Skills to manage challenges at work

In class we discussed how organizations try to stay competitive and what is expected of employees to work efficiently in dynamic work environments.

1. Explain in your own words what the biggest challenges for employees are to work in a dynamic and continuously changing business environment. Describe at least 4 factors that make it difficult for many to recognize work as a positive challenge, to accomplish their goals, and to follow their career ambitions. Explain your answers.

2. To be able to tackle all those challenges, companies consider a variety of skills as important that employees should have or gain to become a valuable addition to their workforce. Think about a job that you would like to have – that can be a specific job or a certain professional field. Imagine that you are in the process of sending your application to the companies/organizations that offer jobs like that.

State your favorite job or field and write a short application, focused on those skills that you think need to be highlighted to appear as an attractive candidate to hire. You should write in full sentences that build on each other like a real application. Your goal is to convince the hiring manager.

Note: Don’t include the standard formalities in your application. Focus on the skills part. Remember that, in most cases, applications describe a mixture of relevant existing skills (those you already have) and important “hoped-for” skills (those that you are convinced to gain soon).

The Short-Paper length needs to be 1-1 ½ page long. Don’t forget to read and comment on the paper of a fellow student after posting your short paper on the discussion forum.