Business Skills Development

In our contemporary world, people as a whole is becoming more and more knowledgable. As a result, academic knowledge is no longer a key measure to differentiate between competent people and mediocre people, but it is a fundamental requirement. As a business student, acquiring more soft skills is regarded as a more important way to improve oneself and make oneself stand out in the competitive working environment.

Fortunately, PolyU has always kept focusing on the development of such skills by students and organizes a very useful subject--Business Skills Development. During this last semester of my undergraduate study, the lovely teachers, Ken Wong, Evgeniia, and Alfred Lee from ELC, delivered a series of helpful classes and made this subject impressive and beneficial. Satisfactorily, I found myself improved a lot in respect of several different kinds of skills after this one-semester-long study experience.

Till the beginning of this term, I was a shy girl afraid of stepping out of my comfort zone and reluctant to get to know strangers. In BSD classes, Ken always told us business opportunities and also other opportunities are always created through networking with others, and we should seize the chance to communicate with people we would like to know and try our best to develop the relationship further. After learning this, I decide to open myself up and try to move out of my comfort zone.

During the Easter’s holiday, my friends and I went to Thailand to go on vacation. Luckily, we met many interesting local people, including the taxi driver, speed-boat driver, ice cream seller etc., and we got to know a lot about the culture of Thailand through our communications. After being proactive to chat with strangers, I found it not very difficult to move out of comfort zone and I have lost many precious opportunities to get to know others because of my shyness.

Before attending BSD classes, I thought business presentation should be conducted in the way of standing still, so that I always pretend to be serious in the process of presenting to look more formal and professional.

After listening to Alfred’s presentation skill classes, which are totally different from any other ELC classes I have taken before, I recognize that my previous thought was stupid. The content of presentation should fundamentally base on the interests and needs of audiences and the speaker should have belief in what he is presenting and show his confidence to the listeners. Also, an appropriate presentation structure is important as well. It is a step-by-step process from arising interests of audiences to letting them put their trust in you. Now I become more natural and more considerate about audiences’ feelings when delivering presentations, and no longer treat giving presentations as completing tasks but a process of expressing myself to others.

Creativity and problem solving skills are always demonstrated simultaneously, because problem solving demands creativity to accomplish.

Before attending BSD classes, I was not a person who always takes initiative and find out problems actively, but a person who only struggles to solve those immediate affairs. In this semester’s BSD classes, Ken told us that opportunities are not always ready-made waiting for you, but rather, waiting for us to excavate. As a result, both problem exploration and ideas generation requires creativity.

Recalling our preparation of the group presentation about problem solving, at the beginning stage, we were thinking to discuss about some hot issues such as aircraft accidents or talk about some business networking habits. Later on, we accidentally noticed that one of our friends posted a message on her SNS to seek for a pot to make a DIY hotpot. We suddenly realized that such scene is not by chance in our life, but a very common occasion. We thought it is quite necessary for such instant needs to be met. Then we thought of other popular Apps such as the taxi Apps and realized that we could create an App for our PolyU students to help each other, by posting their needs on a platform and responding to others’ needs that one can help.