my success in interacting and working with people. By achieving the above objectives, I knew they will play a huge part in my career success and personal live. My second objective was to improve self confidence. I needed to improve it to deal with all the situations I could encounter during my daily work. For several times, I had felt unsure of myself to do things and considered how difficult it was to be confident when I started working in a new job I did not knew. I decided that I was to work to improve my self confidence continually and make it grow. To achieve this objective, I needed to be independent and not looking to others to validate my choice of actions, values, personality and ideas. I knew that, the successes and achievements gained would help me in strengthening my self confidence. That is why I needed to prepare my abilities to do things from training and experience. Career exploration/confirmation objective. On the course of my work in BTO Inc., I specified what I wanted to learn, improve and achieve by learning how a new business is started, and participating in building a business website to serve among lawyers. I confirmed my objective of how I was to learn, improve and achieve my career goals by getting easily along with the team and adapting quickly to the new working environment. I and my team were to find a way of establishing the website by using Drupal 7, PHP, JavaScript and MySQL. By confirming that, I knew that the new business comprises student as founders and who are good in different areas such as database and website design. I decided that this was the best opportunity to learn from others and explore the new business areas together. To confirm my objectives also, I needed a way of knowing that I have achieved my goals and I have no questions in mind about the whole project and my manager and co-workers will congratulate me on what I have did. I decided that my measure of my objectives that the website passes all the tests and operates successfully, then my goal could have been accomplished. Responsibilities My responsibilities involved were: i. Designing, developing and building the web-based platform. ii. Coding the source code for the system and issuing of tracking analysis. iii. Working closely with my team to ensure that the projects was successfully accomplished and released. iv. Reporting to my supervisor or manager on the progress of the project. Technical assignments. PHP and JavaScript was the key programming language. My first individual assignment was to draw a graph using JavaScript. Tasks were not that difficult. I used Drupal 7 as a flexible tool for content creation and management even for people who do not know too much about coding modules. Drupal 7 is also powerful. However, I being an inexperience software developer, modifying the existing modules such as adding elements in contents and views for specific job became difficult for me. Though, I learned how to track codes between modules, add codes to make auto-complete field, add regions and layouts to the when theme, embed JavaScript for a particular task and others. I aspired to make myself professional in Drupa 7. I participated in analyzing how the website was to be established and the functions it was to contain. I prepared my ideas at home and delivered them to my team during our meeting sessions. I believe my manager was satisfied with what I did. I was also involved in monitoring the database and modify the modules to meet the specified system requirements. We had basic modules which were already installed. The problem we faced was to find the right tool for the job. Selecting the correct module among the several great modules was difficult. We launched the website successfully; it looked more professional, tested the website bugs and figured out the payment system using the right modules. I and my team also embarked in testing the website during the closing stages of developing the website. Testing the website was a complex activity. Testing ensures that all functionalities operate successfully and nothing is left undone. I was interested in setting up the payment system even though I was not assigned by the manager. Rebecca Lau is the one who was dealing with it by then. The part interested me most. I monitored her work and learned several ways of setting up a payment system and in future, I am capable of doing it alone. Technical environment. The technical work really involved the website business design. I involved myself in the work environment by dressing properly and neatly, acting courteously with my colleagues and considering other people’s ideas regarding the design and implementation of the website. I increase my relationship with my team members by interacting with them more closely and involving them by sharing my ideas with them in order to have and build trust among ourselves. I tried as much to showcase my abilities during the few months I had to work with them since I saw it as a good opportunity for me to practice my interpersonal skills. I acted positively in every action I was involved in by building basic trust with my team member and by motivating each other’s capabilities to perform tasks and responsibilities productively. I worked well to ensure that my weekly tasks were nicely and properly delivered in order to show my ability in the company. As a result, my managers and co-workers gave me a god evaluation to my hard work and abilities. During the period, I have realized that I have achieved