P1,P2,P3
Unit 1 Communication & Employability Skills for IT
P1
Specific skills
Technical Knowledge
technical knowledge is that you know how to use certain programs, this would be the case in IT. For an Engineer it would be a some sort of machine for e.g. so that for example if your manager told you to do a tak on a certain program for e.g powerpoint, you would know how to use it and so that there would be no waste of time teaching you or so that you're not useleff fot that perticular job. You can show that you have this knowledge by showing you had past expierience with a perticular program.
Health and Safety
health and safety is also looked for by employers as it is a part of the law in United Kingdom. Employers especially look for health and safety certificates as it provides evidence that you are aware of your surroundings and aren't going to be negligent during work for e.g messing about with sharp objects not throwing any objects or distracting other co-workers while doing their job that could be dangerous for them. The employers usually want to the health and safety certificate if you have one.
Working attitudes
Good work attitude is essential for the work space, having a good work attitude could convince the your employer that you are a dedicated employee and that you are working on an efficient pace. This could benefit you later in your career.
General attrubutes
Time Management
Employers look for Time Management skills as it is very usefull when for e.g if the employer needs you to so a job or hand in some work on a certain time or date you will not fail and ruin they plan. This is when its for e.g sunday and you have to hand in some work on monday so you do this instead of work for tuesday. Again you could provide some evidence from previous work to show your time management skills.
Written Communication Skills
Written Communication Skills is allways looked at especially duting a job interview because makes you a better person to do written pieces of work for example reports or other pieces of work that might be essential. You could prove your skills by showing the employer your english grade or any other documents confirming previous expierience with good written communication skills.
Planning Skills
Planning skills are very important so that work and time is managed effectively in order to get work done on time and to a sufficient standard.
Orginisational skills
Organisational skills are very useful when keeping work in order otherwise you could easily loose track of important documents or misplace them Physically or electronically.
Numeracy and Creativity
Numeric skills are useful especially if the company deals with a lot of databases, records and statistics to easily work out sums or solve problems. Also Creativity skills are very important to bring new ideas, designs projects and to improve individual work.
Verbal Skills
Communication is extremly important for the employers so that they can effectively communicate with their employees so that they know what they have to do and so that they do it right.
Team Working
Employees might not be able to complete certain task on their own in some jobs unless they work in a team, sometimes others have the skills you need to complete the task and you have the ones they dont so working in a team is a good skill because it allows you to finish a task. Team Working is also essential while being a part of a large company.
Attitudes
Determined
Being Determined is a useful attitude because it pushes you to do more work and work comes easier. Also not determined employees give up on their work very easily and sometimes dont do the work they sould and not satisfy their empoloyer or not hand in the work on time.
Independant
Being independant is useful because sometimes the employee will have to undertake tasks on their own and fillow what they intuation says and do what they feel is the best for them.
integrity
Integrity will ensure employees will get even the hardest jobs done and on time. This is good because the employer feels he can depend on you which puts the employee in a better position.
Tolerance
Tolerance is necessary as workspaces very often have employees and customers with different Personality, Race, Religion or even taste of humour. For example if youre working with a hard personality customer or co worker you have to get on with work and keep a level head. employees should not argue between eachother or with the customers becuse it destroys the work atmosphere that is needed to be efficient.
Dependable
Dependable means that everyone can count on you if they have a problem with work or need help with a task and you will be able to help them allways and effevtively on an acceptable standards by the employer. This also means the employer can cound on you that you will be on time with your work and allways to a good standard.
Problem Solving
Problem solving is important so deal with problems within a task such as finding and fixing bugs for a java programmer.
Leadership
Leadership is useful in teamwork as the leader should know what job to give to who so that task gets done most eficiently so as fast as possible and to a good standard. Otherwise if anybody did anything the job would probably be wrong and take a long time to do.
