Scholarship / The selection panel will want to understand how your proposed study will assist you in your career. [NEW]

Respected seniors, Please suggest how I can improve this essay ? your help will mean a lot to me !

Career Plan Commonwealth Scholarship

The selection panel will want to understand how your proposed study will assist you in your career. Describe the skills that you expect to gain from this scholarship, and your career plans once you return home afterwards.

According to the DFID report 2018-19, 53% of the total aid from the UK to Pakistan was focused on Human capital development. I wish to contribute to this cause by joining Planning and Development Department and start professional development programs for the final year university students where their professional skills will be developed to meet the demands of the business environment. These programs will focus not only on the professional but also on the personal development such as Communication, Teamwork, and creative thinking.

I have experience in training and development and I also have done training needs analysis of the various companies. I have good knowledge of the technical and soft skills requirements of the business sectors and deficiencies that are generally found in the employees. I will leverage on my professional exposure, skill and knowledge gained regarding policy making from my Masters Course combined with the authority of the federal institution to make Pakistani youth more prolific and increase their options for income generation.

I will also develop policies to incorporate skill development in the curriculum of secondary school system.This policy will help the 65% of the youth population that does not have access to higher education. Most of this youth remains useless or engage in anti-development activities without contributing anything to the national economy. If we are able to train these at the secondary level then this trained workforce can be used in projects such as CPEC or we can export this workforce to increase our foreign reserves.

Institutions building is a major project of the DFID Pakistan for which it is working closely with the federal and provincial governments of Pakistan to build capacity, improve public sector institutions and tackle corruption.

My long term goal is to become Secretary P&D Pakistan and work on federal level. My main objective in this role would be to associate the compensation and benefits with performance standards by implementing performance appraisal system in public institutions. At current no such system is in place which is one of the main reasons that state institutions do not perform like any private organization where there is motivation to perform better and punishment for poor performance. This is called positive and negative reinforcement in Psychology that can be used to change behavior of any individual.

I would like to use management by objectives system for performance appraisal where annual objectives will be set on three levels organization, department and individual. Instead of fixed annual increments and bonuses (current practice) compensation and benefits will be linked to the percentage of objectives met. This will provide a motivation level to state employees to think out of the box and get rid of their monotonous professional behavior to perform better and give better services to general public.

Both my immediate and ultimate career plans of institution building and youth development in Pakistan are not only are in line with the interests of Commonwealth, but also related to the recent support by the UK government.

Scholarship / "How your proposed study relates to ..." - Impact Statement for Commonwealth Scholarship [2]

You all requested to critically analyse and help me improve these essays! any suggestions will be highly appreciated!

I am sorry I am posting Career plan as well in the same thread because it is related to the impact statement and I would like the career plan to be reviewed by seniors as well!

Development Impact Statement

Provide a statement explaining:

How your proposed study relates to a particular development challenge or need at the global, national, or local level
The outcomes that you aim to achieve and the timeframe for their implementation
How the impact of your work might be measured

A country's development is the direct result of the capacity of its institutions to perform effectively which in turn depends on the quality of the human resource working there and the related policies that govern these institutions. Unfortunately, in almost all sectors of Pakistan the infrastructure development is given priority over the human resource development and the negligence of the public policy makers in this regard exacerbates this situation. Policy makers have failed to make the vocational training part of the curriculum and combine the formal education with the skill development.

Pakistan has the highest youth population after Afghanistan in South Asia and ranks second lowest in South Asia for Commonwealth YDI 2017. According to another report Pakistan ranks 164th out of 195 countries for its quality of human capital. This is one of the main reasons that unemployment of youth in Pakistan is higher than other South Asian countries except Sri-Lanka.

I have rich experience in HRD and now I plan to study Masters of Public Administration; this course focuses on developing consummate public policy makers in the ever changing business environment. This course will expose me to policy making practices in the UK and will help me understand how organizations work and how employees perceive their work environment. This course will help me to not only cope with the current challenges related to human resources in the state institutions through effective policy making but will also prepare me to handle future challenges such as the "laying off the human resources". As a student in UK I will also get the chance to observe and understand the structure and implementation techniques of professional development programs for students, which I can replicate in Pakistan.

After this course I plan to return to Pakistan and serve my country by joining the Planning and Development Department which is the central agency which sets the strategic policies for the HRD and monitors its implementation in Pakistan. In this role I will be able to derive strategies to bring behavioral changes in employees on micro level and policy changes on macro level using psychological tools of positive and negative reinforcement. Through effective policy making based on scientific research, I will be able to solve the issues such as misuse of authority, early leaving and procrastination of work, misbehaving with public and commonplace involvement in grafting in organizations of Pakistan.

My final anticipated outcome is to use my experience related to HR and exposure of policy making in UK to improve human capital output in the public sector organization. I would also design professional development programs and collaborate with universities to introduce these in the courses to fill the gap between the current skills the youth has and skills required in the future by the organizations.

As per my career plan I have no doubt that I will be able to make an initial impact within Ten years and this impact can be measured by the improved human resource output in the target government institutions.

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