Essential Requirements: Excellent Interpersonal And Communication Skills

SKILLS/PERSONAL REQUIREMENTS

Essential Requirement 1 - Excellent interpersonal and communication skills including the ability to manage expectations, advise and influence stakeholders and provide verbal and written updates to senior colleagues.

Coherent communication is at the heart of everything that I do. My oral communication skills have developed through public speaking courses, giving presentations in both my academic and professional career, and through pitching media stories via the phone. My written communication skills have similarly developed over the years through university courses on creative nonfiction writing, persuasive writing and media writing, but also through professional experience. During my time at Dunn & Associates,

I have always been commended for my strong writing skills, particularly my ability to self-edit and alter my language and tone for various audiences. I actually enjoy editing and proof-reading content, and am often the person my classmates, colleagues or friends come to when they need a second set of eyes. I like to say that I have a lifelong commitment to good grammar and believe my careful proofreading skills and attention to detail are part of what makes my writing so strong. I use these skills in any writing context, be it for print or the web, and never rely on (or trust) spellcheck to do the work for me.

Essential Requirement 3 - Excellent organisational and project management skills including the ability to prioritise tasks and juggle changing

A master’s degree is extremely self guided and requires discipline to go above and beyond the basic requirements and to learn what you have truly enrolled in the course to learn. As a postgraduate student, I was often left to my own devices to make judgments about how best to manage my time and seek out the resources necessary to conduct research and produce documents and assignments. This was particularly true in my winter semester, as I was balancing a full course load along with my involvement in a research project with Electoral Reform Society Scotland to conduct research meant to inform the Lobbying (Scotland) Act, which was passed on 10 March 2016. As part of the research placement, I was actively re-evaluating the bill at each stage and using my best judgment to decide what research and communication was necessary to make the greatest impact. Through the course, I created my own schedules and developed weekly and monthly plans and goals to ensure I was not only meeting course requirements but learning to the best of my ability. As a result, I will soon graduate with a master’s degree with distinctions in five of my six classes and one