Раздел 3. Введение в профессиональную коммуникацию

Раздел 3. Введение в профессиональную коммуникацию

Тема 3. People and Employment

Целью изучения данной темы является овладение учащимися фактической, терминологической, лексико-грамматической информацией, которая позволяет на английском языке описать и проанализировать процессы и ситуации, связанные с приемом на работу и развитием карьеры сотрудника. В результате изучения темы студенты должны: •  знать возможные способы мотивации и стимулирования; факторы, побуждающие людей выбирать ту или иную работу; стандартную процедуру приема сотрудников на работу и характерные особенности каждого этапа этой процедуры; факторы, влияющие на эффективное управление персоналом; возможные пути и средства профессионального совершенствования и развития карьеры; •  уметь составить резюме и подготовиться к собеседованию, проводимому при приеме на работу; проанализировать ситуацию, связанную с управлением персоналом, выявить основные проблемы и предложить пути их решения; •  быть ознакомлены с наиболее типичными современными вопросами в области управления персоналом.

Оглавление

Questions to be considered. 1

People. 1

Employment 2

Managing people. 6

Careers. 8

Test yourself 9

Библиография. 10

Questions to be considered

•  people;

•  employment;

•  managing people;

•  careers.

People

People work because of different reasons. The most typical are their inner needs:

•  the need for successful and pleasant social interaction;

•  the need for social status;

•  the need to achieve something in life and be acknowledged for this.

If a person is willing to work, he/she is usually called motivated. Motivation is eagerness and willingness to do something without needing to be told or forced to do it.

But the desire to work doesn’t appear only as a result of a person’s wish. To become a motivated worker, a person usually demands some efforts from the company as well. The process of encouraging people for work is called “stimulation”.

The main and the most influential stimulating factor for people is money. For his/her work a person gets a salary (wages) usually on a regular basis and some recurrent payments as a reward for a well-done the general rules of our life we are forced to earn money.

Besides a salary, a company provides its staff with other incentives:

•  Training to bring the staff in the know of company procedures and keep their skills and knowledge up-to-date.

•  Travelling abroad on business purposes and for rest.

•  Organizing social life of employees: holding informal meetings, throwing corporate parties, going out together.

•  Providing job security and support: this includes not being afraid to lose the job, providing a paid leave, giving medical insurance for employees and members of their families, organizing some additional pension funds.

•  Public praise.

•  Making people proud for their company and what they produce.

Employment

If a company has a vacant job or position, it needs to employ a new worker. Instead of “to employ”, we can also say “to recruit”, “to take on”, “to hire”. To advertise a vacant position companies usually:

•  place a job advertisement (advert, ad – for short) in the appointments section of a newspaper/magazine;

•  advertise in the Internet on their own web-site or on specialized web-sites;

•  use the services of a recruitment agency (US – search firm).

In a job advertisement they may state the following information:

•  brief description of the company and its business;

•  job description;

•  requirements;

•  what work conditions and benefits the company offers to its employees;

•  how to apply for the job;

•  how to get in touch with the company.

People who are interested in the vacant position can apply for it by sending in a letter of application or covering letter (US – cover letter) and a curriculum vitae or CV (US – resume). Sometimes a company asks to complete an application form.

A CV should be word-processed, laser printed on good quality paper and usually no longer than two pages of A4 paper. Some specialists also advise to print your CV on coloured paper of some light colours to make it look different in a pile of CVs, but the choice should depend on a situation. The main goal of a CV is to “sell yourself” to the company, which doesn’t mean selling your soul but only attracting the attention of the employers and making them interested in you. Therefore a CV should position you as a preferred candidate and contain all the appropriate details that show your suitability to the job and your uniqueness.

A typical CV usually contains the following elements:

	Curriculum Vitae
	Personal Details Melanie Henderson Date of birth: 3.11.1978 Marital status: single	Address: 99 Newlands Park London, SE30 8UJ Tel: 0 E-mail: melanie. *****@***net
Put the most recent studies first.	Education 1997-present	Degree in French and Film Studies, University of London Royal Latin School, Aylesbury “A” levels in French, German, English, Film studies
Put the most recent experience first and do not to leave any gaps.	Work experience 1999 1998	Information Officer, Futuroscope, France Responsible for dealing with enquiries in a busy office, responding to 2,000 enquiries a week. This demonstrated my ability to retain a professional approach and a sense of humour while working under pressure. Customer Services Assistant Provided support for customer enquiries. Dealing with customers’ complaints demonstrated my ability to remain calm under pressure. Explaining complex issues simply and clearly helped me to develop my communication skills.
If you don’t have a lot of work experience, this section shows your potential.	Positions of responsibility In my final year at school, I helped organise a careers fair for all final year students
	Skills IT Languages Additional	Good working knowledge of Microsoft Word and Excel Spreadsheets Working knowledge of French and Italian Current clean driving licence
Add some details about your hobbies.	Interests Travel: I have travelled extensively and independently in Europe Music: I play the guitar in a semi-professional band and have done a number of ‘gigs’ for school and student clubs
Get the permission of a referee first.	Referees Hamish Roberts (Tutor at University in London) 17 Woodland Avenue Oxford, OX11 7GGR	Richard Gayle (Customer Service Manager) 31 Pleasant Street London, SE18 3LSR

