Leicester Award for Employability: Online Networking

By undertaking the Leicester Award for Employability: Online Networking -my second Leicester award- I was hoping to understand more about how to best utilise social media and what should be posted online. I chose it mainly because I already used many social media sites and with my study abroad period coming up, I knew I'd be using them a lot more and I wanted to be able to best use them to my advantage.

The first step on the award, researching myself on the internet, instantly highlighted the importance of security to me. Although on the whole I did not appear many times in the search result, it made me aware of how public my profiles are. Therefore I changed privacy details and edited what I wanted to be made readily available. I have now developed my awareness of internet privacy and how profiles can also be found via images and videos, not just search results. Other peoples' experiences of this, as detailed in our online discussion groups, have only made me more conscious of the issue and how anything that you post on the internet could be made accessible. 

However, on the flip side, I have learnt about how it is still necessary to have profiles on social networking sites in order to create an Online Digital Footprint for oneself. For example, I did not realise that employers can be wary of people that are not part of any social media website or have incomplete profiles. This pushed me to update my LinkedIn and Google+ accounts so that potential employers have all of my current information and the sites portray an up to date reflection of who I am. Furthermore I have linked them up, via this blog so that my online 'brand' is accessible all in one place.

Another lesson that I have learnt is how to connect with employers and the ease of connecting with them through social media. Each platform is used for different reasons, be it to connect with others or to promote their product. Therefore I understand that each site has different etiquette that should to be adhered to and shouldn't be forgotten. For example if I wanted to contact an employer I would use a platform such as LinkedIn or Facebook, rather than twitter where I may not be able to express everything I want to say, with the correct grammar in 140 characters. 

Finally, I believe that I have been able to better my reflective writing style and blogging skills through taking part. As the content should reflect me I have worked hard on my writing style and in order to work on it more I will continue to blog any transferrable skills that I gain and soon I will start a blog to document my study abroad period as previously mentioned.

I think that I have learnt about what I originally thought I would, and now I am learning more. These are commercial awareness skills and networking knowledge that I will continue to employ in the future, to make sure that the content that I put online is both well thought out and accurately reflects me.

Three golden words: 'Good customer service'

Learning about the interview process and how to better present oneself throughout the first Leicester Award I completed (Experience employability) helped me to grasp an understanding on how the job interview process works (having only had more informal interviews up until that point). This enabled me to better prepare myself; researching the company I was applying to, researching potential questions and planning answers, as well as taking care of my appearance to give a good first impression, all of which resulted in a good interview and then receiving a job offer to work as a sales assistant, at Tommy Hilfiger. 

However the real skill I was hoping to practice further, through working in a retail environment, was my customer service skills and as an added bonus, improve my interpersonal skills. 

Recently I had a situation in which to give good customer service was a challenge. A lady that had wanted to try on several dresses, had a fitting room curtain pole fall down on her. On top of this she had a difficult outfit to find on a very busy, hot day and when she came to pay, the till stopped working. 
Despite all of this I remained cool and calm, and took each issue as it came- as well as making light of an unusual situation and having a laugh! Firstly I put discarded the pole and instead engaged the lady in conversation by asking about the occasion for which she was buying the outfit (unusually she needed to find the ugliest dress for a bizarre hen night- the incident only got more and more strange...). By communicating effectively, I was able to find out the issue she was having and then use my knowledge of the store to give her quicker answers. Also dealing with each problem in order, meant that neither her nor I became too overwhelmed. I was able to build a mini rapport with the customer, which led her to also buying another item. Furthermore it meant that when there were problems at the till point I could continue the light and slightly humorous conversation, so that she still left the store in a positive disposition and therefore more likely to shop there again.  

I felt that I was able to further my ability to provide good customer service in difficult circumstances. There is always a way to help a customer and make a positive impression even if it is a bad situation. Overall this experience taught me how good customer relations and service can keep a customer happy against all the odds. Now I make sure that I know what each customer is looking for or if they are not searching for anything in particular, I let them know that I am here to help. 

I believe that by continually working on my customer service skills I am also bettering my interpersonal skills. This in turn has given a boost to my own confidence and I know that it is now a skill that I can call upon in any part of my life. 

After doing a little research on the matter of Good Customer Service, I realise that I have learnt more through experiencing it first hand rather than learning through reading or talking about it in training. This has highlighted how useful reflection has been.
However this website has some good concise points that consolidate what I now put into action on a daily basis. 

http://marketing.about.com/od/relationshipmarketing/a/crmtopten.htm

Therefore I feel that over the course of working at Tommy Hilfiger, training on the job, but more importantly taking action in real life situations, have both allowed me to build upon and refine the foundation that I already had. 

University of Leicester Student Awards

Recently I attended the university's annual student award event, that gives recognition to both individual students and student led societies that have been successful or had achievements over the course of the academic year. I attended due to the fact that the Modern Languages society had been nominated for Academic society of the year.
Being part of the committee as a social secretary has been both rewarding and good fun, which is in part, the reason for the success that we have had this year. I primarily chose to become part of this committee in order to try my hand at organising events in a society of which I already enjoyed being a part of. Furthermore I knew that it would be an ideal chance to enhance my team working skills.  I have worked alongside like-minded hard-working committee members and under the leadership of a dedicated president. Our common goal was to create enjoyable academic and social events for our members, in particular a formal Summer Ball, so that we could be nominated for a Society award.

In order to achieve this goal we each worked on projects or certain aspects of an event independently to utilise our time well. However we also came together to work as a team, offering a wide variety of knowledge and mutual support to each other. For example when we planned the Summer Ball together, we each had certain tasks to organise and then we would report back to the committee to make a final decision. I researched venues, pricing and menus, collecting together a selection of possibilities to put to the committee vote. This meant that everyone was involved and it was voted on fairly. We also worked together on table decorations, selling tickets and preparing the venue on the day. Working in a team did not mean that there was always somebody to rely upon should somebody not be pulling their weight, but rather that everything ran more efficiently because everybody was ready to work together.

As well as being able to balance independent and team work, this developed my awareness of  balancing planning and organisation with flexibility; often certain things could not be planned for (such as numbers of people attending events or in the case of the Ball, last minute drop outs) and therefore I would have to be ready to adapt to the situation to ensure it still ran smoothly.

I believe I have since been able to call upon these honed team work sills in my part time job, as I now have a better knowledge of when independent work or supporting a colleague may be necessary. Being part of the UoL Modern Languages committee has been an experience that I have gained an awful lot from and I learnt that by enjoying what I was doing meant that I got a lot more out of it that if I didn't.

All of our work paid off as we won the award, the second time in the society's short 4 year history. I am proud to say that I was part of such a wonderful society.

(From left to right) Me, a publicity secretary, the president and the vice president with the award.