Improvement: Skills to Develop my Career Readiness

The concept of career readiness is based on extensive research and frames the eight areas college graduates should understand and have experience in. I believe these skills should be continuously worked on and will improve overtime. Employers look closely for these abilities and the best way to prepare yourself for your future career is through internships.

I am personally working on my fourth internship. My friends look at me crazy when I explain to them my choice to take on another, unpaid internship but I know my future-self will thank me. Through my internships I learned and grew both personally and professionally. I feel that I already have a few of these skills under my belt but there are definitely some areas that need work. Out of my current internship, I hope to improve on leadership, professionalism/work ethic and oral communication.

I’ll be the first one to admit; I am a follower, not a leader. I have been this way my whole life but leadership skills in the workplace are crucial in being successful. Although, I feel it is difficult as an intern to work on leadership skills when your essentially on the bottom of the food chain. Instead, I plan on taking on responsibilities that demonstrate my leadership qualities or taking the initiative to do things without being asked.

Another area I want to improve on is professionalism/work ethic, more specifically time workload management. I didn’t struggle with this until recently because I was never given a never-ending to-do list at my other internships. I enjoy being busy and feeling truly as an equal on the team, I’ve just never had to fight the clock as much as I am now. Between school and my internship, I never have free time anymore. I realize this is what a full-time career is, but I won’t have to balance school as well. If possible, I want to learn to do tasks faster because as a perfectionist I have a hard time “submitting” work until I am completely happy with it. I have heard “time-blocking” works, which is limiting yourself to a task for a set time. Overall, I need to make my work-life balance a priority. I need to take time for myself or I will not be able to present the best version of myself at work.

Lastly, I hope to improve on oral communication, specifically public speaking. This skill is something I have been great at avoiding for a majority of my life until I had to take a public speaking class in college. I hated every second of it and was always so nervous no matter how many power poses I did before, but in the end I am grateful I pushed myself. The only way I am going to get better at public speaking is by doing it more and more. Just today at my internship, I was taking social media pictures for an event and they made everyone go around and give their elevator pitches, including me. This is a small example of how I will be able to improve on my public speaking skills.

Through my internship experience I hope to improve my current skills while learning new ones. By the end of the semester, my leadership, professionalism/work ethic and oral communication skills will be better then they are now.