Powerful Presentation Skills

Thanks to Che Lah, now everyone is aware that Sabrina, she has an American accent! :D

Well I'm not sure that I do but I do know that my English is a little bit different and it will only be different when I am actually nervous. When I am totally calm, trust me my English is somewhat very normal :)

Because Che Lah is so just so fun to be around with, I enjoyed his and Puan Rusilawati class a lot! I do believe it is essential for us to have this presentation skills because HELLOOOO PRESENTATION?! Very common; during our studies and also in working life later.  Nail this skill and what you want is, what you will get.

So if the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology is DNA--->RNA--->Protien,
the Central Dogma of a Powerful Presentation is Knowledge--->Confidence--->Enthusiasm.
If you have the knowledge on the topic that you will present, you will gain the confidence to talk about it and when you confidently know all this wonderful thing of the topic, then you definitely will be enthusiastic to share this information will the rest of the world! No? :)  I know I would.

So there are three major components of presentation skills - strategy, substance and style.
1) Strategy - Planning ahead for the event and positioning our self to take advantage of all the possible opportunities and to overcome any of the potential problem
2) Style - Developing our verbal and non-verbal skills to communicate our own way
3) Substance - Knowing your topic dearly at heart at least one point.

So my group and I presented on Eco-fashion. We choose this topic becuase it sounds COOL :D
And since Donald Trump said that "You never get a second chance to make a first impression", we started of our presentation with a fashion runway to grab our audience attention. I think it worked, hihi. I have learned a lot from everyone group presentation, most important I learned that a very versatile speaker can make any topic interesting and a very dull speaker will kill any topic, even the most fun topic ever.

So hopefully by the end of this communication course, I will be the most versatile speaker I can ever be.


"There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave."
-- Dale Carnegi, an Amercan writer and lecturer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training public speaking and interpersonal skills.

Dear Mr Carnegi, that is so true! 

Effective Resume and Cover Letter

And people say: The resume get you the interview ,the interview get you the job.

So today Madam Liza and Madam Farah share with us some few tips in constructing an effective resume. But what caught my attention the most is the Employer Recruiting process, which goes like this:

1) Look for someone inside the organization
2) Rely on networking and contacts and personal recommendations
3) Hire an employment agency
4) Review unsolicited resumes
5) Place a newspaper ad.

It seems as a Fresh Graduate it will be a little bit of a challenge to get a job since we usually depend on the last three to seek a job. However the list pretty much make sense. Of course if you have someone already in the organization that can be promoted, it is better to promote that person who's performance is already well-known rather than hiring a new employee and having the risk that he is unreliable, no? And it is also less risky to hire someone who is recommended than a unknown person. But it is just unfair for those who are actually qualified but does not have any contact, what would happen to him or her then? If you are not born with a silver in your mouth than you just have to work your way up! Do some networking! That is why I always attend career fair to make some contact here and there, and I also see BeST Programme as a stepping stone to start some influential networking. I do hope all of us in this programme will make full use of it.

I truly felt very content when Madam Liza asked all of us to list down our achievements. I just realized that I actually have gain a lot and have a lot to offer the world. The tips to play around with words, the adjective that represents us made a lot of difference in portraying oneself. Champion of  dot dot dot is better than Won first place dot dot dot..no? Champion sounds greater and stronger. I'm so ready to use the synonym application on Microsoft Word to help me built an elevated resume!
 
Sometimes I do wish that Malaysia is not so discriminate in the job hiring process. In US, resumes are only 1 page long with all the same essential details as a Malaysian resume but each resume is more tailored to a specific job that you only include relevant experiences to that resume. Therefore, the resume look more focus for that job. And a US resume also omits all the details that can be discriminate against someone such as physical appearance, their race, religion, gender and also marital status. It's just sad to know that the most important part of a Malaysia resume will be the picture. The picture?! Aiyaaa. It is just wrong to JUST judge someone based on their picture. Can they not use a picture to firstly judge someone? If I may use some bahasa pasar "What to do, masuk kandang kambing kita kena mengembeklah, masuk kandang lembu kita kena mengemoo lah..mooo.." 

So dear hiring managers,
Is my picture attractive enough? No?! Owh gosh there goes my new elevated resume down the bin.

" In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing - antihumanism". -
Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman to win a seat in the United States Congress, 1924.

Conducting Effective Meeting

I was just super impressed with our instructor today, Assoc. Prof. Mohd Khir Ashari. He actually successfully made me thought about starting a career as a Company Secretary! He made it seem as being a Company Secretary as all glamorous. I even talk about it with my mother on our back home! :D But again, a glamorous life is not what I seek for, well sometimes I do want that life, but most of the time I prefer to be working on something that can actually contribute the society directly. I am super confuse with myself sometimes and I am very grateful that I entered this programme, it let me venture, seeing things out of my normal perspective.

So today we learn the concept of conducting an effective meeting, Everything was very general that is was easy to follow. The concept we learn today may not only be apply in a company meeting but also in a society that we are or will be involved in and also in family meeting. Time is gold and as we went through the course today, I keep on remembering the long hours of meeting that I had with my society back in high school to my university, were meeting were generally long and without a concrete conclusion. So if I were to rewind everything back with the knowledge I gain today, I believe that each society that I joined would have a better organization and we would have not faced some ridiculous outcome from a meeting, just becuase we decided that a meeting is where we need to express everything we are not satisfied with. An agenda planned before a meeting, I believe is very important to make sure that everyone is not only prepared with what they have to say but also to keep everyone focus. I absolutely agree 100 % with our instructor that we definitely should not add in 'dll - dan lain-lain' in an agenda of a meeting.

Looking forward to apply everything I've learn today for future use! I'll keep all the notes close to me :)

And thought to ponder for today:

 "People who enjoys meetings should not be in charge of anything"

Thomas Sowell, American Writer and Economists