Even though your CV may seem full, some companies will ask for additional details during a job interview because they could be interested not only in the candidate’s marital status but also his/her family background, as well as other things, sometimes rather unexpected: handwriting, sickness record, even astrological sign.

The letter of application is equally important as the CV because it produces on the employer the first impression about an applicant. It should be well-written and presented (see part 2 “Business letter writing”). Normally an application letter contains 4 paragraphs where an applicant:

·  confirms that he/she wishes to apply and says where he/she learned about the job;

·  says why he/she is interested in the position and relates his/her interests to those of the company;

·  shows how he/she can contribute to the job by highlighting the most relevant skills and experience;

·  indicates his/her willingness to attend and interview and possibly says when he/she would like to attend.

To draw up a good letter of application and CV often means to stay competitive on the labour market.

After a CV and a letter of application are received, the Human Resources department or other workers engaged study them thoroughly and prepare a short list of candidates, who are invited to attend a job interview.

A typical job interview includes the following stages:

Making the candidate feel at ease, holding a few minutes of neutral conversation – the interviewer greets the candidate and brings him/her into the office.

1.  Explaining the plan of the interview.

2.  Reviewing the candidate’s CV, asking questions about the CV or any other area that may interest the employer. This is usually the longest part of an interview that can demand a certain preparation from the candidate. For example, he/she may be asked what he/she knows about the future job and the company. It is often advised to anticipate the questions that can be asked and prepare the answers in advance.

3.  Nowadays companies very often expect from candidates to know the company and the future job already on the interview stage. It shows the candidate’s interest and enthusiasm about the job and usually impresses the interviewer greatly

4.  Describing the future job – the interviewer gives the candidate his/her views on the job.

5.  Answering questions – an interviewee gets a chance to find out what he/she is interested in about the company and the job.

6.  Summarizing – an interviewer summarizes the main points and explains what happens next.

The decision about hiring a new employee is taken individually or during a management meeting. A person can be offered employment over the telephone, by an official letter, or personally, when he/she comes back to the office on an appointed day. A respectable company usually informs about candidacy rejection officially as well.

Traditional job interviews are becoming now a thing of the past because some employers think that even a good education or a record of successful achievements doesn’t guarantee the same result in future. Some companies now put into practice so-called “stress interviews” when a candidate is deliberately put into a tricky situation: for example he/she can be treated impolitely and asked provocative questions about the personal life. This is done because businesses now value greatly the ability of their employees to work under pressure.

Employers nowadays also seek workers with leadership skills, creative approach to the situation and appreciate the ability for non-standard behaviour and way of thinking. An employer often expects that a candidate doesn’t agree with everything that he/she says, but argues and expresses his/her own opinion freely.

Another important aspect for employers is the candidate’s appearance, which together with the traits and skills mentioned above can show if a person suits the corporate culture.

Non-traditional interviews suggest unexpected tasks and questions so that an interviewee can’t be ready with the answers and reactions in advance and reveals the true sides of his/her personality. A candidate can be asked to sing a song, to dance, to tell a joke, to take part in a game. The general trend is that candidates now come to interviews being better prepared: they foresee the questions and even sometimes play a mock interview beforehand. Nevertheless, most companies have not yet accepted a non-traditional approach to job interviewing because it is usually more costly than a traditional one, while the supporters of a non-traditional approach argue that hiring a wrong employee may turn to be even more expensive.

A preparation stage for a job interview is of vital importance for a candidate especially if an interview will take place in a foreign language. To enrich the vocabulary, a person should first of all possess the dictionary skills. If to look up a word in the dictionary, it is possible to find the following information about a word:

•  its pronunciation(s);

•  its grammatical category i. e. noun (n), adjective (adj), verb (v/vb), adverb (adv), preposition (prep), phrasal verb (phr v) etc.

•  its meaning(s);

•  the way it can be used;

•  other ways it can be spelt;

•  its suffix forms;

•  its compound forms (when the word is used with another word).

