I remember at the beginning of my degree when I sat in the introductory lecture for the course of public relations, the lecturer was going through and stating the attributes of an individual that would make a good practitioner in this area of Commerce.
I sat there listening intently, taking notes, and thought to myself that I checked off on most of the attributes, except for one; and unfortunately being one of the most important – time management. I have unfortunately struggled with time management all my life, but have made considerable efforts to improve upon this short-fall.
During my professional practice placement, this experience has also brought to my attention areas of my own professional development that needed improvement; such as time management.
I found that whilst I was completing tasks and projects I was assigned to during my work experience, I was failing to manage my time well and was spending many hours outside of my placement just trying to complete them. I suddenly realised I was going to have to review the way I was approaching tasks, and the process I would take to complete them.
Whilst at Sinclair Consulting I was also asked to research and then create a stakeholder list of prospective industry employers for surveying company. In particular, of prospective clients in the mining and construction industries, that was involved with or contracted to, large scale projects. As I did not know much about the mining or construction industry it took me much longer than anticipated to deliver what was required of the task.
On review of my work with my supervisor, he drew to my attention that I had actually missed most important objective at hand – the HR details with the direct person of contact. Whilst compiling the list I realised I couldn’t remember the specific details of my task and had not written myself an outline of what was to be included upon delivery. I decided I didn’t want to ask any questions in embarrassment of looking silly (like I didn’t know what I was doing), especially for such a straight forward task.
Luckily my supervisor was understanding and gave me the opportunity to fix my error, however it taught me a few key lessons about time management and the process of my completing work. From this I learnt that it’s better to ask questions than not to ask any at all, even if it’s for asking for clarity on information that may have already been given. It also taught me much about the processes involved in identifying an organisation’s target market, and where to start when doing research, such as beginning with analysing the client, and then proceeding from there.
It also In turn it has taught me to never assume the complexity of a task, and demonstrated the type of timeframes and workload, I could expect in similar roles of future employment.
