This is actually my first post of 2009 and this is partly due to being on leave up to the 12th January which was great and enabled me to get some additional rest.
I went through my blog whilst i was on leave as part of my first 6 month review and looked at how it had evolved and how i have developed my learning and understanding.
Personal learning and reflection was one of my initial motivations for this blog. So with that in mind i am intending on posting more experiences on what i have learnt and how i will use the learning in the following 4 areas:
- Customers
- Colleagues
- Organisation
- Personal development
So for my first post on this i offer a simple experience , i recently applied for a job (closing date was last Friday) and as you usually do, i wrote a supporting statement, which as a line manager who recruited staff i was keen to ensure that my statement actually demonstrated that i met the essential and desirable criteria. This i found was something people didn’t do well and it often frustrated me as a manager because you were looking too hard for evidence that someone actually had that skills or competence.
My final supporting statement was 12 pages (The job description and person spec was 24 pages, so i was happy with the 12). What i learnt from the experience as i haven’t actually applied for a job in over 5 years now was that we should always keep our CV’s up to date and the process of going through a supporting statement is something we should do at least once a year.
In fact i think the appraisal process should focus on the original person specification and job description and at once a year you should go through and build up a list of examples where you have demonstrated delivering your job. This can also lead to the identification of personal development opportunities which you may not have thought of during a normal appraisal process.
I have already identified a number of personal development opportunities and behaviour changes that i am now going to start working on because of that process.
Changing the subject now….
I am in the process of arranging the 2nd internal social media forum session, and this time it is going to be more practical as the first one was introductions, purpose and networking. I’d thought i would share the agenda for information purposes
The agenda
- Twitter demonstration and discussion around business applications
- What is RSS and how can it help you (Listening)
- Good practice for setting up any online account (pictures, username, links to other sites etc)
- IDEA’s Communities of Practice – how it can help collaboration
The group has a private facebook group to collaborate and discuss issues and post interesting links etc, which is useful and for most is popular, some are still struggling with facebook i think…
We are also in the process of finalising the outcomes and approach for a pilot implementaion of blue kiwi social software. I am very excited about this and will blog more on the over the next few weeks and months.
A journey through life - Carl's Notepad 