Taking Advantage of Career Resources

One of the best things about Foster is the amount of career resources that are available. When you arrive you will quickly discover that a large number of people stand ready to help you develop a wide variety of skills. Nowhere has this been more apparent to me than in my work developing my public speaking skills. Every week I meet with Heidi Mathisen, a Business Communications Advisor at Foster. Every Wednesday we spend an hour developing my speaking skills. I prepare a one to five minute speech depending on the week, Heidi films me delivering it, and then we watch together and analyze my performance. Heidi’s feedback is extremely valuable and specific. First we spend time working on my content to ensure that my points are clear and memorable. Then we work on things like my posture, gestures, phrasing, tone of voice, and use of filler words. Soon we are going to begin working on public speaking while integrating visuals such as PowerPoint. Since each speech is filmed I can directly watch myself improve from week to week. Though I came into the program a reasonably confident public speaker, I have seen my skills steadily improve over the last quarter.

An awkward still from my first session. I’ve gotten better since then.

I realize that I am at a point in my career where I am able to intensively develop skills of this nature. Never again will someone be willing to sit with me for an hour a week to help me develop such an important skill. Public speaking isn’t the only skillset that offers enrichment opportunities of this nature. Career services offers interview workshops, primers on different industries, and the opportunity to hear about a variety of exciting new technologies. Overall I have gained immensely from my meetings with Heidi and am excited to see how much I will develop over the coming quarters.

~ Guest post by Dave Stecher, Class of 2015 MBA Candidate