It is extremely important to manage ourselves in order to be a better person and achieve our goals in life. Nobody is always perfect, every one has some strengths and some weakness, but we all should look for opportunities to convert our weakness into strength. This portfolio contains every thing about me, starting from scratch till the present and also about the future. While doing this portfolio I came across many new skills about myself, I went through many management test, EQ test, verbal as well as numerical test etc.
REFLECTION
Reflection exercise attached in appendix- page 1
[Refer to appendix- page 1]
PERSONEL ASPIRATION REVIEW
BACKGROUND
My name is Karan Seth, 20 years of age. I am hardworking and sincer. My school principal, where I studied for 9 years also believes that. [Refer to appendix- page 2] and believe in myself. I have never travelled anywhere without my parents untill one day my father deicided that I will be studying in London after my ‘o’ levels in India.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO STUDY FOR A DEGREE
I have been studying in Delhi Public School and had english as the medium of education since my childhood. In India the education system a bit different from here in UK. The student have to decide if they wish to go for the science or the commerece stream in their 11th standards and only those students who get more than a 70% overall along with good marks in science in class 10th are allowed to opt for sicence in 11th. I was hard worker and wanted to become a engineer in future. I got 70% aggreate marks and I got 75 in science in paricular [Refer to appendix page 3], which helped in to opt for science in class 11th. Science was not as pretty as it looked. I did not realize that my apptitude was not the theories and models, instead my interest was in knowing the concepts and appling in real life. When I did not perform well, the principle gave me an option of choosing commerece, if I promised to work really hard and live up to the expectations as I will be doing two years of education in one year. I put in all my efforts worked day and night. Finally at the end the result said it all. I got [70%] almost same marks as the students studying the same course for two years in class 12th. [Refer to appendix- page 4] And 75 in business studies in particular and 64 in Economics.

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Therefore, getting into a Bachelors of business administration degree was because my own interst. My father being my inspiration, I decided to do something which the world should be proud of. This degree will provide me with all the skills and knowledge I need in order to become a Marketing/Finance manager. The degree is fast tracked, economical and well managed.
HOW DOES THIS FIT IN YOUR LIFE & CAREER PLANS
The bachelors in business administration is basically the first step in the ladder to my goal in life. In order to become a manager in Finance/Marketing I had to go through this degree programm.
REVIEWING OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
For the future the next step in the ladder is doing Masters in business administration from London Business School. Persuing masters in LBS is a big deal as it requires a capital of £42,000 [Refere appendix- page 5]and 2-3 years of working experience to get into a good university.
PLANNING AHEAD
In future I want to go for either Masters in business administration or do Msc in Finance. But before doing any of these courses I have to have a two years of job experince after my bachelors. So, I will apply for graduates jobs in London after my degree and gain the experience in my relevant field.
SWOT ANALYSIS ON MYSELF
STRENGTH:

WEAKNESS:

OPPORTUNITY:

I can change my weakness to my strength by this degree.

‘Practice makes a man perfect’- I will make sure that I work in teams and perform group presentations in class.

THREATS:

Not scoring a good mark/degree in the present course

Competition in the market [future industry]

Political issue regarding visa

PERSONEL SKILLS REVIEW
“To be skilled is to be able to perform a learned activity well and at will”
(Cotrell S. 2003)
RITE MORE
MANAGEMENT MODEL
According to the management guru’s including Henny Fayol , Peter Drucker, Fredrik Taylor, Marry P. Follet, Charles Hndy etc. have a certain things in common that is skills required at workplace. The key skills required at a modern workplace are: Planning, time management skills, communication skills, decision making skills, IT skills …………
MANAGEMENT SKILLS BY FAYOL
WHAT MANAGEMENT SKILLS DO U HAVE
In order to find out more about my management skills, I went through various managerial test in order to find out my skills.

The test gave out 18 attributes of leadership, which were organised into four main dimensions- Creating the future, Ideas into action, Enthusing , growing and appreciating others and clarifying values.
Out of 18 my top six attributes were: Visonary, Opportunity awareness, single-mindedness, proactive, enabler and leacy builder.
Out of 18, the four lowest scoring attributes were: consistent, enthuser, values champion and team builder.
[Refer to appendix- page 6]
I had a module of leadership and group working in college in which I secured 72% marks. The study in the module included various management and leadership rolesin the modern workplace. The assesment was on the topic that does a manager requires leadership skills.
[Refer to appendix- page 7]

I performed two learning activities, one from the Kolb’ learning cycle and other one from Bell’s learning model.
Kolb’s learning cycle has Activist, Reflector, Theorist and pragmatist. After performing the activity, I came to know that I am a activist.
[Refer to appendix- page 8]

