GLASGOW HUB ASSISTANT, SHELTER SCOTLAND: Understanding and communicating with our clientsIn July 2018, I joined the Glasgow Hub for Shelter Scotland as a Hub Assistant Volunteer, where I was to interview drop-in clients. I had volunteered with Shelter for almost a year previously in Edinburgh and had sat in on various client interviews, which meant I was familiar with the paperwork and procedure, but not with the interpersonal aspect of meeting with a client. In particular, I struggled with perceiving what areas to press more in order to gain all the relevant information, and with emotional resilience against hearing about difficult situations and dealing with more challenging clients. My first independent client interview was therefore extremely challenging.
As I was already familiar with the paperwork, I therefore initially relied on these questions to guide my discussions, in particular in order to streamline the information I was given by our clients. I had noticed that clients often broke out in several tangents in a bid to get all their information across to me, which made the interview difficult to control and meant I often missed crucial points due to information overload. However, I quickly realised that applying emotional intelligence and effective communication skills, and tailoring my approach in the interviews to create a personal connection helped clients to feel more comfortable, and therefore helped me to direct the interview to get all the relevant case details. To do this effectively, I demonstrated both confidence and resilience against the difficult situations I was interacting with, as well as against challenging clients. I learned to approach situations both objectively and empathetically and to navigate interviews with a wide variety of clients, including Scottish nationals, international students or refugees, as well as interviews where translators or social services were present. Additionally, I took note of the questions I was asked by Housing Advisors when presenting the case to them, and learned quickly from situations where I had not picked up on an issue, so that I would pick up on similar problems in future interviews. I received consistently great feedback for my performance in this role, and was increasingly left to conduct, arrange and feed back on the interviews independently, without Housing Advisor oversight. In particular, I was trusted to manage and conduct an afternoon of interviews where all Housing Advisors were out of office, and to pass all notes and contact details over to the Hub Manager. I have used the confidence, emotional intelligence and communication skills that I gained from interviewing so many clients to many of my other people-based roles, in particular as Professional Skills Programme and Graduate Skills Programme tutor with the University of Glasgow. |
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PROFESSIONAL SKILLS PROGRAMME ASSISTANT, PEARSON COMMUNICATION: Tailoring my approach to group facilitation and teachingI was motivated to take on the Assistant role for the Professional Skills Programme (an intense, 3-5 day workplace readiness programme) after taking part in the programme myself and experiencing its impact first-hand. I saw this role as a strong opportunity to further develop my confidence, presentation and communication skills, leadership and my commercial awareness, and as a way to support other students in their own professional development. In particular, it was an opportunity to learn how to work with students across the College of Social Sciences, and thereby how to tailor my teaching approach.
PSP is an intense and interactive programme, and includes several assessment-centre style teamwork exercises which I observed and analysed in order to provide students with specific and objective feedback on their communication skills, leadership, commercial knowledge and ability to work effectively in a team. I did this by facilitating group discussions after the exercise had been completed, which required a high level of emotional intelligence and behavioural analysis skills in order for me to both observe and understand students’ behaviour, and to build a strong rapport with each individual student. In particular, I had to tailor the way in which I observed, interacted with and fed back to students based on cohort type – Law and Business students generally engendered a more corporate approach, whereas Social Sciences or Education students benefited much more from a more creative and reflective approach. Tailoring my approach to teaching was particularly important in order to keep students’ attention, but also to cater for the strengths and weaknesses of the particular cohort. I did this by keeping a flexible and open approach to the teaching material, which became easier as my confidence in public speaking and assertiveness increased. I encouraged questions throughout the course, and, where relevant, allowed students’ questions and contributions to guide the programme, thereby keeping the teaching modules as dynamic as possible. My performance on the programme resulted in outstanding feedback both from the programme co-ordinator and from students themselves, in particular for my perceptiveness, ability to learn and adapt quickly, and my personability and ability to tailor the programme to individual needs. Additionally, my increased confidence in presenting and facilitation helped me step swiftly into my role as Graduate Skills Programme tutor, which I was offered due to my performance as tutor on the PSP programme. |
PUBLISHING ASSISTANT, 404 INK: Acquisition of the novel 'Animals Eat Each Other' by Elle NashA few weeks after joining 404 Ink as their Publishing Assistant, I was asked to write an evaluation report on a manuscript called ‘Animals Eat Each Other’ by an American author, Elle Nash. This was my very first manuscript review, and if acquired, the manuscript in question would be the company’s first international acquisition and first novel – as a small publishing company, this would be an expensive, time consuming and potentially risky acquisition. Whilst a general template had been provided, no specific considerations other than my opinion of the book was requested.
I immediately loved the book on reading it, and felt that this would be a perfect fit for our company. I therefore wanted to provide a strong case for its acquisition. As a result, my report took into account not only quality, but also market potential on publication and suitability specifically for 404 Ink. In particular, I drew on my knowledge as a book reviewer and avid reader, and researched similar titles which had done well in the English market, thereby demonstrating my strong market awareness. I also noted the novel’s positive reception in the US market, where it had been published a few months previously. Hugely impressed not only by the quality of writing, but also by its niche marketability (it very much reminded me of Sally Rooney’s Normal People as well as Jade Sharma’s Problems) and positive US reviews (it had previously made Oprah Winfrey’s June reading list), I advocated strongly for the acquisition of this novel. The novel ‘Animals Eat Each Other’ was officially acquired in September 2019, with publication set for May 2019. As a result of my unique market awareness and ability to perceive both quality and potential, I was offered a more fixed Editorial position, where I read, evaluated and reported on all submitted manuscripts in order to filter the most suitable ones. These would then be discussed by the Editorial department as a whole. Additionally, I was nominated by the company for the Creative Edinburgh Student Award, for which I was then shortlisted. |
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