Confidence and Motivation
Confidence is good because youre not shy to share your opinion or ideas. Also Motivation is important because if someone is confident and motified than they can get on with work on their own withour supervision or guidance of someone else this is useful because it allows individuals to work independantly without needing support.
P2
General Communication skills
Cultural differences
Cultular differences is what makes people from britain different from other countries, they think different things are acceptable from us or unacceptable from the British.
Adapting your voice and terminology
Adaptation and terminology is to behave and speak so that people dont think youre crazy and so that they understand you.
Use of technology to engage an audience and question and answering
Typically when a person is speaking to a large group of people they use a slideshow on a big screen, wall or whatever background and a projector over the back of a speech this is what is meant by use of technology instead of jsut talking. Engaging the audience means to make the audience aware of what you are saying and making sure they dont get bored. Doing something like including a joke in your speech will capture your audience attention. A good way to engage audience is also to ask them questions, random audiences. relative to the subject youre taljking about./
Interpersonal skills
Verbal exchanges
Verbal exchanges is when you speak with someone face to face via speech.
Signing
Sign language is a way to communicate with people that are deaf and cant hear at all. This is when you make different signs with your hands and faces to express a certain meaning so taht the deaf person can understand you.
Lip reading
Lip reading is used by people with hearing difficulties or deaf people to understand what people that are communicating with them are saying.
Body Language
Body language can tell you how somebody feels and their feelings also in a face to face conversation. It is often sub consciously done.for egsample when someone is frustrated they will throw their hand about moaning about something.
Use of initiation
Intonation means that speaking fast and loud or shouting can make an effect of nervous atmosphere and speaking calmly and moderate makes a relaxed and nice chat.
Positive and negative language
Positive language sends positive signals to the audience which encorages them to take part in the discussion and reinforces positive emotions its helpful for further discussion. Negative language could take away the courage to take part in the discusion from the audience and also it could cause the audience to not pay attention.
Active engagement
Active engagement means to involve the audience in the conversation so they dont just sit there disinterested.
Communicate in writing
Use of emoticons
Emoticons are used to show the person you are chatting with, how you feel for example laugh with tears emoticon to show that it was so funny that you cried.
Letters
Letters are messages like emails but written on paper and send by post often used when someone has no internet access or its more of a formal message that should be kept safe.
Fax
A fax machine is used to send a message to another fax machine by scanning a physical letter and the fax that recieves it prints it out.
emails
Emails are messages like letters but you recieve them instantly, you can read them any time because they will stay in your inbox and after being read they save in your read emails. This is useful when you are sending a message to someone in another timezone.
spelling and grammar
Spelling is important ebcause sometimes if you miss spell something it could mean something else, if you keep to miss spell, you could even get a different point across from what you wanted to say. Grammar is important because it would make the job a lot easier for the reader by not getting distracted by your grammar and also it shows your professionalism when you use correct grammar.
relevance
Relevance means to be relevant to a point for example if you start writing a raport for your manager you dont go off task and talk about what you did last weekend.
Proof reading and note taking
Proofreading means to check if you coverd everything you wanted to talk about and also for spelling and grammar so that you look professional. Notetaking means to write what someone is saying or if something is happening in brief words for ytourself to read and develop later.
P3
Background noise distractions
Background noise are sounds that are made for example by a hoover if you work in an office and cant concentrate.
Physical barriers
An example would be for example when you're presenting a slideshow to a group of audience and your phone goes off, this makes you loose confidence or make your peers loose respect to you.
Lack of concentration
Lack of concentration is when you cant reamin focused on a task for example play on games instead of do an assignment.
Location
This could cause trouble if for example you suddenly have work to do from boss that is necessary but youre on holiday in some exotic place where you dont have phone signal or internet.
Any others you can think of
Disabilities-if youre deaf or cant speak and have to use sign language and someone else cant.
Language difficulties for example when youre from another country and cant understand some words.
Language difficulties for example when youre from another country and cant understand some words.