Compound nouns are nouns that are made up of two or more words to form the single unit. They can be either written in one word (e. g. “troubleshooter”), separately as two words (e. g. “customer service”) or with a hyphen (e. g. “problem-solver”). There is no rule about it so it is better to check the way of writing in a dictionary.

Before being accepted for permanent employment, a person may be asked to complete a probation period. Usually during the probation period a candidate can be dismissed without any explanation. When a person leaves the job, we can use different words to describe the situation:

•  if a person leaves the job on his/her own will, we use “to resign” or “to quit the job”;

•  if an aged person leaves the job to get pension, we use the verb “to retire”;

•  if an employer makes somebody leave, then the employer can “sack”, “dismiss”, “discharge” or “fire”;

•  if the position itself is cancelled due to some financial problems of the company, we say that the person is made “redundant”.

Managing people

The responsibility to manage people is usually on Human Resources, or Personnel, department, though all the managers are in charge of their subordinates. To manage people effectively, they usually use both their experience in dealing with staff and a lot of scientific information in the such fields as psychology, sociology, even psychotherapy. It is also not bad to know the staff personally in order to meet their needs more precisely. Managers often hold meeting to share information and find efficient ways of dealing with the staff. Effective management can increase productivity of a company significantly but this could be a tough thing to achieve because people react differently to different management styles.

Different employees want to see different people as their managers. Some prefer a sympathetic and mild boss, who eagerly delegates the responsibility to his/her subordinates. Others, on the contrary, want to have a strict leader, who is always in control of what is happening in the company, leaves no space for creativity, but at the same time gives exact and clear orders. So it is not always possible to say definitely what traits of character a good manager should possess.

Many managers believe that building a strong closely-knit team is an important task of effective management. A significant role here is played by corporate culture – the way that people in a corporation think and behave. Here everything is important starting from how people in a company greet each other and finishing with the tradition to spend holidays with colleagues. In the latter case managers of a company believe that socialising and entertaining can help them to create team spirit. Socialising is spending time with other people in a friendly way. Very often socialising and entertaining means meeting colleagues from other countries when they are on business trips.

Managers need special skills to direct employees from different cultures. Management styles should depend on different national management standards that are accepted in various countries. For example, the British nation management style is usually considered more formal than Spanish but at the same time much less formal than Japanese. Another peculiarity of the Japanese is more male-dominated business.

The attitude to women at work may vary both from country to country as well as from company to company and even form one department to another. It is acknowledged that men and women have different management styles. Women are usually more collaborative than competitive and challenging; they eagerly welcome other’s contribution and as a result are ready to share credit for success, while men prefer personal achievements.

The problem that is connected with male and female management styles is that not all employees are ready to follow both of them and not everybody is ready to see a woman as a manager. Although more and more women now work as key officers in many companies, still the problem of “glass ceiling” continues to exist for business women – that is when a woman can’t be promoted further than a certain level though officially there are no visible obstacles.

The effectiveness of managing people in a company can be measured by analyzing different company characteristics:

•  the professional level of the staff;

•  the staff satisfaction with their work;

•  the level of staff turnover;

•  financial results and profits.

Describing skills

Verb and preposition combinations are often useful for describing skills and personal qualities, for example, those of a manager:

•  listen to the subordinates’ opinion

•  believe in the subordinates

•  delegate to employees eagerly

Some verbs combine with more than one preposition:

•  report to somebody on something

•  apologise to somebody for something

•  argue with somebody about something

Clauses of contrast

When we need to describe the difference between, for instance, male and female management styles, we often use clauses of contrast that are introduced by the conjunctions “but”, “although” (“though”), “however”:

Men are more confrontational at work, but women are more tolerant. Although men usually dominate in business, some companies consider it to be necessary to have a woman in its top management so that different opinions are represented. Men prefer to have full control of a situation, however women often practise empowerment.

Reported speech

Effective management is often connected with communication between people of different levels. To talk about various communication situations, when often use reported speech:

1.  The verbs “say”, “tell” and “ask” are used to report speech. “Tell” is used with an object, “say” is used without an object. “That” can be used directly after “say”, but not directly after “tell”. “Ask” is used with or without an object to report questions.

2.  To report words that were just said, we keep the situation still present:

She says that she is interested in our business proposal.

3.  To report words that were said in the past, the verbs usually go back one tense. Nouns and pronouns may also change. “Would”, “could” and “should” do not change:

“It is necessary to hire some extra unskilled workers.” – He said that it was necessary to hire some extra unskilled workers. “I have already interviewed the applicants.” – He told me that he had already interviewed the applicants. “I left the CVs on my table.” – He said that he (had) left the CVs on his table. “I will offer her a promotion.” – She said that she would offer her a promotion. “You should be more persistent.” – He told me that I should be more persistent. (He told me to be more persistent.)

