Blog #3

On December 6th I attended the Small Talk Part II workshop offered by Star Career Development. Even though the workshop was short it was very helpful. This workshop is meant for people that need to learn social skills and excel in communications. I learned how to begin a conversation and ways to keep the conversation going. For example, if you’re attending a holiday party and a firm recruiter is at the event and you’re in need of a job, what should you do? For me I would have the host of the party introduce me to him. I would want to be introduced because I don’t want to go up to someone and feel like that I’m a needy person and coming on to hard. So if someone introduces me to the recruiter they will be able to say some positives about me and have the conversation start for me and then the recruiter and I will be able to begin our small talk about anything.
This program also had its negatives, the program as helpful as I thought because of the shortness and how bored I was in it. We only read about five pages of our fifteen page packet and they only had drawings or figures on it. When it time to have our questions answered I didn’t have any questions because I didn’t learn anything new. But I felt bad for the man that was offering the class because within five minutes of the seminar starting a group of people left, the class started with 25 and ended with about eleven people left in it.
In the beginning of the workshop, we introduced ourselves to the class and also went into small groups to have small chats among each other. We received a packet about different techniques we can use to start a conversation. In the packet it gave us fifty tips on what to do and not to do during a conversation. The proctor then told us about how body language can tell a lot about if you want to talk or not. For instance, if you cross your arms it says that you don’t want to be bothered or you’re in deep thought. This is very obvious, but people need to know that this will happen. Even if the person is willing to speak with people and showing this mood, nobody would want to approach them or speak to them.
If this seminar was to be offered again I don’t think I would attend, but I would attend a seminar on job searching or how to make my resume better than what it already is. The only thing that I would be able to take out of the seminar is that I have to begin a conversation and not to always depend on people to come to me and begin the conversation. For me being a shy person it is going to take some practice, but sooner or later it will be easier than thought it would be.