ACADEMIC AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Introduction

As a graduate securing a purely formed career is an essential element that is considered immediately after school. It would be necessary to critically analyze the job requirements and determine how suitable I will fit the criteria. To ensure a high percentage in matching the job description, one has to develop and keenly identify weaknesses and strengths (Small et al., 2018); this would increase the rate at which employee would choose me amidst other competitors.

For this report, I will consider an in-depth analysis of employability based on the published literature and establish how best I fit the requirements within strict Poland’s employability framework as an IT engineer to develop new designs that suit customer satisfaction. I would then outline my career path and a development plan to help me achieve my subject goals.

Literature review of employability

It has been on record by authors such as Artess et al. (2017) that defined employability as a set of allocations, skills, proficiency, and the probability of one being chosen by employees based on their capabilities and advances their career to make them contribute mainly to the economic development. The definition is similar to that given by the confederation of British industry that also backs it up and suggests that individual skills are considered in the labor market to make one to be selected for a job.

First-class qualification graduates are more selected for a position. Nevertheless, a reasonable degree will make one secure a good graduate, it is the skills that helps one keep their status, and other external factors are taken into account when recruitment is done.

Employability has been changed depending on the competency and qualities that meet the required standards that they can give in workplaces. For quite some time, paper qualification has not been the top priority for many companies while recruiting graduates. As per my case, Poland, to be more specific, marketing manager required by Raffles, is not based on educational qualification but work experience and individual personality. Therefore, a graduate must consider how to perceive employability at their level and the confidence in acquiring a new employer.

It is also worth noting that industries and countries have different means of making their priorities while hiring graduates. For instance, research given by Suswanto et al. (2018) has shown it clear that third world countries take into consideration academic qualification, which is not the case in other countries such as Poland, as quoted by Gedye (2018). It is also clear that requirements for a particular job position vary from time to time, depending on the level.

For the 21^st century, the work environment is on rapid change, and so are the skills required by employers. In a CBI report, employers gave their point on what kind of skills they need in the actual field, which came out clear that one has to have transferable skills. These skills include; technical, basic academics, thinking levels that incapacitate problem-solving, self-assessment skills, social characters, and a personal view towards a particular choice.

From the presented literature, it was evident that employability is a combination of “employ” and “ability” that has been one of the employers’ most significant concerns. Graduates henceforth have the mandate to research what is required of them before getting into any industry. They may handle this through connections and regular field reports of the actual market analysis. A university degree is not the only way out; it develops through experiences and competencies that will guarantee a future in securing a job.

Market place for graduate employment in Poland

In Poland, the graduates’ job market is not as systematic as other countries’ employment patterns. This has been attributed to the continuous growth of sectors, securing a job position, and relevancy of the employee’s skills. With all this, one is fully prepared to secure a place at any level, whether competitive or interested in following the trends (Zając, 2018).

Source: the University of Leeds, career center. https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/working-abroad/work-in-poland

From the data given, some sectors have been registering growth in terms of graduate vacancies as employers have started growing their operations to accommodate graduate recruitment. The general notion that the graduate job market is still on the reduction is based on the decline of 2 major graduate employment sectors: accounting and Banking.

Graduate salaries are still expected to be constant at $26500 based on the job sector. Recent research has shown that 35% of graduate vacancies are attributed to large companies based in Poland. In this regard, graduates must make proper plans into the market trend to establish job requirements and skills. One has to have great work of their commercial awareness of all targeted companies offering a job of their desire to have a realistic impression of the job. One also has the mandate to know the skills and competency values required by employers.

Construction has the highest demand in vacancies within Poland as the country is moving towards an innovative hub. In Poland, the overall graduate market is on the rise by 1.6% since 2016 as most of them give their channels and network for recruitment for the campus. These companies are taking new approaches to students, for example, by using social media platforms such as LinkedIn, roadshows, and many other means. To bypass all this, graduates have to understand any industry they are planning to enter and those they have no interest in. This general knowledge will help them attain the desired position they want.

My career path is informed by work and adjustment theory.

Career development is a lifetime show that has its main focus on seeking and processing relevant information. It may be an individual’s movement through space and time, or it may be the pattern of people’s occupation throughout their working journey. Theories and models have been developed in aid of one making a distinct choice. After graduation, my target job is to be a known marketing manager in a well-known company within Rajasthan.

