Week 8: Marketing teamwork experience to employers

Introduction

Welcome to the final week of the course!

In Week 7, you looked at social identity, exploring how our biases and assumptions can impact on team relationships. You also learnt about Hofstede’s six dimensions of cultural difference, considering how an awareness of these different dimensions can help with communication in cross-cultural teams.

This week, you’ll consider how to apply your new insight, revisiting an issue that you first looked at in Week 1 – marketing your teamwork skills to employers. You’ll journey through the application process, looking at the ways in which employers assess teamwork through applications, interviews and group assessment centres. At each stage, you’ll learn some useful tips for articulating your own experiences and you’ll finish by setting some goals to help you with your next steps.

To begin, watch Lynne Johnson introducing the topic.

Download this video clip.Video player: wdt_1_week_8_lynne.mp4

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Transcript

LYNNE:

Now that you have a better understanding of why employers value this skill and the kind of competencies they're looking for, how can you translate this knowledge into marketing yourself during the application process? Competency-based questions during an interview and group assessment centre activities are two of the main ways employers assess your teamwork skills.

This week, you'll use the STAR strategy to structure your interview questions and consider what an employer is looking for in a group assessment exercise. This will help you evaluate your own experiences of working in teams and consider how you can communicate them in a way that will work.

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NARRATOR:

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By the end of this week, you will be able to:

• outline how employers assess team skills in the recruitment process
• understand how to communicate teamwork skills to employers using STAR
• identify your next steps and set SMART goals.