I had a module named IT skills in the college and I secured the highest marks in the class. It skills module included …………..
IT is important in all fields. People can not even think of spending one day without IT and its applications. For a student, a laptop is his best friend as it allows him to be in touch with the world. Therefore, in order to do MBA, I have to give various online test and in my workplace as well dealing with information technology is unavoidale .
[Refer to appendix- page 9]

Identification and execution

In order to identify the problem, one has to be very critical in his approach and analyse the data and present it in various graphs forms to have a better idea. I had a test of Data collection and interpretation in my degree in which I secured 79% which is extremely good as it will help me in case of analysing the companies financial conditions.
[Refer to appendix- page 10]
PERSONAL PERCEPTION AND VALUES
I have a high values and morales. I believe that every one should strive and work to be the best but sometimes I do feel that competition should not be there in the society as it tends to become a burden for student who has pressure form his family and friends to do his best and beat the others, people forget that only one person can be the winner and everybody does not have the same way of thinking and cannot be best at everything as some might be good in reading, some might be good in writing.
I often think about myself and future, my current skills and the ones which I need to develop. I did a few self-evaluation activities which gave me a better picture of myself, answering my current skills and qualities [Refer to appendix- page 11]. My other developed skills required in the future are:
Planning- planning is deciding in advance what to do how to do and for whom is to do. It bridges the gap between where we are and we wish to be. It is required at all levels of management; it is an on going process through out our lives, which is very important from the point of view of achieving the desired goals. I makes plans even for small things like spending the vacations with friends, planning makes me feel comfortable and relaxed. During college days I use to submit all my assignments on time. This will really help me in the workplace.
[Refer appendix- Page 12]
Decision making- it is the process leading to the selection of a course of action among alternatives. Every decision making produces a final choice. It can be an action or an opinion. It begins when we need to do something but we do not know what therefore, decision making is a reasoning process which can be rational or irrational.
Writing skills- In context to communication skill, the other developed skill which I have is writing skills, I can really express my self better in the written part of speech, I have taken part in various essay writing competitions and won the first and sometimes second prize as well. I can pen down my emotions and feeling on the paper very easily, basically while writing I can really go into the depth of the topic.
Team worker- He is the person who is most aware of the needs of the team, the concern and the needs of the members. I do not feel comfortable working in groups as I feel every person has a different approach towards life and have a different set of ideas, so I do not think they are able to solve a particular problem or can reach to a final conclusion for a problem. Thus I need to develop my negative skill to positive and hence I need to develop this skill of mine.
Some of my developed skills are from my school days where I used to have my daily time table table for my day to day activity, this in return helped me to become punctual and I understud the importance of time and I understood that once time passes it never comes back, therefore every second of our life is very precious.
Where as regarding my decision making skill, I developed at my work place, when ever I have been given more work to do at one time, the I have to set my own priorities of work, which means I had to take decisions on my own as to which work should I do first keeping in mind their importance and dead line.
As far as writing skills are concerned I can really express my self better in the written part of speech, I have taken part in various essay writing competitions and won prizes. I can pen down my emotions and feeling on the paper very easily and I can write along with thinking about it.
CARRER PLANNING
Vocational qualifications
In future, I need some more knowledge and education in order to apply for Masters in Finance, I need to do a course apart from my Business degree, some courses like ACCA and in case of Marketing I might have to do CIM- Charted institute of Marketing. Both are flexible courses and are well recognised in their own fields all over the world.
CIM- It is Europe’s leading provider of marketing ans sales courses. The aim of CIM is to develop individuals marketing and sales skills through distance learning courses. It is the world’s largest marketing body working with the marketing profession, government and industry to develop International business.
ACCA- It is a world class body of knowledge, in every 8 minutes someone registers as an ACCA student in the world. ACCA has been established for more than 100 years now and gain a standard reputation in the field of professional education.
Fee structure of CIM as per course

COURSES

INTERNATINAL APPICATION

UK APPLICANTION

Intro Certificate in Marketing

£85

£120

Prof Certificate in Marketing

£85

120

Prof Diploma in Marketing

£125

£160

Prof Postgradz Diploma

£165

£200

In ACCA, the course length depends upon the candidate and the fee depends on the length of the course and the exams taken.
THE WORLD OF WORK
JOB MARKET ANALYSIS
In future I would either gofor RETAIL INDUSTRY. Marketing or finance.
Since, I have been working as a sales advisor in Marks & Spenser from more than two year and people know me as well. The management is happy with my performance as I has a pay raise. Sometimes when there is no supervisor, I also perform the role of a supervisor in their absence. In my near future I would like to get into Retail industry with either finance or Marketing sector.
[Refer appendix: pagge 13]
Paradigm Shift for Retail Focus
Over the last decade or so, retailers world over have focused their resources to create efficiencies in their sourcing, supply chains and store operations with the purpose of reducing the operating costs and maintaining a hold on their thin margins. [http://www.dmreview.com/dmdirect/20060707/1057744-1.html ]
The list of the biggest retailers in the world is dominated by the grocers:

