As part of creating a personal development plan, I have undertaken two self assessments. The first assessment I took was a SWOT Analysis.
The strength’s I have mentioned include Time management, as I am very good at being on time for things as well as managing how long I will spend on a specific piece of work, Professionalism, as I am able to be professional and efficient if something requires me to be and Passion in my specialist subject. I have also mentioned one of my strengths is communication, as I am able to hold a conversation with someone without running out of things to say as well as replying to emails and texts and also answering the phone quickly. As well as these, I have said that I have a good knowledge of the media as my journalism course has helped me with this and I am also constantly using media products such as social media, laptops, PC’s and the TV.
For weaknesses, I have mentioned the fact that I am not very confident as when I first meet someone, I am not very confident starting a conversation or confronting them however If someone confronts me or starts the conversation I am fine. I do believe that by becoming a freelance journalist, this lack of confidence will slowly disappear as I will have to talk to new people as part of the job and this will help me with this weakness. I have also mentioned that sometimes I am not as focused as I would like to be on specific tasks and find it quite hard to stop myself getting distracted as there are many things around the house & workplace where I will be working which can distract me such as Social Media and the Television. I also feel that music can distract me. To conquer this weakness, I should either block all social networks on a ‘Work Laptop’ and not listen to music as well as not trying to complete my work in a room with a TV. I also tend to put off work quite a lot and think that I will come back to it later on in the day, however I never do, so I feel like this needs to change also.
Being a freelance Journalist, a lot of opportunities can arise. Some that I have included are University, as by going to university you can get a degree and further your chances of more work, HND’s for the same reason, Internships and Apprenticeships can also help you gain experience of the working world. Also, by having your own blog you can also get a lot of opportunities such as getting to test out new products, talking to new people and networking, which I also included.
However, even though a lot of opportunities can arise, being freelance can also pose a lot of threats. The threats I have mentioned are competition from others, as a lot of people will be competing for a job with a company and you have to make yourself stand out from the others, Lack of work, which could be a major problem if you’re always pipped to the post by other freelance workers and because of the lack of work, you can also have a lack of funds, which means you would have to prepare yourself financially for if that ever arises. Also, as I am not fully educated in all software packages out there, businesses may see this and employ someone else for the job, meaning that this could be a major threat. One of the biggest threats I feel, is my lack of confidence when speaking in public, which could result in presentations or interviews not going very well due to me being shy. I would have to get over this by communicating more with people who I do not know to become more employable.
2. For my next self assessment, I decided to write down all the skills I have in a table and mark in boxes how I feel I perform with these skills ranging from very confident to very uncertain. I have done my table below in two designs.
Design one :
Design Two:
As a very visual learner, the design of the first table I created is of much more help to me than the second due to intensity of the colour coding etc which I do feel is another skill of mine. However with this aside, as you can see above I have listed most of the Journalistic skills I possess and assessed how well I feel I perform with these skills. The first skill in the table is writing, the skill I feel most confident in. To be a journalist, you do have to be a confident writer and as I already feel confident in the writing that I produce, I believe this to be a very valuable skill for me to have at such an early stage. Another skill I am very confident about is how I work as I feel I can work well both in a team and also solo. Some of my best work has been produced solo however I have been very happy with work that I have produced with a team and I think that this skill is key for a Journalist to have due to the fact that Journalists could be put together with a team or taken away from a team in an instant and have to keep working. The final skill I feel very confident in is how well I can use Microsoft. Having used Microsoft for many years throughout my school and college education, I feel that I know how to use all three main Microsoft Office products Word, Powerpoint and Excel very well.
Some of the skills that I feel slightly confident on are:
1. Researching – When researching, I feel as though I may have not researched thoroughly or that I have missed something out and therefore may not be writing the best article or producing the best piece of work that I could if my research was proper.
Presenting – As a very shy person who needs to know people before speaking up in front of them, presenting can be quite a weak point for me however I have started to overcome the fear of talking in front of strangers and I am becoming more and more confident of doing this. I still feel that it isn’t one of my best skills and my presentation techniques are no where near as polished as my writing skills are however this is something that I can improve on.
Adobe – Having only used Photoshop for three years and Illustrator and InDesign for less than two, I do feel that I could use more practice on them however I feel that if someone asked me for help whilst using one of these three packages, I would be able to help them. That aside, there are many Adobe products I have never used and therefore I am not completely confident on Adobe.
The final skill I have listed is Interviewing and as you can see, I feel I am only okay at this skill. Once again, as I am quite a shy person, I feel interviewing people a very scary and uneasy thing to do however I do feel like I have improved on this skill during my education at college and I do feel I have become slightly better at interviewing.
saskiasteelswright 