Skip to main content

Important Professional Tools – More than Knowing How to use SPSS or SAS (see www.SueMentors.blogspot.com)

A young professional just starting out after finishing her MPH asked me a very interesting question. She said she took a lot of research courses during her MPH program. But she felt pretty unprepared in school for the key tools that are needed in the workplace. She was now interning and was applying her research skills in an interesting intern position. But she also realized that the work involved much more than just applying research skills.

 

She asked, “What kinds of tools are important to have?”

 

Here are the things I expect and hope your professionals to have these days – or to be ready to learn as soon as they come to work:

 

  • Budgeting: you should be able to construct a basic budget in Excel, using straightforward formulas (add, subtract, multiply, divide a column of numbers). This will help you get more facile with a key aspect of project planning and implementation – matching resources to activities.

 

  • Charting and Figures: you should be able to use Excel to create graphs so that you can present visual displays of data in reports and presentations.

 

  • PowerPoint: Learn to use this to make an effective presentation. Think of it as an outlining tool where you use each page for a specific thought or idea. Key skills in PowerPoint include knowing how to format text, how to insert figures and objects, how to realign bullets, and how to move slides around. And educate yourself with one of the multitude of resources on the web about how to effectively display text on a PowerPoint slide.

 

  • Presentations: Take any opportunity you can to speak in front of a group – informally or formally. The more you do it, the better you become and the easier it becomes. (Okay, not always – I still get nerves.) Being prepared helps you feel more confident so if you do better by writing the text down, then do that. If you work better from notes, then that’s what works for you. Use what works for you but don’t read anything word for word. That will sound forced and will sound like you’re droning. Think of this as a conversation.

 

  • Outlining in Word: I’m sure you are facile with Word. It is extremely important for you to be able to set up and use automatic outlining in Word. And if you can use that and set up headers so you can make a table of contents – that’s even better!

 

Do you have some favorites that I haven’t mentioned here?

Posted via email from sue griffey's posterous

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mentor: Barbara Rawlins, Monitoring and Evaluation Team Leader, Maternal and Child Survival Program

Another feature of this blog is bringing you advice and perspectives from people who mentor, by answering 3 questions. Here are  Barbara Rawlins ’  responses: What are mentees looking for? ·  Career guidance ·  Technical advice ·  Moral support ·  Advice on how to negotiate politically-sensitive or controversial situation What 1 piece of advice do you give every mentee you work with? Figure out what they want to do (in the long term) and what steps they can take to get there Why are you interested in mentoring? To support younger colleagues, especially women, to help attain their career goals
8 comments
Read more

A mentor is like a mirror: Even a senior (expert) needs - and wants - mentoring #mentor (SueMentors.Blogspot.com)

I haven’t been posting for the past 3 months because of an extremely busy time. But I have been mentoring – and in ways that were surprising to me. In July-September, we at Social & Scientific Systems (SSS) were unexpectedly were facing the sooner-than-expected project close-out, and it meant that several staff needed to be looking for new jobs. I wasn’t surprised that some of the staff – mostly those still early in their careers – were asking for my help in updating their resumes. I was more surprised to have two very senior and experienced professionals ask for my help. When they gave me their resumes to review before we met, I realized that both were examples of why a mentor can be useful, no matter how far along you are in your career. One had an illustrious and varied career and many qualifications prior to coming to SSS two years ago. But her resume read like someone who had just finished graduate school. She was very detailed in listing all the things she did (both in her SS
2 comments
Read more

Guidance on Mentoring: What is Mentoring?

This brief guide focuses on defining different aspects of mentoring, whether for an individual or for a team, and includes selected reference resources. It is critical that the mentee and mentor both approach their interaction with the same understanding of the nature and scope of the advising that will be offered. This brief guide can serve as a reference for both parties in arriving at that mutual understanding. Before delving into mentoring, it ’s important to be aware that s ome times  the terms “mentoring” and “coaching” are used interchangeably  despite important differences between them . There are many resources on mentoring and coaching – and almost as many different definitions for each as well as the similarities and overlap between the two  (such as shown in the articles on coaching in the resource list below).   Also, m ost people agree that mentoring is NOT training although a mentor or coach may recommend that a mentee obtain additional training. W hat i
4 comments
Read more