By David E. Gordon
Good verbal communication skills, the ability to communicate your thoughts
effectively, is one of the most important skills you must master to get a
good job and advance within your chosen field.
Everything starts with your ability to be able to effectively express or
present ideas, opinions, objections, emotions, directions, dissatisfaction
and pleasure. While its importance is critical to success in business, it is
very often the skill we most take for granted or assume we have, since we've
been communicating with people and getting what we need or want, more or
less, all of our lives. Also, the people you interact with most often are
probably close to your age and communicate the same way you do.
O.K., so...like..., what's the problem?
A potential problem is that business communication can be different than
social discourse. For one thing, you will be interacting with a wider
variety of individuals with different educational backgrounds, ages and
experience levels. And each, especially your future corporate recruiter or
supervisor will have expectations about your job performance based upon your
ability to express yourself effectively. A study of unnecessary reasons for
job interview failure, by a large big ten university, listed poor
expression, diction or grammar as one of the major reasons for rejection in
job interviews.
The good news is that it will be relatively easy for you to learn to
communicate effectively in a business environment. Below are five
suggestions for improving your verbal communication skills to prepare for
those all important job interviews and your first job.
- Get one or more internships while you're in college. Apart from the
learning experience, you'll be in a business environment where you can
listen to how individuals present ideas to clients, argue points of
difference with associates and generally conduct themselves with their
counterparts. You'll also be forced to communicate in an organized and more
formal fashion.
- Don't be afraid to express your ideas in your classes. Use the
interaction with your instructor to sharpen your ability to think on your
felt, use proper grammar and make points of view. Overcoming a fear of
talking in class is a great way to practice, with instructors who take your
points of view seriously.
- Get a part-time sales job, even if it's only over the holidays. It will
help you gain confidence in expressing yourself and reduce possible shyness
you might have among strangers.
- Practice talking with relatives or family friends who are older than you,
about a subject that requires you to express ideas or emotion and talk in
extended sentences. In an interview situation, when you are applying for a
job, this ability to express your feelings and experiences in an
enthusiastic manner is a critical skill that will separate you from the
pack.
- In discussions with friends, parents and in class, practice using facts
to buttress a point of view rather than just your opinion. One way to
practice this is to read the paper for a week or two about a particular
subject, whether it's a political race or another news story, so that you're
able to express an opinion and support it with facts. The substitution of
facts for opinions in conversation is particularly important to the
acceptance of a new employee as a contributor in a business meeting.
You've studied hard and taken a variety of courses to prepare yourself for a
career after college. Don't neglect your acquisition of one of the most
important skills which could make you stand out from the crowd: the ability
to effectively communicate your thoughts.
--
David E. Gordon is the Director of Advertising and Promotion Internships
in the Marketing Communications Department at Columbia College in Chicago,
Illinois.
