Week 2:Work readiness

Week 2: Work Readiness Skills

Being professional is an extremely beneficial work readiness skill to have, as employers will respect you more and treat you like an adult. I dressed professionally for my first 4 days at my internship, and my employer complimented me and I earned his respect quickly. I was early to work and I worked efficiently when I was working.

Being literate is another important work readiness skill to have. During the first few days, there was a lot of  written instructions for us to read and we were expected to execute the task fairly quickly. For example, although it seems simple, setting up my voicemail for the phone on my desk was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. I had to read the written directions multiple times before I finally understood how to use my desk phone. However, comprehending and performing this simple task was important.

An area I struggled with was communicating effectively. There were lots of acronyms and new information given to me, and I didn't always ask questions when I should have. I understood how to perform the task I was given for the first few days, but I didn't quote understand the significance of what I was doing. The way I saw it, I was entering numbers into a computer, but the way my employer saw it was that I was organizing the forms in the database, helping him determine how much work his employees could get done in a certain amount of time.