Skills for the Global Market – A Student’s View



Another new ‘Skills for Success’ session on Intercultural and Global Awareness Skills (I & GA) was held at the Octagon on the 5th of November 2012.  As we might realise these skills have become increasingly important these days.  Attending the session today was helpful in terms of helping us emphasize this issue. This course was presented by two women, one is from Careers Service, and the other is from HSBC. They both talked about Intercultural and Global Awareness, but from different perspectives: theoretical and practical.
As I can see it, this session went well and information or key points were well received by students through the presenter’s speech and attendees’ activities. Students’ attention was attracted by the first group work. By answering which country you are from and what the language(s) you are speaking, we found that we were in a place where 19 languages were spoken. Cultural awareness was also discussed. To some extent, we may experience cultural conflicts or cultural shock due to not understanding the fact that we experience life through our own ‘cultural spectacles’. In order to address this, in the second group work exercise, we discussed several ways to develop Intercultural and Global Awareness Skills for example, spend part of degree abroad, learning languages, talking to students from other countries, using the Career Service resources etc. The session went on to the second presenter - the lady from HSBC. Before providing her own examples of living in different places in the world, she talked about many failure cases of international companies. Those companies are doing quite well locally, but they had to close some overseas branches because of not considering the importance of cultural differences. One company’s failure in China was an example of a major international player that didn’t understand China.
 It is very important for graduate employment in terms of the fact that we are becoming global citizens and we will work with people from many different parts of the world. Career success can depend on how one understands Intercultural and Global Awareness.
Although the session was about only 2 hours, the knowledge received was informative and long-lasting. The ‘Skills for Success’ sessions are held throughout the year, anyone who wants to be successful in the future should not miss out on this opportunity to enrich their insights and broaden their vision. 
Dingshou Yang (Student Blogger)
Careers Service

Careers Service

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