How to Introduce Yourself
Category : PROspective
Welcome to the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health! To returning students, we are delighted to have you back! Returning MPH and MSPH students have a busy and exciting year ahead, culminating with commencement only nine months from now. Entering MPH and MSPH students also have a busy year, as you begin to gain the knowledge, skills, and philosophy needed to be influential public health practitioners. Our department staff and faculty welcome you all and look forward to doing all we can to make the year a success!
For new students, this might be your first introduction to the PROspective column. This short column appears each week and provides some sort of tip or encouragement on honing your career skills. According to this site:
“career skills are the abilities that enable you to do your job and to manage your career. These are over and above the skills and technical knowledge you need to perform the tasks that are part of your job.”
The site categorizes career skills into three groups: communication, operating style, and career development. The University of Colorado provides a nice summary of 10 essential career skills needed for career success.
Career skills are as important a determinant of your career success as the knowledge, skills and philosophy that you learn in the classroom, but career skills are seldom included in the formal curriculum. To meet this gap, our department provides this column as a weekly reminder of their importance and to help students prepare for their careers after Rollins. Take some time over the coming months to browse the PROspective archive.
Since we are in the midst of meeting one another, today’s career skill focuses on the task of introducing yourself. You will be doing a lot of this over the next weeks, as new students meet one another and meet their course instructors. This Harvard Business Review article suggests a three-step process. Say something about your present self, your past, and your future aspirations. None of the three parts needs to be long, but this simple formula gives the person you are meeting a good idea about who you are, why you are here, and what you aspire to do. Like every career skill, practice is the key. Try out introducing yourself at home to a mirror; you’ll be ready the next time you are asked to introduce yourself in person.