SWOT
STRENGTH:
Retal is the second-largest industry both in number of employees as well as number of establishments in US. The industry generates $3.8 trillion in retail sales annual.
The largest retailer in the world is Wal-Mart with more than $312 billion sales per year. Wal-Mart employees 400,000 employees all over the world, including 1.3 milion in US itself.
WEAKNESS
OPPORTUNITY
The retail market in the UK is considered to be mature so it is unlikely to see the large expansion that occurred in the 1980s. Large retailers are likely to remain the dominant players while trying to increase their market share through mergers and acquisitions. Premium operators such as John Lewis, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer, with their focus on high-value, high-quality, diversified product range and customer service, will also continue their strong trading performance.
New systems will enable retailers to find out how shoppers choose goods. Cameras catch the customer’s gaze and determine the effect of particular colours, special offers and placing, as well as how many brands are considered and for how long.
THREATS :
Internet shopping soared by 50% in the ten weeks leading up to Christmas 2005 and shoppers spent £4.9billion online in the same. Consumers are expanding their horizons in terms of the products they’re willing to shop for online, with clothes, health and beauty, books and CDs being the main drivers.
Safety and security is a concern for retailers and consumers. Secure browsers and sophisticated websites will alleviate these fears in the future.
Internet shopping will not, however, spell the end for shops. People will continue to see shopping in stores as an enjoyable social event.
FACTS & FIGURES: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/

According to the national Statistics, done in June 2005 the rtail industry has employed 2.9 million people which is 1 in every 9 or 11% of the working UK population.

UK retail sales were approximately £260billion in 2005.

11% of all VAT-registered businesses in the UK are retailers, with the total number currently at 180,875.

UK retail sales were £265 billion in 2007, larger than the combined economies of Denmark and Portugal.

Retail sales account for 1/5 of the UK economy.

The retail sector generates almost 8% of the Gross Domestic Product of the UK.

More than a third of consumer spending goes through shops.

Sales over the internet account for less than 4% of total retail sales, despite

strong growth in recent years.

The retail industry employed over 3.0 million people as at the end of December 2007.

This equates to 11% of the total UK workforce.

Over the last five years, employment in retailing has grown by 50,402

CHANGING WORKPLACE
CARRER PATHS
CURRENT AND FUTURE WORK PATTERNS
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN
FIVE AREAS TO DEVELOP

A personal development plan helps a student to :

Improve their general skills for study and career development.

Become more effective independent and confident self-directed learners.

Encourage continous / lifelong learning and take self responsibility.

Identify their strength and weaknesses.

Area of skill behaviour you would like to develop further.

Why it is important to you in relation to your ambitions.

How you will work on this development. Who or what can help or support you in this respect.

Numerical skills
[Refer to appendix page: 14]

[Refer to appendix page: 15] class teachers boli good tha .

Verbal skills
[Refer to appendix page: 16]

Want to work as a finance/marketing manager. I need good communicational skills and good command over my vocabulary in order to communicate with my clients at workplace.

The inter-personal skills mainly develops by practice, the more we communicate with people, more effect we will have in our language, so I will start giving presentations, taking part in all kinds of debate competition as well.
I can only help Myself to improve over my less developed inter-personal skills. As nobody else know me better than myself. [Refer to appendix page: 14]

Time management
[Refer to appendix page: 17, 18]

. s
S
S

[Refer to appendix page: 19]
[Refer to appendix page: 20]

Team-work skils
[Refer to appendix page: 6]

S
S
S

PSYCHOMETRIC TEST
The types of psychometric test are:
Ability test-
Ability test measure a persons potential, for instance to learn the skills needed for a new jobor to cope up with the demands of a training course. Test is divded into four main sections- numerical ability, verbal ability, non-verbal ability and spatial ability.
An example of ability test would be GAT- General Ability Test.
Aptitude test-
An aptitude test os more job specific. These test tend to be job related and have names that include jo title such as the programmers Aptitude Series (SHL). [Refer to appendix page: 16]
Personality test-
Some people have distunguish features from others, which maked them unique
MBTI TEST [Refer appendix- page 21]
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE or EQ
[220]
Emotional Intelligent as defined by Thorndike, is ‘the ability to understand and relate to people’. Daniel Goleman (1996) says ‘the capacity for recognising our own feeling and those of others, for motivating ourselves and for managing emotions well in ourself and in others’.
Now, EQ is totally different from the cognitive intelligence, i.e. IQ. IQ is a measure of an individual’s personalinformation bank- one’s memory, vocabulary and visual motor co-ordination.
Emotional Intelligence involves:

Knowing the appropiate feeling for the circumstances.