My target job is more like an organization as it is geared towards befitting an organization as they have their employees as their resources through the human resource (Pinto and Ramalheira, 2017). Managerial careers are more traditional, where an individual career lies in the same organization. Based on the work adjustment theory, a person’s ability is matched with an organization’s requirements that are inconsistent with my career plans geared by enhancing my engineering firms’ skills and later developing my own IT firm.

Having built my IT experience as a customer support system, I would transfer to the same industry with a higher rank, not as a support system assistant but as a full manager. My future career plan is transitional. I plan to expand my marketing knowledge and have a firm’s experiences in the same or similar industries that lead to crossing industrial boundaries.

My career at Raffles will be a journey to obtain the highest position attainable under my employed career. Most career destinations have to be based on evidence, such as getting a higher organizational hierarchy (Managers and CEOs). Still, it is noted that non-tangible goals are also recognized as part of the career journey (Zając, 2018). For my scenario, my career path is that of gaining knowledge and experiences that will help me run my own business.

At Raffles, I will have the opportunity to develop a good network with team members, managers, and clients that will allow my network to grow globally. Colleagues networking will allow me to improve my expertise area in management.

Even though most of Poland’s workforce is in the service sector, such as chemical, mining, food processing, iron and steel, glass, and textiles require more workers, which shows how plenty of jobs are available for graduates. The country is home to successful startups such as live Chats, among others. With this entire in mind, I consider the skills required by Amazon that are highlighted in this report (Crossman, 2017). This process applies to my career path as I gear towards other organizations before I venture into entrepreneurship, considering that Poland’s graduate employment economy has not changed over the years. Part 2 of this report will evaluate my suitability of matching Amazon’s employment requirements based on my personality and attributes as an IT support technician within their company structure.

2.0	The chosen graduate-level job target
Job title:	Marketing manager
Name of the company:	Raffles
The country where the job is based:	Rajasthan
Purpose of the job:	At Raffles, customer satisfaction is one of the tops priorities. The chosen candidate is to provide 1st support service to ensure all its equipment and infrastructure will be running to their optimal performance level. All departments KPI and SLA are met on the home site and remote sites that the team supports. The following obligations are set:- Develop a public relations program for a hotel based on marketing goals. Liaise with marketing in targeting specific markets to develop good public relations to help reach these markets.Develop good media contact, plan for the press and other press activities.Develop and organize promotional activities, coordinate with concerned departments, invite VIPS and media to promote activities, and issue press releases.Establish sales from magazines, newspapers, and other personal contacts.Disseminate corporate press releases to appropriate local trade and consumer media.Establish a program to send out promotional news regularly.Provide information to other departments on activities within and outside the organization.Maintaining clipping files about hotels based on media’s daily perusal and providing the same to the general manager as appropriate.Build a profile within the local market place through attendance at various events and local market place.Liaise with human resource manager on matters affecting corporate image.CoordinateCoordinate guest lists and invitations for VIP receptions, dinners, etc.Maintain good public relations by extending personalized service to VIPs.
Job requirements:	Being a global market place for Hotel services, Raffles has standard requirements for those willing to be employed by the company to form part of their working task force: Basic requirements Strong leadership, interpersonal and training skills.Good communication and customer contact skills.Service-oriented with an eye for details.Ability to work well in stressful and high-pressure situations.A team player and builder.A motivator and self-starter.

2.1	Self-assessment of skills and abilities against the companies expectations
Skills required by Raffles	How I meet/reach the skills
	Strong leadership, interpersonal and training skills	I have headed several hotel management positions within the hospitality industry. The experience that I have from these organizations has shaped me to have good leadership skills.
	Good communication and customer contact skills	Attended part time training seminar to fulfill healthy communication through mentorship, and I have a certificate in customer relation skills. The training will help enhance my communication and improve my skills in negotiation.
	Service-oriented with an eye for details.	Through negotiating with several clients within the industry, I am geared towards giving the best services at every position I hold at all levels, from subordinate to managerial positions.
	Ability to work well in stressful and high-pressure situations	Before my internship at Brainly, I was employed in a supermarket as a customer care service provider that allowed me to multi-task by offering different after-sales services to customers and support. Supermarkets being a fast-paced working environment, made me develop a good idea of operating within a fast-moving environment, not forgetting offering first-class quality towards customer satisfaction.
	Team player and builder	Being employed in a fast moving environment, such as a supermarket, has to combine experience and team contribution to meet customer satisfaction. I then believe I have developed the useful ability to help build the people we work with at all ranks and levels.
	Motivator and self-starter	I previously attended mentoring programs that help me to be a self-motivated and results-driven individual. I would gladly say I operate in any environment presented to me to meet the required targets within the stipulated time frame.

