Chevening is looking for individuals with good networking skills...:
Networking is a fundamental building block in society development: through sharing, suggesting, and exchanging different ideas and opinions that can help development and improvement of one self and the society as a whole.
My first networking skills arose when I was chosen by my university to join the organizing committee of a Medical conference named the Pan Arab Society of Pediatric, Gastroenterology, Hematology and Nutrition conference held in Sudan during 2012
The conference was initiated, hosted and attended by a large group Of Doctors from different nationalities and different backgrounds. Being assigned as a coordinator of the registration team registering the Doctors coming from abroad for speaking and/ or attending the conference besides arranging their accommodation and transport; gave me the confidence to deal with the different nationalities more freely having no doubts about my good communication skills and also gave me the chance to develop and improve these skills.
My second experience that served best enhancing and reinforcing my networking skills was when I started working at Abu Dhabi National Bank - Sudan Branch as a one month intern. Two weeks into the job, I was offered under-job training in the Customer Services Department. I started out with simple responsibilities, i.e. handling the Electronic Cheques Clearing (ECC), handling the day-to-day customers' operations, requests & complaints, the process of issuing & renewing ATM cards & cheque books. After finishing my first month, the department manager called me into a meeting with a big client and told me that the client asked for me to handle his account. After the meeting was over, my manager told me that he was going to test me and assigned me with two other big accounts. After another month, I was handling some of the biggest accounts we had in the branch. When I asked my manager of the reason, why he decided to handle me this responsibility he said because I was the most social employee working in that branch. His answer motivated me to focus more, build more relationships and learn how to put these relationships into good use.
During my time at the bank I met a lot of people also coming from different nationalities and societies, communicating with them was a great challenge and that was when I believed in my good networking skills as I was able to deal with them perfectly & efficiently and they reported satisfaction of my services. And I wish to use my skills to help me precede my future career goal.
I used my networking skills and good relationships with clients as a search engine for accounting jobs and started interviewing immediately, that's how I got my current job...!
Chevening community integrates people from different countries and cultures, these people are chosen with specific chevening standards to fit perfectly into its community and to be the future leaders, engaging with this community will help me expand my perceptions and I can use my previous multinational / cultural networking experience to merge with these people perfectly.
Reem, your first paragraph, the introduction is a throw away. Why are you defining what networking means to the reviewer? That is totally unnecessary and only takes attention away from your actual response that starts in the next paragraph. Don't waste space and word count. Always respond immediately to the prompt. That response should be interesting enough to serve as the hook that will reel in the reviewer. Right now, you don't really have an effective hook with that opening statement.
With regards to the paragraph about the conference, I feel that the kind of work that you did there would be better placed in the leadership and influence Chevening prompt rather than the networking skills prompt. The work that you did during the conference did not really require much networking as all of the contacts already existed since the conference is a yearly thing. You were only using already existing contacts at that point and did not really have to set up a network from scratch. If you can adjust the essay to show an incident during that time when you had to create your own business contact and create an original network for yourself, then we can use that paragraph. Otherwise, I think you can skip that also and just concentrate on paragraph 3.
In paragraph 3, you should expose the reviewer to the methods that you used to create the social contacts for the bank and their clients. How did you create these contacts? Did you attend conferences? Join parties? Engage in company sponsored networking activities? Can you better illustrate the way this job required you to develop your networking skills? I really believe that this paragraph in particular can contain the relevant networking information that the prompt requires. You just have to recall how you did it. Don't forget to explain how you were able to eventually use these contacts on behalf of the bank or your clients on order to drive the point home.
The last line you wrote about how you got your current job, is that a part of the essay? If so, it needs to be better developed and please, never use an exclamation point when writing a formal essay. The reviewer will take that to mean that you are shouting at him or her. A simple pause in the form of a period will suffice.
Thank you for your reply i will work on the adjustments immediately.
Here are the rest of my essays waiting for your opinion about them.
Studying in the UK Question :
Accounting has been my passion ever since I took my 1st accounting class during my 1st year of university and that passion extended to my 3rd year where I chose Accounting as my major , further more to my graduation project where i led a research about the difference between theoretical accounting and practical accounting;( as a fresh accounting student I wanted to know the nature of the field and career I liked) where I established a research plan and I conducted a questionnaire in one of the leading companies in Sudan to help me get different point of views coming from different experiences about the importance of accounting practical experience in comparison to theoretical knowledge . Continued until my graduation (choosing accounting as a major included).
