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.

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.

Mentoring: International Buddy Network and training day.

May 2012- Ongoing.

Late May 2012, I signed up to take part in the University of Leicester's International Buddy Network scheme as soon as it first came to my attention. In its basic form, it is a university run scheme to aid international students coming to Leicester to settle in and find their feet. This is done through allocating each new student that signs up, a mentor. The 'mentee' student can then meet up informally with their mentor, as and when it is felt necessary to chat or discuss any issues they may be having. As with any transition it is likely that the new student might have questions about university life and the culture in Britain, so ultimately the mentor is there to offer support and to help them find a solution.

In order to better equip us to do that, there was a training day to attend. The day, split in to different workshops, comprised of : Mentoring skills, Cultural and Diversity awareness, Signposting, Career skills and Specific training/details for the International Buddy Network itself.

The day taught us the general overview of becoming a mentor (i.e listening, keeping in contact, becoming a friend but not too close, professionalism.) but it also taught us us where we should direct mentees in order to fulfil different needs, (i.e finance, health etc) and made us aware of the transition that international students go through. 

During the day we acted out many role play situations. For example I, in the role of mentor, was given the task of responding to a mentee’s plea for help after suffering from insomnia for days. I then had to use the knowledge that I previously had and the knowledge that I had gained that day in order to respond a) in the correct manner and tone, and b) with the correct information. I decided that I would show compassion, yet I would not tackle this issue by myself. I would provide the mentee with information on healthcare at the university, advise them to speak to their personal tutor and finally potentially discuss some simple tips that I may have in the meantime. This exercise was both insightful and useful, an experience that will be useful to draw upon when the situation calls for it.

For me the day was useful in numerous ways, the first of which was the communication skills employed during each workshop. On many occasions it was necessary to work in teams to collect ideas together and this brought into play many interpersonal skills. Furthermore as the day ended with a small talk on careers and organising CVs and work experience. Although not a success the first time I created one, it did make me think about creating a blog for a short period of time. This last part of the day helped me to start focusing on my employability skills and gather together examples of these, almost a prelude to the Leicester Award I later undertook.

As a result of this day I contacted my mentees to make myself known to them and provide them with any information they might need. I have since found out from feedback that this has proved invaluable for all of my mentees, especially during the first few weeks. Additionally I feel that I have made many new contacts, with my mentees, which has been especially useful as I have also had the opportunity to practice my language skills with them.