2.2

Ten-year career plan

After my graduation, my greatest intention is to apply for a job. I would build my career and undergo a self-development for the next five years in Raffles before acquiring a new firm at a new level. I will enroll in my master’s course that I haven’t decided on during this development. To set my plan in progress, all my applications are sent to various targeted universities, with several of them having accepted and gave me an offer while I have not yet made up my mind. I plan to enter into a multinational company in any MBA (Masters of business administration) that will help me handle complex business problems of any firm to be a business manager in both public and private sectors. Under normal circumstances, post-graduate studies take 12 months that is further sub-divided into three parts. During the holiday breaks, I will attend various business project planning’s within the company that involves brainstorming voluntarily. These joint training sessions further give guidance about developing creative skills, preparing for multiple case studies related to entrepreneurial skills. I will be aiming to start my own business and all its legal procedures and undertake other online short courses in advanced management skills. I will then attend various career fairs to understand the job market better and take a more in-depth consultation with companies to get into the more profound meaning of multiple firms’ skills and abilities. This intensive period will decide on my dissertation topic and start my extensive research for my post-graduate graduation (Savickas, 2018). Being an introversion person, I will first have to pick what I like before having it undertaken. With everything falling into place, I will be done with my education by 2022. I will fully be back for a job hunt for a new organizational post as I still maintain my marketing manager position at Raffles. Working at a globally e-commerce firm requires in-depth management knowledge and technological innovation that is in constant improvements rapidly and staying up to date with the current emergence of other competitor firms (Harrison, 2018). With the current challenges that technology presents to our daily life, essential skills are not only needed for the next ten years of my career but until my retirement, and it all has to make me be a quick learner that will make me keep up with the latest data and give more immediate solutions required at any time.

2.3

Conclusions and areas for further development

With all these highlights and based on Bughin (2018), I am fully aware of my weaknesses and strengths that allows me to take advantages for better results with development areas highlighted as below: I have poor verbal communication that I will improve through discussions and presentations to help me boos up my level of confidence and improve my team working skills. I have reluctance in rejecting tasks imposed on me due to work overload that I have been involved in over the past years that may lead to poor outcomes. However, for a more productive team to prosper, various team roles are needed to gear up any process. I am aware that I can reject or delegate tasks through the use of perfection and achievements of attaining results. Generally, all these processes have set my career journey towards self-development in the right direction. Henceforth, writing this report has made me have newer interaction with literature analysis and an in-depth understanding of employability based on developing a good knowledge of my career and abilities, even if some were not relevant or included in this report’s final presentation.

References

2021. [online] Available at: <https://www.wizbii.com/company/amazon/job/it-support-engineer-111588#layout-main> [Accessed 14 January 2021].

Artess, J., Mellors-Bourne, R., & Hooley, T. (2017). Employability: A review of the literature 2012-2016.

Bughin, J., Hazan, E., Lund, S., Dahlström, P., Wiesinger, A., & Subramaniam, A. (2018). Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce. McKinsey Global Institute. Retrieved on, 10.

Crossman, H. A. (2017). Awareness of the public versus private accounting divide and its impact on accounting students’ career path preference. Accounting Education, 26(4), 392-409.

Gedye, S., & Beaumont, E. (2018). “The ability to get a job”: student understandings and definitions of employability. Education+ Training.

Harrison, G. (2018). Sonographer workforce developments. Synergy News, 12-13.

Pinto, L. H., & Ramalheira, D. C. (2017). Perceived employability of business graduates: The effect of academic performance and extracurricular activities. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 99, 165-178.

Savickas, S. (2018). Review of Career Development & Planning: A Comprehensive Approach. Journal of employment counseling, 55(1), 41-43.

Small, L., Shacklock, K., & Marchant, T. (2018). Employability: a contemporary review for higher education stakeholders. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 70(1), 148-166.

Susanto, H., Mursyidun Nidhom, A., Bagus Nur Rahma Putra, A., Saleh Ahmar, A., Smaragdina, A. A., Cahyono Putro, S., & Wibawanto, S. (2018, April). Development of Mobile Academic Exhibition Information System to Support Achievement of Job Hiring Graduate Vocational High School. In J. Phys. Conf. Ser (Vol. 1028, No. 1).

Zając, T., Jasiński, M., & Bożykowski, M. (2018). Early careers of tertiary graduates in Poland: Employability, earnings, and differences between public and private higher education. Polish Sociological Review, (202), 187-208.

  Do you need high quality Custom Essay Writing Services?