Developing The Complete Skill Set

There’s a clear differentiation in the minds of today’s employers between technical knowledge and what is increasingly being referred to as employability skills.


With a high degree of technical prowess automatically assumed of today’s business school-educated candidates, it’s these wide-ranging employability skills that now constitute a must-have commodity for businesses and organisations worldwide. Consequently, these are the abilities that are aiding candidates in winning premium placements and enjoying the desired rate of career progression. So, how might we define these particular attributes? In a nutshell, candidates deemed to have these skills are those who possess:

• a world-wise, global perspective and the type of strong inter-cultural skills that are essential for effective interaction within a global marketplace. 
• a critical mindset and the ability and willingness to question and test assumptions with a view to achieving the best problem-solving outcomes. 
• excellent communication skills (oral and written) as well as solid research and analytical aptitudes. 
• teamwork skills – an essential ability considering that many business projects are now prosecuted within multi-disciplinary groups.

Crucially, the development of these employability skills represents a core component of the Business School curriculum. But there are other ways that students can also develop the types of abilities that will help them prosper within the dynamic and global 21st Century job market.

Travel, either private or via one of the Business School’s student exchange, study abroad, or offshore placement programs in China, the US and France, is the ideal way to increase cultural awareness and develop a global perspective. The very nature of our learning environment also offers a golden opportunity. Because we attract top-level students from all over the world, all course participants are effectively studying in a global classroom, learning from each other as well as from our expert educators.

We take the needs of employers seriously, so we give students everything we can to support them in the pursuit of their chosen career path. It’s all about building the ultimate candidate.

Author: Dr Leanne Piggott - Director - Business Programs Unit

How To Create Your Own Social Media Brand

With the increasing relevance of social media to corporate life, you can be sure that more and more organisations are looking to your online brand in order to understand who you are.

No surprise, then, that the design of your online presence is crucial for enabling others to not only connect with you, but also to understand the ways in which you’re thinking and engaging as a professional. With the LinkedIn facility being one of the best ways to establish your online identity, it might be useful to note the following tips for creating your profile and maximising your brand power.

· Customise your URL – the URL for your public profile is located on your

   profile page. Change it to something more meaningful and use it on your email

   signature and/or resume.

· Optimise your job title and/or create a strong headline – extremely  

   important as this is one of the first things a reader will see.

· Add connections – this increases your visibility and connectivity. Also seek

   recommendations that will similarly help improve the visibility of your own

   profile within internal LinkedIn searches.

· Complete your summary – search engines index this section, so don’t

   underestimate its importance. It should be written in first-person, feature

   keywords, and highlight the skills and experiences that differentiate you from

   others.

· Complete the Skills and Specialties sections – specialties are searchable

   through the LinkedIn Advanced Search feature and can provide detailed

   information beyond your professional experience.

· Join related groups and use LinkedIn Answers – find groups that other

   industry professionals have joined and look to participate. This will add value to

   your own profile and help get you found by other industry contacts. Contributing

   to LinkedIn Answers can also help build up your reputation within a field. From

   an SEO perspective, this also builds the number of internal links pointing to

   your profile from within LinkedIn, which in turn helps to strengthen your search

   engine profile.

Author: Dr Kristine Dery – senior lecturer – University of Sydney Business School (in association with EMBA graduate Christine Bishop)

Painting a Picture of the Perfect Job

Federal Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Bill Shorten has made a number of speeches recently about the importance of job quality in Australia.

On the surface, his contention that every Australian wants to work in a good job is highly understandable. Afterall, a good job means more money and the opportunity to fund a better lifestyle. A good job may also engender greater security and the opportunity to utilise skills in a fulfilling and satisfying manner. But the benefits don’t end there. Firm productivity and competitiveness have also been linked to the availability of good jobs, with skill utilisation-based job satisfaction leading to higher levels of staff retention.

From a national perspective, there’s an argument that good jobs offer an opportunity to move up the occupational ladder and a much-needed pathway to social mobility. Other schools of thought contend that good jobs, by virtue of their better pay and security, afford people the time and resources to engage with their neighbours and communities. With this eventuality leading to happier workers, it’s hard to ignore the role that good jobs can potentially play in holding the social fabric together.

But there’s a small problem. Despite the increasing importance placed on good jobs, we’re not quite sure what job quality actually means. For instance, is a good job one that satisfies all of the above criteria? Is a good job one that satisfies only one criterion? With the lack of solid definition currently making it impossible to identify the hotspots of good jobs - the types of occupations and industries that offer these jobs - academics need to start addressing this gap in knowledge. 

Only by first ascertaining the conditions that create optimum employment can we hope to develop informed and appropriate policy responses and help create great places to work.

Author: Professor Chris Warhurst – University of Sydney Business School

Creating Intelligence-Based Business Practices

The use of business intelligence has the power to radically transform the way that modern businesses operate.

Indeed, capture and analysis of customer data can inform many aspects of business strategy, from decisions about pricing to the type of products to offer at certain times of the year. As a technical exercise, it’s relatively easy to do, with abundant processing power and easy-to-use applications making it simple for more and more people to encorporate this information into their daily work. The real challenge presents itself when trying to adjust the mindsets of individuals steeped in the framework of traditional work practices.

Our European-based research has shown that a drive towards business intelligence utilisation can start with a small group of enthusiasts who subsequently become a community of practice within an organisation. As a result of their active promotion of business intelligence, the mindset of such individuals can ultimately permeate an entire organisation. Of course, this type of change can be hard to achieve, with proponents first needing to demonstrate the clear benefits and advantages of data analytics. Moreover, they need to convince colleagues of the need to modify their existing processes.

In the instance of a European retail organisation we examined in our study (view it at http://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2012/28/), some of the early lessons imparted did indeed lead to small-scale innovations in regards to certain product lines and processes. This was enough to ensure that an appreciation of business intelligence filtered through to all levels of the organisation. Eventually, these practices received the support of the CEO, ensuring that a business intelligence mindset quickly influenced all aspects of organisational strategy making.

The key message is that organisations should notice communities of practice that spring up within their midst and acknowledge the potential creative power of business intelligence ideas. These ideas may be divergent, but there’s a strong possibility they could be used to develop a powerful competitive advantage.

Author: Petri Hallikainen – senior lecturer - University of Sydney Business School