in improving my interpersonal skills in a very significant way. I always reminded myself that I had good interpersonal skills which enable me to be gain social skills and effectively communicate with my co-workers and establish good relationship with them and the manager. I often questioned myself if I had achieved a good communication level with my co-workers and managers during the period of my term work. I strived hard to build good team work that would collaborate with me with other and share ideas with them. I always sought to know and uncover potential issues and conflicts with others during team work and tried as much as I can to avoid conflicts. Accomplishments. During the period of June to July, while working with BTO Inc., I accomplished in building the BTO website with basic modules installed to the server and local machine. I also accomplished the following; i. Adding new region to the default theme ii. Added codes to modules for adding practices areas fields. iii. Implemented the use of JavaScript for auto-complete fields. The feature automated the system to search the database for data without clicking a confirm button, enables data searches to pass regular expression and enables data to be displayed predictably. iv. Modified view of edit user profile v. Modified view of create legal issue vi. Modified view of contact user vii. I and my team worked 40 hours in a week, working together in Wednesday and Saturday from 10 A.M to 4 P.M. and for the rest of the week, I usually worked from 11 A.M to 7 P.M and sometimes from 1 P.M to 10 P.M. I also worked on weekend (Thursday and Friday) However, during this period, I faced some challenge and difficulties which include; The involved activities and processes of tracking codes and functions among modules were really pain for me at the begging. There were more than 30 modules installed in the web-based platform. When I needed to add something new to a field such as auto-complete, I was required to find it out which PHP file contained the field and which module contained the functions that can be changed. I tried as well to get a solution from the internet. After performing a web search for few hours, I found nothing. Therefore, I sought help from my team members. One of my team members John Liang, told me that there was a module called “Theme Developer”. So I tried it and it was really useful to me. English not being my first language was also a challenge. So when my team members were talking quite fast during the meeting sessions, I sometimes had trouble to react immediately and comprehend adequately. This was one of my weaknesses during my working period with BTO Inc. My team members did not slow down their speech intentionally and keep their voices clearly. Whether I understood what they said or not, was none of their problem. However, in order to resolve this challenge, I tried to establish a good relationship with my team members; so that I could ask them later if was not sure on something. I knew the progress to improve my listening skills would have been very slow without befriending them and I kept practicing so as to conquer my weakness. During the period of July to August, I accomplished the following; i. Changed regions for adding user search ii. User search multiple page views added to show all registered user, added a module for user information details added when clicking the name, added a module for user picture added, added a module for user company name and title added, added a module to confirm for auto-complete addition, user search textbox added as a block to the user search region created. iii. I and my team worked 40 hours in a week, working together in Wednesday and Saturday from 10 A.M to 4 P.M. and for the rest of the week, I usually worked from 11 A.M to 7 P.M and sometimes from 1 P.M to 10 P.M. I also worked on weekend (Thursday and Friday) iv. Tested the website for ending work or processing. The challenge or obstacle I encountered during this period was that the most difficult part to code user search was not to code the user search web page, nut to separate the user search textbox block from its content view page and put it to the user search region created. I tried to do it by creating a web form, modified the search module and added code to the php page but nothing worked. But lastly, I tried to set up a view for it and after doing some modification to it, the user search textbox showed up and worked well. I had in mind that there were several ways of doing it and after trying, I found the correct one and if will have a chance again in future, I will learn the other ways. Positive experiences. i. Brainstormed for every tasks related to work ii. Demonstrated efficiency in a relaxed working environment. Conclusion. I feel privileged to have been exposed to a firm that nurtures talent and makes them grow stronger through good guidance and mentorship. I leant that being a proficient employee is a journey and not a destination. I also learnt that people learnt best when they are given difficult assignments and are guided as they solve them. It was a wonderful experience working with BTO Inc. Company. BTO Inc. is a great organization in that it promotes growth and development for its employees. I commend BTO Inc. for giving its employees the freedom to express their ideas and encouraging them to be creative and innovative as in the case during the Web-bases platform development exercise. 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