D3
Evaluate your development of transferable business skills
Evaluate own development of transferable business skills. Reflect on your mind-map for P5 and your work placement (development of transferable business skills). Evaluate how your work placement has enabled you to develop transferable business skills.
Before work placement, I intended to develop transferable business skills by; learning about the role and the department I would be working in in depth; learning about the company, their structure and the systems that they use; communicating frequently with the team so that relationships can be built and so that my time there is used to its full advantage; creating good relationships with my employers so that opportunities may be open to me; getting involved in every task and opportunity available to me; asking frequent questions in order to find out the information I need and by showing my talents and skills in any creative task given to me so that my skills can be developed further within my time working with them. I do feel that i was able to demonstrate my transferable to skills to my employers when on my work placement. Even more so because Lipsy is sister brand to Next, the systems and procedures they use are the same and this meant that I had a very high level of understanding already. This was very much an advantage to me as It meant that i could contribute effectively to discussions with the team and made me feel more comfortable in the tasks I was doing. I was able to show all of my transferable skills that working at Next has given me but I was also able to show the transferable skills that I planned to. I created good relationships with the team by communicating with them frequently and have been given details to contact when I see a position I am interested and also for them to have my CV and candidate profile on their system. I definitely got involved with any job given to me and was able to demonstrate my initiative and creativity. I asked lots of questions while I was there too and found out lots of information about the company, the department I was working in and their roles and the structure of the business.
I feel that I performed to the best I could over my work placement. My knowledge, skills and experience from FRA and working at Next gave me an advantage in my role, this showed in the tasks I undertook. I was enthusiastic towards all tasks and enjoyed working with the team. Out of all the tasks that I did during the placement, I feel that assisting the Visual Merchandising Manager and the team in White City to change their windows to the new Christmas Scheme and independently leading the team in Bluewater to do the same; independently publishing the company’s weekly bulletin out to Head Office staff and stores and presenting my Comp Shop to the Retail Operations team were where I performed my best and was the most able to develop/demonstrate my skills during the 3 weeks.
Although I feel this went well overall, I could have improved my experience by trying to get more involved with the Visual Merchandising side of the Retail Operations team while in the office environment. However, I was very happy having the combination of both and I was still able to be creative and show those skills within some of the tasks I was set.
I developed my transferable business skills over the course of my placement by getting involved in every task that I could. Overall, I feel that this work placement has developed my skills in terms of communication, presentation, public speaking, excel, visual merchandising and team work. I have also developed my skills enough within the company to feel comfortable there if I applied for a job either in store or in Head Office. I was able to develop my skills due to the team and company I was working with and the tasks they gave me. Being able to create the windows for the White City store really enhanced my Visual Merchandising skills to a more practical and physical level and being able to work alongside with some of the store staff while doing this inspired me to ask my Store Manager if she could arrange for me to help the VM team with the windows next season.