| The
Life skills sessions
are designed to enable you to look at fundamental
attitudes, behaviours and skills that are
necessary in everyday working life. They
are split into 5 separate sessions and are
focused on improving your abilities to secure
employment.
The
different sessions cover:
Self-awareness
Personal Presentation
Body Language
Managing Money
Coping with Stress
It
is important to ensure that you understand
the reasons why these ‘life skills’
are so vital and are fundamental in your
success to finding employment. Discuss
reasons why you feel life skills are important.
Answers will include:
A lack of confidence will come across
at an interview; I need confidence if
I am going to succeed.
I need to know how to manage my money
so that I can afford my travel expenses
prior to receiving my first salary cheque.
Stress can impair performance at a job
interview etc.
Self Awareness
Description
During
this session, you will gain an awareness
of who you are, what you can offer an
employer and will have assistance in mapping
out your future life plan. Repeat the
opening exercise but concentrate specifically
on Self Awareness and ensure that you
understand what this is and why it is
important.
Activity: 1
a)
Personal Perceptions
Break
into pairs to discuss your perceptions
of each other and how these were formed
– this will include a discussion
about each other’s assets and capabilities.
At the end of the discussion, you will
have to present back to the group about
the other participant, giving an outline
of how you perceived the other participant,
how the other participant reacted to these
perceptions and what you jointly considered
were the other participants main assets
and capabilities.
b)
Personal Awareness & Life Planning
On
an individual basis, produce a pictorial
life plan, which uses colour and pictures
to show how the you feel about your life
currently and how you wish it to develop
(both on a personal and professional basis).
You will then be asked to present your
plan to the group and a discussion will
take place.
c)
Use of Diagnostic Tools
You
will have the opportunity within the session,
to use some Internet-based diagnostic tools, within
which you will be required to answer a series
of life, career and work questions, resulting
in a personal and/or career profile. Using the
diagnostic tools adds another fun element into
the session and you will be able to print out
and save your personal or career profiles, for
use in other modules within the programme and
to discuss with your trainer and/or colleagues.
d) Identifying Personal Assets & Matching
to Employer Needs
Discuss
questions in groups and as individuals, to stimulate
debate:
· Is there anything that made your academic
or vocational qualifications a 'special' achievement?
- e.g. was there a particular difficulty you had
to overcome or was the outcome particularly noteworthy
in some respects.
· Is there any activity that you undertake
as a leisure pursuit or hobby where you have made
use of particular skills or achieved success that
could be interesting to an employer?
· If you have had previous full time or
part-time employment, identify your achievements.
What did you learn - were you promoted etc?
· Do you undertake any voluntary work or
similar - what skills are needed here and what
relevance could these have in the workplace?
· Think about situations and their outcomes
where you have been able to demonstrate the following
skills rated as important by employers:
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