Use Information Literacy and Communication Skills at Work
The information literacy and communication skills you build in college will be valuable assets after you graduate. Not only will you use them during the job-application process, but they’re also important for accomplishing tasks and sharing your ideas with others once you’re on the job.
WRITING PROMPT: Ask students to practice talking about their accomplishments by writing a self-evaluation of their progress in this class to date. Encourage students to focus on achievements and progress made, rather than on areas where growth is needed.
Sell Yourself to Potential Employers
No matter what your occupation, being able to write and speaking intelligently about your own skills and experiences can help you “sell” yourself to potential employers. You’ll likely need to write a résumé and a cover letter as part of the job-application process and to go on interviews. If you have weak writing and speaking skills, you’ll find it hard to convince potential employers that you’re the ideal candidate. In addition, many organizations ask employees to complete an annual self-evaluation, which often involves writing and presenting a summary of your accomplishments. You’ll need information literacy skills in order to pull together, evaluate, and present that information.
ACTIVITY: Have students create a commercial selling themselves to prospective employers. Remember: Commercials are short and contain only the most salient information. What do students want potential employers to know about them?
Work with Information Effectively
Information literacy and communication skills can help you work with information effectively once you’re on the job. In fact, in a recent survey employers listed oral communication, writing, and information literacy as three of the top six skills colleges should emphasize for new graduates.5 Look at Table 10.1 for ideas about how people in various occupations might use the skills in this chapter. Then ask yourself: “How will I use them in my desired field?”
ACTIVITY: Divide the class into small groups and assign each group a common profession. Ask students to brainstorm ways in which someone in that profession has to work with information and communicate effectively. Then have the groups report back to the class.
| Career | Example |
|---|---|
| Nonprofit campaign manager | Research past campaigns, identify best practices used by successful campaigns, and communicate ideas for a new campaign to the project team. |
| Computer systems administrator | Find and evaluate software options in response to a new security threat. Write a report describing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. |
| Soil conservationist | Collect soil samples, analyze them, and write a report documenting your findings. |
| Radiologic technologist | Stay up-to-date on scanning procedures, explain them to patients, and direct patients’ actions during scans. |
Communicate Your Great Ideas
Your experiences on the job can inspire you to develop big, creative ideas — for example, plans for new products that will boost sales or new processes that will increase efficiency. To showcase your creativity or share your ideas, you need to communicate them verbally or in writing. For example, if you’re a software developer, you might give a presentation about how your new app will revolutionize social networking. As an astronomer, you might write a scientific paper to detail your discovery of a distant galaxy. When you know how to express your ideas effectively, you can make a meaningful contribution to your company or organization, your community, your customers — and even your own professional development.
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voices of experience: employee
MANAGING AND COMMUNICATING
INFORMATION
| NAME: | Matt Mahler |
| PROFESSION: | Production Supervisor |
| SCHOOL: | Southern New Hampshire University |
| DEGREE: | Associate of Arts |
| MAJOR: | General Studies |
“Clearly communicating information … helped improve the efficiency of the factory and cut our mistakes down to nearly zero.”
Writing and communicating were among my strongest areas in college, and I continue to use these skills on the job. Before my recent promotion to Production Supervisor, I served as the Interim Production Manager at the bread factory where I work. Obtaining ingredient information, determining its quality, and creating a way to manage and then communicate that information were all skills I used to do my job.
Before I took this position, people had to guess how many ingredients to order each week, and this caused us to fall short a lot. The ordering process was also problematic, as orders were written on a form and faxed to the supplier. To improve the quality of information we were working with, I started using Excel to track our daily ingredient usage to be more precise in weekly ingredient ordering. I also changed the ordering procedure: I e-mailed our order, which eliminated the problem of lost or unreadable faxes and created a record of our weekly orders.
Closely monitoring ingredient usage also helped me communicate more effectively with the mixers. I could see when there was an overscaling of ingredients, and I had tangible data to show the mixers while I coached them. Being able to quantify the ingredients that were being overscaled into dollar amounts gave the mixers a clear picture of what was happening and how important it was to avoid waste.
Overall, managing information and then clearly communicating information to my production team and supplier helped improve the efficiency of the factory and cut our mistakes down to nearly zero.
YOUR TURN: If you’re currently employed, what kinds of information do you need to find, and in what ways do you communicate that information? If you’re not employed but have a particular career in mind, how will knowing how to find and communicate information help you excel in that career?
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