Personal Selection Criteria - Admission/Application Essay Example

15 September 2007 Personal Selection Criteria My childhood has been the most significant chapter of my life because it is when I have acquired my most important values. Through the years, I grow to become more matured while obtaining more knowledge and skills through my various academic, social, and work exposures. I am highly confident that everything that I have been through prepared me for greater challenges and instilled me with value of integrity, influence and negotiation skills, resilience, focus in achieving results, analysis and judgment, cultural and social sensitivity, and oral and written communication.

Having been raised in a Vietnamese home where integrity is highly valued, I learned to upload the highest possible ethical standards. My parents taught me the golden rule that is, treating others fairly by treating them the way I want them to treat me. My entire life has been a struggle to keep my integrity. Academically, it means being responsible for my actions and avoiding plagiarism. Socially, I honor my friends' respect by maintaining confidentially. In my experience as a businessman, this means upholding my honor by giving fair wage, equitable treatment, and healthy working condition to my employees.

Being a businessman challenged and displayed by influence and negotiation skills. I believe in dealing with my colleagues and other players in the food industry, my ability to influence and negotiate is highly linked to my image and integrity. Having been always known for honesty and fairness, I am able to win their respect and approval. This really helps me in dealing with important business issues like wage increase and sourcing of inputs. My bargaining skills enabled my business to maximize financial resources by purchasing input at low cost.

The hard times in my life and my exposure to challenging situations instill me with resilience. In my experience as a businessman, operations are always adversely affected by economic downturns. There are times when the business incurs huge losses. There are also situations when competitors launch aggressive moves in order to gain our market share. Yet, in these situations, I have learned to stay calmed, focused, and come up with efficient solutions. Planning is an important aspect of business management.

Through planning, I set the direction where I want the organization to take, establish focus, and able to install the necessary control methods to monitor performance. At the start of the year, I make financial projections and periodically compare them to the actual performance. As they reveal problem areas in the business, I take corrective actions to obtain the goals that I have set. My experience in managing a business organization presented me with all the opportunities to analyze and make the best decisions.

This often means utilizing only the available information at hand. In the business world, you don't often know you're your rival is thinking. Battling with local competitors, the most important decision which I implemented to counter intense competition is providing unmatched service to customers. Being born, raised, and educated in Vietnam and having been able to obtain another degree and establish a business in Australia instilled me with social and cultural sensitivity. I can say that there is a wide disparity between the two cultures which can hinder two people from these countries in building a harmonious relationship.

I believe that I have gone beyond this being able to understand the preference of the Australian market when I opened my coffee shop which targets local customers. Cultural and social sensitivity become my secret in building and maintaining customer relations. I believe that I excel both in oral and written communication. Orally, I am able to convey my ideas and express my opinion both in interpersonal and public communication which branded me as a good negotiator. I am the type of person who thoroughly thinks first before speaking, choosing the right words, and forming strong arguments.

English is not my mother tongue, yet I persevered to improve my proficiency in order to communicate more efficiently. The same is true with written communication. In preparing letters and essays, I always think about the audience in order to establish proper format and utilize the proper words. For example, when I write to managers, a memo format is more appropriate because of its preciseness. When writing to friends, I maintain a more informal and warmer tone.