BCS Preparation: Be a Unicorn in the Sea of Donkeys!

Many moons ago, the smart people of our time used to advise us to get a hand on computer to become a unicorn in the sea of donkeys braying across the job market. To bag a job, the job-seekers used to throng the computer training centres to have a mastery over MS Office. That was in vogue among the job hunters at that time.
But that trend of honing a skill-set has already become stale and obsolete. To get a job and not to get you fired now and then, you must walk the walks of re-skilling yourself. You’re to rise a notch up of your fellow competitors and must think out of the box.

Let me list some hard and soft skills that may help you become a unicorn in the sea of donkeys. Honing the following skills you can stand out in the crowd of job seekers.

1. Advanced Power Point Presentation

Perhaps, you can make slides on PowerPoint but your presentation is to be spiced up with professional touch and visual kick. PowerPoint presentation is a must for every avenue of the job world. It is used to covey any messages or ideas to your audience or clients clearly and graphically.

Every modern meeting room is furnished with an OHP (Over-Head Projector). That is why you need to have a strong, not necessarily pro-level, command over a few image and video editing tools. It’s sometime imperative to display your presentation on a particular project or lesson through info-graphics and video footages. The above mentioned tools are the best fit to do that.

Again, you must go through the most popular and pro-level slides on www.slideshare.net to have an insight into how professional presentations are done across the globe by the best minds of the respective departments and disciplines. Have your eyes fixed on the pixels and parameters they use in their slides blending info-graphics, images and video footages to convey their messages or convince their clients.

2. Spread-sheet Application

A spread-sheet application like MS-Excel is an essential accounting tool to process the raw data generated by any business or project operations and present those before the managers or the stakeholders of different public and private entities. It is used to organize and categorize data into a logical format.

This application helps an employee manage working with complex sets of numbers and save their valuable time. It is used in every established educational institute or business entity nowadays to smoothen the data-management process. Spread-sheet software is extensively used in the research works.

So, you need to be competent in MS Excel to be a unicorn in the sea of donkeys!

3. Cloud Computing

Most of us are used to storing, managing, and processing data on local server or personal computer. But what will happen if our PC or local server gets crashed down or disrupted and our data cannot be recovered easily and holistically? What will happen if we require accessing our PC kept in our home or office from a remote corner of the world?

There comes the necessity of storing, managing and processing our valuable data on online server, that is, the server hosted on internet. You’ll need to send spreadsheets, slides, audio or video footages, images and other docs retrieved from online servers to your colleagues or, boss, or clients quite often. Cloud-computing will be the solution then. For cloud-computing, you’re to use the data centres available to many users over the internet.

So, hone the skills required for cloud-computing seamlessly at a go or club with the donkeys unsolicited in a reputed organization.

4. Project Management

Learning how to manage a project is crucial to accomplish a project successfully. In an institution or an organization, you’ll be tasked with so many projects and your remuneration, reverence and promotion will logically be linked up to your performances in those projects. Have a short training on project management.

There are a few institutions in Bangladesh where you can pursue a short course on project management. Invest some money and time in such courses and I tell you- you’ll never regret this spending.

5. Communication

There’re lots of people around us who cannot get their points across as they’re not well-versed in communication skill. Mere making sentences correctly for both verbal and written communications won’t suffice for effective communication.

For effective verbal communication, you have to know and practice how to listen, speak clearly with proper intonation, know your audience, watch your body language, make an eye contact, ask questions, empathise and relate your answers with questions.

For written communication, you’re to know your readers and message well. You must learn how to communicate using the formal medium of communication aligning with the latest trend of communication formats and styles. And you are to undergo conscious and strenuous practice on both verbal and written communication.

Take help of the experts and be a peacock among the ravens.

6. Organizational skills

As per Wikipedia, organizational skills imply your ability to stay focused on your assigned works, and use your time, energy, strength, mental capacity, physical space, etc. effectively and efficiently in order to achieve the desired outcome.

If you want to survive in this competitive job market, you have to be accustomed and adhere to these skills. In an established public or private entity, there prevails a job culture practiced consciously under a set of principles. Not everybody can abide by those principles and consequently, they are distilled to be withdrawn or fired. Even if they’re able to remain in the office, they are sidelined and silenced.

Let me list here a few of the most important organizational skills:

• Planning
• Prioritizing
• Teamwork
• Time management
• Collaboration
• Delegation
• Mental and physical organization
• Work-life balance

Now, decide whether you’ll master these skills or will love to be humiliated!

7. Analytical Skill

Analytical skill, as stated in Wikipedia, refers to the skill of performing an analysis. Such skills include the ability to apply logical thinking in order to break complex problems into their component parts.

Every problem has more than one solution. But if you don’t cultivate the habit of being analytical to reach a decision on a problem surfaced in your workplace, you’re going to be ruined. We need to be analytical to solve every problem we face everywhere in our life. Adhere to this skill consciously and rule the job world. You can google ‘analytical skills’ to have a deep insight into the term.

To hit the bottom-line, it is imperative and safe to forecast that 40% of the jobs you see in the offices around you in Bangladesh are going to be taken over by the Artificially Intelligent machines within the next 10 years.
So, before signing off, I would like to advise the fresh graduates, especially my students, to keep abreast with the latest skill-set required to work in the advanced industries and offices of the world.

Try your utmost to become a unicorn in the sea of donkeys or be prepared to be trimmed up and perished in this modern job market.

 

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