4.  To report things that are either very recent or generally true, it is usual to use the same time as the speaker:

“Higher education and work experience give a competitive edge on the labour market” – He said that higher education and work experience give a competitive edge on the labour market.

5.  To report questions, there is used the following word order:

(1) question word/if (whether), (2) subject, (3) verb.

“What are you main responsibilities?” – He asked (me) what my main responsibilities are. “Are you working on further development of your skills?” – She asked (him) if/whether he is working on further development of his skills.

Careers

Building up a career demands consistent work to achieve the goal. This can include the following activities:

•  getting information about the companies of potential interest;

•  talking to people who do the same job;

•  reading professional press;

•  developing the necessary traits of character;

•  developing knowledge and skills;

•  acquiring work experience.

The first step towards successful career is choosing a profession that suits a person’s interests and abilities. After mastering the basics of a profession in a higher educational establishment, it is essential to get into a company that values and supports its employees in their strive for career development. It means the company encourages the staff and acknowledges their success.

To move up the career ladder, a person should be committed to constant development of his/her knowledge and skills. The results of these efforts are usually assessed by the manager on a performance appraisal. It usually includes:

•  determining what was done by an appraisee for a certain period of time;

•  evaluating the results of an appraisee’s efforts;

•  determining the areas that need further improvement;

•  planning the actions that need to be undertaken.

Describing future

To express future plans and intentions we use “to be going to” on the contrary to fixed arrangements where we use Present Continuous. When something is decided at the moment of speaking, we use “will” (future tenses) to express and idea.

Using modal verbs “can” and “could”

To express people’s abilities and refer to future possibilities in career progress, we use modal verbs “can” and “could”:

He can easily remember numbers, faces and names. (ability)

Due to his abilities he could make a further progress. (future possibility)

“Can” and “could” are also used to:

•  make requests:

Could I join your discussion?

•  give or refuse permission:

You can’t copy his personal record. It’s confidential.

•  make an offer

We can offer you personal training on time management if you like.

•  say that something is possible or impossible:

He can be promoted soon.

It is also possible to make requests and offers as well as describe an imaginary situation, using a modal verb “would”.

Would you bring me the results of the staff survey?

Would you like a private office?

If you mastered this software, you would head the division.

It is obvious that when we talk about employment, it is not just about hiring and firing people. It is a wide range of different activities and procedures that are based on extensive knowledge. It needs understanding and patience as any other area that is related to dealing with people, where each has his/her own character, desires, problems and expectations.

Test yourself

1.  What is “motivation”?

2.  What is “stimulation”?

3.  What inner needs can make a person work?

4.  What is usually the main stimulating factor?

5.  Give three examples of other incentives besides salary.

6.  Name three synonyms for the verb “to employ”?

7.  How can a company advertise a vacant position?

8.  What does a job advertisement usually contain?

9.  What are general tips about writing a CV?

10.  What elements does a CV usually contain?

11.  How many parts are there in a letter of application usually?

12.  What stages does a typical job interview have?

13.  What is a stress-interview?

14.  What is the main distinguishing feature that a non-traditional job interviewing suggests?

15.  How can a person be offered an employment?

16.  What information about a word can you find in the dictionary?

17.  What department in a company has the ultimate responsibility for managing the staff?

18.  What can a management style depend on?

19.  What information and skills can a manager use to direct people effectively?

20.  Why is it difficult to describe precisely the character of a mostly preferred boss?

21.  Name the five rules to report speech.

22.  What is corporate culture?

23.  What is socialising?

24.  How can the effectiveness of managing people in a company be measured?

25.  What activities can help a person to build up a career?

26.  What steps does a performance appraisal contain?

Библиография

1.  Graham Tullis, Tonya Trappe. New Insights into Business. Student’s book. Pearson Education Limited, 2005.

2.  Graham Tullis, Susan Power. New Insights into Business. Workbook. Pearson Education Limited, 2004.

3.  Sue Robbins. First Insights into Business. Student’s Book. Pearson Education Limited, 2005.

4.  Kevin Manton. First Insights into Business. Workbook. Pearson Education Limited, 2005.

5.  David Cotton, David Falvey, Simon Kent. Market Leader, Intermediate Business English. Course Book. Pearson Education Limited, 2005.

6.  David Cotton, David Falvey, Simon Kent. Market Leader, Intermediate Business English. Practice File. Pearson Education Limited, 2004.

7.  David Cotton, David Falvey, Simon Kent. Market Leader, Pre-Intermediate. Course Book. Pearson Education Limited, 2004.

8.  John Rogers. Market Leader, Pre-Intermediate. Prectoce File. Pearson Education Limited, 2004.

9.  Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Pearson Education Limited, 2004.