Getting Down to Business

Honors students from Dr. Lori Brown’s business communications course hosted a showcase on Dec. 6 last year to demonstrate the skills they learned over the course of the semester. The students were grouped into teams and given the task of organizing a presentation on soft skills.

Softs skills are different types of communication skills, social skills, personality traits, and set behaviors needed for the workplace. Soft skills are unique because they must be self taught, as opposed to being acquired in a traditional classroom setting.

The showcase was open to students, faculty, and other influential guests. Guest speakers included CSULB University Honors Program academic advisor Brenda Pulido and Senior Director of Merchandising at Home Depot, Mark Voykovic. 

Voykovic was the first guest speaker for the afternoon. Before the students took the stage, Voykovic talked about his upbringing and how it guided him to where he is now. Additionally, he discussed the personality traits he looks for when adding people to his merchandising team.

Pulido, one of the main advisors for the Honors Program, talked about her college experience in addition to commending the students for their exceptional hard work.

Soft skills covered included communication, problem solving, teamwork, work ethic and interpersonal skills. All of the presentations covered skills that seem to be lacking in the 21st century workplace. All the students that presented knew their topics well enough, and the majority of their presentations came from strict memorization.

In the middle of the showcase, one group of students presented a mock debate about whether corporations should allow their customers to define the company’s image and identity. In this debate, the students were required to utilize the soft skill of public speaking to research their own cited evidence and present their findings in a persuasive manner.

The most important aspect of the event, however, was for the students presenting to learn and understand the impact of the knowledge they gained from the process of putting on the showcase. 

“One thing that I learned from the showcase was how to correctly construct a business report,” junior David Sarkisian said, “I initially remember writing the report like a typical essay, but as the process went on, I began to realize just how differently it is put together. I eventually formatted my paper to fit this model.”