My Work Placement
CATH KIDSTON
Transferable Skills
Overall my work experience has helped me to develop transferable business skills which will help and relate to my career in the future. The placement has allowed me to become my business aware and learn about progresses and operations that are needed within a business. I have seen which products sell well and which products don't as well which will help with my career in merchandising or other areas on retail. I have developed my decision making skills in general by helping and serving customer also when carrying out tasks such as visual merchandising, this will help me in the future when i need to make bigger decisions in my work and relating to my career. Problem solving is another transferable business skill which i have developed during my placement especially through visual merchandising, i often had to decide what products to use, if the chosen product was out of stock.
I also developed problem solving when dealing with unhappy customers and issues relating to this. This skill will need to be continued to be developing through different situations and will help in career. I will often need to solve problems during my working life. My work placement has helped me to become more organised when being given many tasks to carry out. I learnt to prioritise tasks and listen to instructions and write them down to ensure i membered the tasks. Improving my organisational skills will help relate to my career as i will need to ensure i am organised to ensure tasks are completed to the best of my ability and within the time scale. I have developed my verbal communication skills through working within a new team, speaking to customers and dealing with customers & other branches over the phone.This will react to my career as i will need to be able to interact with all types and amounts of people in different roles. Also i have developed my written communication and ICT literacy through assisting with sending emails and writing reports & updates during my work placement, i received guideline and feedback while writing these. This has allowed me to improve and develop, which will relate to my career in the future as i will need these skills in many aspects of my career. During my work experience i have had to plan many aspects such as tasks and displays when carrying out visual merchandising.This skill will need to be continued to be developed and relates to my career as i will need to plan to achieve things. Overall I have developed many transferable skills which will assist and relate to my career.
I was able to develop my verbal communication and written communication slightly on my work placement due to interaction with staff, customers and over the phone. I was able to practice basis verbal communication and written communication however i will need to continue to develop this especially within and in front of groups to help me within my career. My team working skills have largely improved during my time at Cath Kidston as i was working within a team environment for the weeks and had to establish my role within the team quickly. I was able to learn team working skills and how to interact with other members all the time. I will be able to build on the skills i have learnt in the coming years to assist me in my career. I was only able to practice my ICT literacy skills slightly during my time on my work placement as there was limited opportunities for this. This skill however can be developed during other opportunities. I was able to develop my negotiating skills slightly during my work placement when dealing with customers and when convincing other stores to send us items. This was a positive experience as i had not experienced this largely before and I can now build on these skills and apply them in different environment.
To conclude
Overall i have improved in many different areas and skills as well as learning how a different type of retailing environment works however i will need to continue to develop in some areas as i did not have a chance to largely improve in all areas.