By Athirah Shaharuddin
There are four fundamental skills that can lead someone to advantage, especially for fresh graduates in their job hunting journey.
Every year many educational intuitions produce a huge number of graduates. However, the job vacancies or demands from employers are somewhat limited making them very competitive and challenging for graduates seeking for employment.
Therefore, it is not surprising for employers to select the best available candidates in the market to be part of their team in the company or organisation. Because of that, one should be prepared with good criteria in meeting the expectations of future employers.
Students need to practise and acquire the elements of “well” if they really want to see the good outcome and how the good practice of the fundamental elements will be able to change their attitude and mentality.
These fundamental skills were shared by one of the speakers in his talk at the Public Relations lecture series recently. JD Lovrenciear from Business Ethics Institute and a Council Member of the Institute of Public Relations Malaysia (IPRM), who spoke on the topic “Artificial Intelligence in Public Relations”, asked the question “Where Are We Heading?”
According to JD Lovrenciear, students should have these four fundamentals if they really want to be a good communication practitioner in the future. He was referring to these basic things – thinking, reading, speaking and writing skills.
The first skill students should have right now is the thinking skill. Everyone can think, but not everyone can think critically. He mentioned that in any field one is working in, that person needs to have a critical thinking mindset and should be able to think fast enough to solve any problem that may suddenly occur.
“Through thinking, one can reflect on their actions and its consequence,” he emphasised.
He further explained that reading is the second element that one should possess. Through reading, a person can get a better understanding, develop creativity, have better thinking ability and develop confidence which is important for communication practitioners.
JD Lovrenciear further said, “Reading does you magic. As communication practitioners we are the engineer of perception. Through reading, you can tackle any problem that you face, and you will have the knowledge on how to help others in reshaping their perception about certain things,”
The third fundamental skill mentioned by JD Lovrenciear is that students should practice how to speak using complete sentence in order to fluently deliver messages to their audience.
On that, JD Lovrenciear added, “Reading and speaking are inter-connected, they cannot be separated.”
By using these elements consistently – think, read, and speak – students will master the ability to write which is the fourth element as shared by JD Lovrenciear. They can simply write short, sweet and quick information to hook the audience, he stressed.
JD Lovenciear said, “These ‘Well keys’ will help you a lot in the future. Think well, read well, speak well and write well.”
The PR talk was attended by both the academic staff and students. It was organised by IPRMSA-IIUM Chapter and was held at Mini Auditorium, IIUM on 18 October recently.
Besides JD Lovrenciear, two other speakers who were invited to share their views on “AI and Public Relations” were Ahmad Izham Khairuddin, the Director of Communication and Multimedia Consumer Forum Malaysia (CFM) and also Ivlynn Yap, founder of Citrine One. ***