After graduation, I couldn't wait until I find a job in my field so I decided to give myself a chance to try different fields because I deeply believe that all business administration fields are interconnected to each other, so I went on trying different ones.
During my previous experiences- trying Sales, Marketing & Customer Services as I learned a lot of new things; I was able to do each & every one of my previous internships/ jobs in a professional and efficient manner. Getting the different experiences, only assured me and made me realize that Accounting & Banking are the fields I want to proceed; out of all the jobs I had I am enjoying my current job as an Accountant the most. I enjoy the challenge it gives me, the focus it requires of me & I work 12 hours a day without feeling the need to stop.
Ever since I realized that, I started putting all my focus into accounting; started studying and preparing for my CMA (Certified Managerial Accountant), through taking the prep course for the first part exam, which I'm planning to take in January, 2016 and for the second part in May, 2016. I also started interviewing for accounting jobs until I got my current job. What I learned from the survey I conducted for my graduation project was what builds a good accountant is the coherent consistent relationship between good basic knowledge of accounting theories, ethics and standards in solidarity with the continuous practice.
Due to all of the aforementioned, I have chosen to apply for the Banking & Finance (charted Banker) because it will equip me for career promotion and employment in financial sector. And also chosen the international / accounting and finance MSc courses because it will provide me with a solid platform of specific subject knowledge alongside a set of highly valuable transferable employability skills and due to its accreditation by the ACCA ; I will be awarded exemptions from certain papers of ACCA examination which am planning to take in the future.
I have selected my three chosen university courses because of their high ranking among global higher education institutions.
Career plan Question :
I believe in the power of education and the important role academics play in the development of oneself and their communities as a whole.
Accounting is my passion, my career goal is to have my own accounting and finance consultancy in Sudan. In order to achieve that goal I need to have a balanced mixture between academic and work experiences. For the academics part, I intend to get the best post graduation credentials through obtaining my masters degree from the UK, which the chevening (if accepted) will provide me with. Hence, the masters represent the foundation and the work represents the building blocks in order to achieve my goal. The Chevening will also provide me with the chance I have worked so hardly to attain and will provide me with the platform I need in order to achieve my career goal.
I have always had a dream to build something that helps eliminate poverty in my country. I believe that a project like this can serve my country best in terms of improvement and development. The project is to establish a charity institution that will provide a number of services for people in need; this institution will work in coordination's with different sectors: education, health, provision of food supplies, and provision of shelters for the homeless. Education development plan is; establishing agreements between my institution and the ministry of higher education in Sudan to provide under and post grad scholarships for students, this scholarship serves two goals: motivating students to get higher grades to earn the scholarship, and giving them the best education needed funded by the scholarship. Health support plan: provision of health insurance that can also be done through agreements with insurance companies and ministry of health to provide health insurance policy that guarantees best health care for elder and people in need. All other aspects will be carried out the same way. What links my dream to my project is that I will allocate a fixed portion of my accounting consultancy profits for charity (funding my project) and community services.
The globally good repetition of the Chevening scholarships has inspired me, I aspire that one day my project can reach the same level of excellence and creditability that chevening has, although I realize that this requires a great effort not only from me as a project leader but also from the youth, community and government in Sudan. I try to be realistic and understanding of all the current and future challenges my project might face but am also optimistic and ambitious that with my ambition and determination nothing is unachievable.
looking forward for your reply
Reem, let's see your first response to the prompt, just looking at your essay and reading part of it as well the EF contributors remarks, it seems like there's a lot of work to be done, so let's get started.
- gave me the confidence to deal with the different nationalities ,
- more freely having no doubts aboutenhance my good communication
- skills and also gave me the chance to develop and improve these skillsdiscover other interpersonal skills that I have .
Reem, I'm sorry but I have to stop editing the rest of the part because as I read the rest of the response, it felt like it's a definition of the words networking skills only to a different level and elaborated over again, what the prompt is asking is a process in which your networking skills is proven and what this can do to help in attaining your goals and in contributing to the society as a whole.
I'm not sure how would you like to revise the essay but I suggest that you do the following;
- should you want to follow the same story in this response, cite an example where you have directed somebody in the group and this lead them to be able to their part in the program
- how does this event lead you to meeting different people and sharing your ideas to them resulted to what?
- how did you keep a balance group of successful individuals, you may not be a leader but regardless of the position, how did you affect your group to keep consistency and spark dedication to their work or projects
Lastly, being able to create a network does not necessarily mean that you need them for a job, a position or to attain your goals, they can be people that eventually be your lifelong friends.
I hope to see a revision of this prompt here on EF so we can assist you further.
