December 13, 2024, by sszts1

Choosing my Nottingham Advantage Award modules

By Vivien Lim, postgraduate finance and investment student

Joining the Nottingham Advantage Award (NAA) has been a rewarding journey, allowing me to explore new opportunities and step out of my comfort zone. The modules I took were Global Buddies and Capital One Product Challenge.

Global Buddies

Global Buddies is a peer-to-peer support scheme for new international students to help them settle-in and make friends. As an international student myself, I understand the importance of seeking guidance and getting support in a new environment, so I participated in this module to support new international students.

During the module I was assigned more than 10 mentees, where I had monthly meet ups with them to monitor their welfare and ensure their wellbeing. I also organised events, such as the Chinese New Year event and the Cultural Tea Talk and reflected on my experiences through a reflective portfolio and presentation.

Throughout my journey in Global Buddies, I gained multiple skills such as active listening, communication, building trust and problem solving. After a change in circumstances meant we had to cancel and rearrange an event at short notice, the ability to adapt was an unexpected skill I also gained.

Reflecting on my experience as a Global Buddies mentor, it has been a wonderful journey helping international students develop skills that could apply to their university life and future career.

The skills I learnt from Global Buddies enhanced my ability to being open to new perspectives during discussions and utilising tools such as Google Calendar to keep track of my tasks to ensure that I complete them on time.

Capital One Product Challenge

I chose to participate in the Capital One Product Challenge as I wanted to gain experience through understanding business operations and analysing issues from a company perspective. This module is different from Global Buddies, as it is more related to how businesses identify problems, growth opportunities and whether the proposed strategies could complement their current operations.

We had a company visit to the Capital One HQ in Nottingham, where we completed scenario based group work. I then wrote a business report to analyse the scenario, identify key risks and justify our strategies to improve market share and attract new customers.

In addition, I filmed a mock video interview to improve our interview skills. I had a consultation with the Careers team, which helped me to structure my interview answers and boosted my confidence. I recommend practising for the video interview with the team to discover areas of improvement. The video interview is similar to real-life scenarios, so I can apply the same skills I gained in the future.

As a business student, the report allowed me to look from both the company and customer perspectives. I used my analytical skills to assess issues and problem solving to determine strategies that would be acceptable to customers.

This module is not only beneficial to business students, the skills gained could be applied to students from all backgrounds. Some of my group members were from sciences and believe they gained a deeper understanding of how businesses identify growth opportunities and set strategies based on customer preferences and existing products and services.

My advice to students

I encourage students from different fields to take part in NAA modules to explore new opportunities. The modules do not need to be related to your studies, as the transferable skills learnt could be applied to all job positions.

Participating in the NAA is also an opportunity to showcase to employers the experience and skills you have. You could consult the NAA team or Careers team to ask for guidance on understanding what employers are looking for in their job adverts, and how to demonstrate your skills and experience in your applications, CVs and job interviews.

Here are some tips I used when choosing NAA modules:

• Identify your interests and passion or something new that you would like to explore
• Read the description of the modules in the module catalogue to know the activities
• Understand the required commitment and check your time availability

If you’d like to discover more about the Nottingham Advantage Award and the different modules on offer, take a look at our module catalogue to search and apply.

If you have any questions, get in touch with the Nottingham Advantage Award team and we’ll be happy to help!

 

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