Importance Of Employability Portfolios For Graduates And Developing Professional Skills

Students are required to submit a Employability portfolio plus appendecies and arte- facts. Well-constructed sentences and paragraphs are required. Headings that indicate each of the numbered sections in the Employability portfolio are expected. Please write in third person. So instead of saying ’I’ you can say ’the student’ or ’the graduate’ or something similar.

The following tasks should be completed:

1.Select a specific role that you would feel qualified to pursue when you complete your degree. The career I have chosen is Human resource Assistant.

‘2. Research and outline the following aspects of this graduate role:

a) Expected task requirements and responsibilities as described in the advertisement of the role you feel you would be qualified when you complete your degree.

b) Describe the knowledge, skills and abilities that are required for the role and then classify these as ‘Graduate Employability Skills’ see Graduate Careers Australia, 2015: 21 – refer to Employability models lecture week 2.(lecture slides attached in supporting notes)

3.Select one of the elements from the DOTS model (Law and Watts, 1977 cited in Dacre Pool and Sewell (2007). NB: refer to the lecture pod and power point slides in week 2for information about this framework. How you would demonstrate to a prospective graduate employer your level of proficiency in this element? Provide examples of how youare proficient. In what areas are you not proficient?

4.Baseduponthe assessment in 4. above, critique the usefulness of the element you have selected of the DOTS model (Law and Watts, 1977 cited in Dacre Pool and Sewell(2007) in terms of its ability to assist you to evaluate your employability for when you graduate.

5.Constructpartof a Personal Development Plan. This plan should consider the development you feel is required for you to achieve proficiency in the Graduate EmployabilitySkills, as described in 2 for your graduate role. Select one goal from this development and write it as a SMART goal then construct this into a Personal Development Plan usingthe format provided in Gallagher (2010: 51) see lecture week 6. Place this in the appendix. (lecture slides attached in supporting notes)

Overview of job role of assistant human resource

Portfolios for employability are effective tools for guiding a graduate towards achieving essential career goals. There are many essential factors that can affect the professional goals of a person. Hence, it becomes important that an individual weighs his/her important skills and their significance towards realizing future developmental opportunities in a given work. A portfolio is important for both a job aspiring graduate and an organization. The graduate can present the essential skills and employability mindset he/she possesses and the organization can select the most eligible candidate based on the portfolio. It is also an essential platform for showing one’s effective professional skills.

The graduate wants to take up the job role of assistant HR in the future. According to the advertisement, the employee much possess experience in SAP-PH1. The company is engaged in operations in the constructions business. The hiring is for a location in Sydney. The job roles will require the candidate to organize meetings, both internal and external. Checking the conducts of employees for adherence to procedures (Stone and Stone 2013). The HR assistant also has to take part in maintenance and update of procedure files. Managing HR officers and supervising the functional operations of the HR department is a much important requirement. Maintenance of marketing budgets and liaising across the various levels is much important for the job role (Peet 2016). The assistant HR is also required to maintain timely reports. However, these are not the complete requirement and there are other extra roles that the job position might require.

The knowledge and skills required will have to be integrated with effective multitasking abilities. The role requires the graduate to have strong HR experience. The graduate is much inclined towards managing people. The graduate also has effective communication skills that will help him to effectively carry out his roles as an HR assistant. The graduate has performed well in co-curricular activities. Especially in team roles the person was very active and thrived due to his coordinating abilities. This will make sure that he will be an efficient team worker.

The DOTS model focuses on some essential aspects of development concerning the career path of an individual. The crucial aspects of the model are pointed towards achieving crucial future goals for the graduate. One of the crucial elements of the model is Self-awareness. This is a much important ability as the rest of the professional journey of the graduate will essentially depend on this element (Taber and Blankemeyer, 2015). Self-awareness is an important criteria and it includes abilities such as understanding ones essential strengths and weaknesses, ability to develop self-improvement paths and effectively utilizing the skills generated (Dacre Pool and Sewell 2007). The other crucial factors that govern this model are decision making, awareness of opportunities and transit learning.

The DOTS model and its significance in professional development

It is important to study and get a degree with regard to the job role that a graduate must pursue in the future. Then there are other elements such as career, work or life experience, emotional intelligence and essential required skills. The graduate is proficient in the aspect of self-awareness and naturally this helps in effective decision making (Plant 2014). The graduate however has significant limitations when it comes to opportunity awareness. This is due to the fact that lesser experience in the HR field has not given enough exposure to be able to understand larger opportunities. This also creates an essential limitations with regards to transitional learning. However, the self-awareness and decision making efficiency of the person can be effectively used towards overcoming these limitations (McCash 2006). This is mainly because as the graduate will continue to grow with regards to the profession the exposure that he is bound to get will provide him with excellent growth opportunities. The graduate is a quick learner and is aware of the general aspects that tend to govern the essential job roles of an HR. The thing that is mostly required at the moment is a bit of more exposure. The graduate can use his self-awareness potential to optimize his abilities towards achieving significant employability goals. With time his limitations in opportunity awareness and transitional learning can be effectively tackled (Creed and Hood 2014).

