Methods and procedures - Draft 1

Methods and procedures

The following are the methods and procedures used by the team for this project.

Firstly, job advertisements in the field of conservation hiring fresh graduates were referred to and it was found that good communication skills are almost always one of the most sought for skills by employers in this area.

Further research on secondary sources was conducted to explore need for communication skills in the conservation field. These sources have been referenced in the background section of our proposal and they serve to support the need for our research.

In addition, the team also conducted a research on compulsory communication modules that other universities are offering. This allows the comparison of the differences in the communication skills development that students from NUS undergo with students from the other universities.

A short survey focusing on the attitude of NUS Life Science undergraduates towards developing their communication skills in NUS was created, to target NUS Life Science students who are intending to be in the Biology concentration. This survey aims to explore the adequacy of NUS curriculum in providing these undergraduates with the necessary communication skills in conservation related workplace. It also aims to gather their opinions and attitudes towards acquiring communication skills in their study in NUS. The online survey tool used by the team is www.surveymonkey.com.

An interview was also conducted with Mr. N. Sivasothi, a Biodiversity lecturer from the Department of Biological Sciences at NUS, who is actively involved in teaching at NUS as well as numerous conservation efforts with the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research and other conservation groups. This interview was crafted to inquire the current development of communication skills in the NUS Life Science curriculum as well as the possible barriers that may be preventing NUS students from mastering these skills. The team also used this chance to discuss about the feasibility of the options and ideas that will be proposed during the oral presentation.

Lastly, the team plans to interview NUS students who have previously worked at the conservation related workplace, such as the Singapore Zoological Gardens and the Night Safari. From these interviews, the team aims to obtain first-hand information from the horse’s mouth regarding the communication skills required in these workplaces and the adequacy of the NUS education in developing these communication skills.

Challenges

There are several challenges faced by the team in the process of conducting the research. For the online survey, due to the difficulty in determining the actual number of students who are both in the Biology concentration and those intending to concentrate in Biology, the extrapolation of results from the survey may not entirely reflect the opinions of the entire population of Biology students targeted. Next, the interviews with the NUS students who worked in a conservation related workplace might be insufficient to determine the general picture of the specific communication needs in this workplace.

Nonetheless, with these limitations in mind, the team will make careful analysis of the data and information that would be collected in this process and attempt to make sound recommendations and conclusions.

Job interview comments, a post out of the norm

Dear friends,

I have decided to share some of my personal feedback regarding job interviews in this stress-free post! (: (I hope Pei Rong does not strangle me for neglecting the project to do this post!)

My group (Rohan, Diana² and myself) has interviewed Pei Rong, Godwin, Nicole, Glenn and Joshua. My feelings/comments would be largely similar to my group's - in which Diana2 has passed to them. However, I'm still creating this post so that all of us may learn.

For Pei Rong, I guess she needs to be more to the point and not try to go around in circles. Other than that the interview was fine. (Or alternatively, it could be me who is totally uninterested in that field where she's interested in. lol)

For Godwin, our team feels that he needs to smile more, and handle stress better during interview. For goodness sake, Rohan isn't even there! But I quite like some of the answers that he gave.

I did not have a chance to interview/grill Nicole, but I guess she had the easiest time since Rohan was being nice and friendly. Or am I wrong?

For Joshua and Glenn, it is really of great reluctance that we have to interview the 2 of you together. Given a choice, we would really want to interview you all individually so that a nicer and more realistic experience may be gained.

Joshua, please do take note to never interrupt the interviewer. Ultimately, the interviewer is also trying to assess whether he feels comfortable working with you or not. Thus it's best to not get into a conflict with the interviewer, unless he's the sort that always welcomes a challenge or an employee that dares to speak up. Our feel is that you tend to take up a defensive stance when being interviewed, please try to avoid that. Other than that, I'm impressed by the knowledge and verbal skills that you possess.

For Glenn, sorry I was slightly stern with you although you did not really grill me back then. However, do take note of your Singlish and sitting posture. With proper preparation before the interview, I believe that you would do better!

Now to talk about my own interesting experience, I was questioned by Glenn, Joshua, Pei Rong and Godwin. I guess my interview was one of the slacker ones among my groupmembers. I went in with the aim of making my interviewer smile and also feel comfortable with me around. So I smiled hard.... Really hard.... I guess they can testify that whenever I'm faced with a difficult question, I will start smiling (: . However one of the mistakes that I noticed myself make is that I tend to say "actually" too many times. One bigger mistake was the Russian roulette question, the correct answer should have been spin again. Oops, I did not know why you all did not correct me because I would have been so dead if you all did. Perhaps I really have good convincing power? LOL. I admit that most of the replies I gave were smoked, but at least the conversation with the HR personnel was real! Overall the interview was pretty close to what a real interview that GE would actually give me and I'm really thankful and grateful for you guys' hardwork!

My personal aim for interviews is that I have to make sure that the interviewer is affected by my presence and smiles back at me. Perhaps you all might also want to adopt this mentality! Last but not least, good luck to for your tests and projects!

Kun lin (: