Reflective Essay On My Management And Technical Expertise At APIC College.

Question:

This report states the different stages of my learning process at APIC College where I pursued a management degree. It starts by giving a brief introduction about my past and then moves on to elaborate the skills and expertise I had possessed before joining the college.
 

Was successful in completing mine under graduation which was concerning public administration. During my undergraduate course the subjects that I had to go through ranged from sociology, law, political science, public policy, etc. Apart from the technical knowledge I was able to develop soft skills regarding managing my work and adhering to strict deadlines. I was also entrusted to work in a group environment which was a learning experience for me since those were first days of my working in a team. All these new opportunities shape my character which I feel helped me to achieve whatever I have done till today.

I also worked for some time which helped me in understanding the importance of strategic planning and budgeting. These qualities are much curtailed for any work that I pursue in the future and would give me a hand in establishing my professional life on firm footing.

Then I decide to join APIC College for a management degree since while working I understood that although having knowledge in a particular field and developing expertise to become a specialist is necessary there is also an explicit demand in the job market which expects every candidate to manage complex situations, collaborate with multiple stakeholders and have an analytical view about any topic or issue. All these prompted me to pursue a career in the management domain. The initial few days were quite hectic as I was still acclimatising with the new environment and trying to develop support systems for me in the institute. I had joined the institute with few expectations in mind which can collate as follows:

• As there would be students from diverse backgrounds, my aim was to develop an excellent cultural and social rapport with them
• Managerial and technical competencies which are of utmost importance to excel in any job were on my priority list
• After completion of the course, my wish was to join employment in the marketing or finance industry

My aim would be to correctly implement whatever knowledge I was able to gather while studying in the college in real life scenarios so that I can gain from my Management degree. With this aim, I had pursued the course in APIC college and how was able to increase the learning outcomes from the different sections of the course have been detailed in the following discussion. 

Socio-cultural and personal competencies – As per my aim and target I had classified the socio-cultural and political skills into separate buckets which were attitude, commitment, creativity & innovation, cultural empathy, leadership, learning and self-direction. In all these aspects I also thought of creating three benchmarks for me to achieve which included a set target, my performance in meeting this goal while how my peers fared in those attributes throughout the semester. I made an attempt to graphically represent these characteristics before and after the work which shows stark improvement in my competency level. A tabular commentary on each of such attribute has been given below: 

I had followed a similar methodology as already explained to gauge my managerial and technical skill on operations management. I had chosen my subjects in this domain after making a thorough analysis of my existing skills and the subjects I had already studied. Again I classified the skill sets based on several attributes which are operations design which involves execution and improvement, principles of operations management and standards, laws or regulations that are prevalent. I tried to represent the skill sets in a graphical format on the target set by me, whatever I achieved and what my peers had made. An explanation of the level of competency achieved in each of the aspects is tabulated below:

Another favourite aspect of my study in the APIC course was the marketing and business communication. It had a unique attraction for me since I was interested in pursuing a marketing job after finishing my studies. Similar to the strategy followed in the previous two cases my motive was to judge the competency level in this subject through benchmarking a target and how far I was able to achieve that goal. Peer comparison was also made since it provides a good feedback about the efficacy of my learning. The attributes related to marketing and business communication were separated into buckets namely effective communication and efficient marketing. A graphical representation of my competencies reveals that although I had faired quite well in increasing my skill level but still it was lagging behind my peers. The skills developed in these two aspects have been interpreted graphically as follows:

Financial analysis is another aspect of business studies which is critical to establish a candidate ready for the job purpose. I had adopted a technique of graphical representation to showcase my progress in these specific skill sets. I had made a benchmark reference in the charts with my performance compared with the fulfilment of the peers. The various attributes of financial management which were judged by me are financial planning & management, financial analysis and other principles of financial management. As can be observed from the graphs that I made a significant improvement in my financial skills but I still lagged behind my peers who achieved greater success in the semester. A tabular commentary on the different attributes of financial management is as follows:

Conclusion:

This report states the different stages of my learning process at APIC College where I pursued a management degree. It starts by giving a brief introduction about my past and then moves on to elaborate the skills and expertise I had possessed before joining the college. Then the work moves on classifying the different aspects of the subjects and studies I had undertaken in this course. My learning was mostly centred on my aspirations as I was able to find self-direction in this course. I had worked on several projects which had helped me in honing the skills required for a successful career in the management domain. This work explains in detail about the specific skills I have developed being a part of the course and resorts to charts or graphical representations to benchmark my learning process. Finally, this report should be viewed as a reflective essay about a candidate who has gained in managerial and technical expertise by taking a course in the APIC College.