The aspect that has been identified as a positive strength of the graduate with regards to the DOTS model is self-awareness (Dacre Pool and Sewell 2007). It is much important for the all-round development of the graduate that this essential capability is optimized. Self-awareness is a very important criteria with regards to effective professional development. It helps people to develop a confident approach towards gaining their crucial organizational and life goals. Self-awareness means being confident about the capabilities and weakness that are possessed by an individual. It is important to develop high levels of self-awareness as according to the model, it is the very basic step that helps in the achievement of the other three essential elements that govern employability levels within individuals (Sultana 2013). The other key steps are opportunity analysis, decision making and transition learning.

In order to achieve significant progress with regards to the other three essential developmental areas being significantly self-aware is much required. This is mostly due to the fact that as the foundation to effective employment growth self-awareness guides the initial perceptions of the individual (Plant 2014). Self-awareness can be said to be the essential step towards optimal career development. It guides the way the graduate will perceive the path he has to travel in order to gain optimal development in his career. As an example it can be said that the job profile being considered for the study is that of assistant human resource. It is very important that the HR manager effectively handles all the essential job roles that are assigned to him (Waheed and Zaim 2015). The job role requires, just like most other roles, a person to know the strength and the limitations that he has hence it becomes important that by becoming self-aware a person efficiently carries out his roles and achieve significant goals. The quality of self-awareness thus, has the essential elements within it to guide the entire career endeavor of the individual. The graduate can improve his skills with regards to transitional learning through the help of greater self-realization. Moreover, experience can help the graduate to understand opportunities and capture them in better ways.

The importance of self-awareness

The graduate needs to achieve significant goals in order to realize his full potential in regards to the job role of the HR assistant. The aspirations of the graduate are high and this essentially means that effective strategies need to be formed in order to address the crucial career related challenges. It is easy to say what the strengths and weaknesses of individuals are with regards to employability. It is important that the motivation, skill, knowledge and capability oriented factors are considered in accordance with their technical requirements (Boxman and Flap 2017). It is essential that the graduate develops systematic growth paths in order to effectively tackle the challenges that come in the way of becoming a human resource assistant.

The tools that will have be used is a SMART approach tool. This is important towards the creation of significant goals and progress paths to efficiently achieving the objectives. Since the role of an HR manager requires the candidate to manage more than one job functions, it is important that the candidate creates good SMART goals that are significantly achievable (Renn et al., 2014). The graduate is at certain times outgoing and at other times somewhat introvert. Thus, the graduate needs to develop the crucial goals considering how he will interact with the team members and other people that he will either have to work with or report to. The SMART goals will be provided later on in order to understand the greater significance of the same in the professional developmental life of the graduate. The goals have to incorporate effective communication with peers, subordinates and managers (Hirschi, Herrmann and Keller, 2015). The developmental plan will be extremely necessary as it will require proper planning that is also feasible to implement. Implementation feasibility can ensure that the development plan can be effectively utilized at the ground level. It is much important that the plan incorporates the essential objective of the job role of the HR assistant.

Conclusion

The graduate has been able to understand the significance of career goals and job oriented developmental plans due to the portfolio. The graduate has identified the crucial areas that will have to be focused in order to be a successful HR assistant. The requirement of the HR organization pointed out towards the exact job roles that the graduate has to manage in order to be efficient is in the role of an HR assistant. It is essentially realized that the job role is multifaceted. The candidate is to manage roles that will require high levels of organization skills and effective levels of communication. The DOTS model has pointed towards the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate. Self-awareness was identified as a crucial strength and opportunity awareness was a significant weakness. The candidate has a character that is sometimes extrovert and at other times introvert. Hence, it was understood that a certain level of communicational efficiency is required for the development. The formation of SMART goals can help in the effective achievement of future goals. The candidate is poised towards better future development if the development plan can be effectively incorporated.

References

Boxman, E. and Flap, H., 2017. Getting started: the influence of social capital on the start of the occupational career. In Social capital (pp. 159-181). Routledge.

Creed, P.A. and Hood, M., 2014. Disengaging from unattainable career goals and reengaging in more achievable ones. Journal of career Development, 41(1), pp.24-42.

Dacre Pool, L. and Sewell, P., 2007. The key to employability: developing a practical model of graduate employability. Education+ Training, 49(4), pp.277-289.

Hirschi, A., Herrmann, A. and Keller, A.C., 2015. Career adaptivity, adaptability, and adapting: A conceptual and empirical investigation. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 87, pp.1-10.

McCash, P., 2006. We're all career researchers now: breaking open career education and DOTS. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 34(4), pp.429-449.

Peet, M.R., 2016. Transforming students' beliefs: Developing employability skills and generative identities through the Integrative Knowledge Portfolio Process. Journal of Transformative Learning, 3(2), pp.15-36.

Plant, P., 2014. Beyond DOTS: Theory and model development. Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling, 33(1), pp.44-48.

Renn, R.W., Steinbauer, R., Taylor, R. and Detwiler, D., 2014. School-to-work transition: Mentor career support and student career planning, job search intentions, and self-defeating job search behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 85(3), pp.422-432.

Stone, R.J. and Stone, R.J., 2013. Managing human resources. John Wiley and Sons.

Sultana, R.G., 2013. Career management skills: Assessing for learning. Australian Journal of Career Development, 22(2), pp.82-90.

Taber, B.J. and Blankemeyer, M., 2015. Future work self and career adaptability in the prediction of proactive career behaviors. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 86, pp.20-27.

Waheed, S. and Zaim, A.H., 2015. A model for talent management and career planning. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 15(5), pp.1205-1213.