Experiancing the appropiate feeling for the circumstances

Expressing feeling apprpiate to the circumstances.

Making opportunities to express feelings

[Refer to appendix page: 22]
(S. Cottrell, 2003)
CV
APPENDIX
Curriculum Vitae
KARAN SETH
30,GURNEY ROAD, STRATFORD, LONDON. E15 1SH
PHONE: 07930464295
EMAIL: karan.seth@stu.ctlondon.ac.uk
NATIONALITY: Indian
DATE OF BIRTH: 13/10/1987
EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS:

Year

Qualifications

School/College/University

2006-2008

BA (HONS) Business Management

University of Wales, Lampeter

2006

Higher Secondary Examinations (10+2)

Delhi Public School, Kanpur

2004

Secondary Examinations (year 10)

Delhi Public School, Kanpur

WORK EXPERIENCE:

March 2007, Marks & Spenser, London, UK

Team Leader / Sales Advisor

Ensures services provided by the department are always carried out to defined standard with the utmost efficiency, consistency and courtesy as detailed in the department operational manual.

To handle all customer complaints and inquiries in a courteous and efficient manner, following through to make sure problems are resolved satisfactorily.

To ensure that all employees in the outlet deliver the brand promise and provide exceptional guest service at all times.

To assist in the inventory management and ongoing maintenance of stocks and inventory taking as required.

Training of new joinees according to the standards laid down by Marks & Spenser.

Maintaining positive guest and colleague interaction with good working relationships.

Monitoring operating supplies and reduce spoilage and wastage.

Ensures the place of work & surrounding area is hygienic and organized at all times.

Motivating and leading a team of committed professionals to achieve 100% in customer service.

Worked part-time as a Food and Beverage Assistant at Landmark, Kanpur, India, 2005

ACHIEVEMENTS

Secured 1ST class in the college in BBA in the present term.

Secured above 70% in aggregate all through the educational tenure.

Served as the President of the Student Union in the year 2004 -2006 at Delhi Public School, India.

Won many Inter-school Sports and debate competitions in India.

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES:

Excellent communication skills, good Inter-personal skills and a proactive problem solver.

Value teamwork, have good team building skills and can communicate effectively with all levels of employees.

Customer-oriented, friendly, honest, fair and approachable.

Have a positive “can do” attitude, highly motivated, innovative, passionate and seeking opportunity to be multi-skilled and trained.

Established leadership skills cultivated through intensive training as a Management Trainee.

Ability to adapt to changing environment and desire to work on new projects.

High degree of integrity.

Possess the ability to perform best under pressure.

DOCUMENTS ATTACHED

Self evaluation- current skillls

Inventory profile for management skills

Learning styles inventory

Reference letters- teacher and principle

Assignment feedback sheets

Pay raise letter with pay slip

useful links
Cottrell Stella (1999). The study skills handbook. Published by : Palgrave Macmillan. in New York . US.
Cottrell Stella (2003). Skills for success. Published by: Palgrave Macmillian. New York , US.

http://www.ucc.vt.edu/stdyhlp.html [TIME N STUDY SKILLS]

http://www.quintcareers.com/career_assessment.html [COLLECTION OF MANY TEST . GOOD ONE ]

http://careerplanning.about.com/od/careertests/Free_Self_Assessment_Tools_Online.htm [OK OK]

TEST LINKZ:
http://www.inspiredleadership.org.uk/ [NUMERICAL N VERBAL]
http://www.myskillsprofile.com/ [LEADERSHIP, EMOTIONAL INTELL, TEAM ROLES, PERSONALITY PROFILE, ] [HAVE TO PAY]
http://retailindustry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=retailindustry&cdn=money&tm=1108&gps=182_807_868_568&f=21&su=p554.2.150.ip_&tt=11&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.brc.org.uk/latestdata.asp%3FiCat%3D52%26sCat%3DRETAIL%2bKEY+FACTS [facts n fingures]
http://www.dmreview.com/dmdirect/20060707/1057744-1.html
http://retailindustry.about.com/od/abouttheretailindustry/p/retail_industry.htm
http://www.shoppertrak.com/index.php
http://www.ca.courses-careers.com/retail.htm
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Explore_job_sectors/Retail/overview/p!egiLLL
http://www.personalitypathways.com/dom-ni.html
http://www.personalitypathways.com/
http://www.ucc.vt.edu/stdyhlp.html [IMAGE FROM LINK]
management model ‘Fayols 14 principles;