1.  You, the Life Skills students, identified and listed a number of important skills a person would need to be hired on Adam Rojek’s Lifespan team.  The skills we identified are often called ‘soft skills‘ or ‘human skills‘.  Many companies focus, as much and sometimes more, on a person’s ‘soft skills‘ than ‘hard skills‘ like computer programming, marketing, accounting, math, pharmacy, etc.  Identify 2 of the skills listed on our classroom white Board that you already possess.  Then, explain why a company should believe you already posses these skills.  This question brings us back to a former class lesson on ‘story telling’.  Your answer will reflect how well you tell your personal story during a job interview and how convincing your story telling abilities are.  Companies will not automatically accept you have these skills you claim you possess.  Companies want examples where you’ve exhibited these skills.  Please send your well expressed, convincing statement with perfect spelling and well constructed, short sentences to my email address by Thursday, 2/9, 3:45am.  Thank you.

Here is your list of important skills needed to be successful in a job. Please note, there are NO hard skills listed. Examples of hard skills are computer programming, accounting, graphic design, etc. Instead, many companies are looking for people with the human skills (also called ‘soft skills’) you listed today. Companies believe they can teach ‘hard skills‘ to the people who already have these ‘soft skills‘.

President Obama greeting Jack Ma at a Business Expo.

Former Professional basketball superstar and now entrepreneur, Kobe Bryant (left) and Alibaba Founder and President Jack Ma at a Business Chamber event.

2.  Read the story of Jack Ma in our “Change” textbook from pages 30 to page 34 posted on this web site.  Please  identify, in a well expressed statement, the ‘soft skills’ Jack Ma possesses which have enabled him to become one of the most successful business people in the world today.  You may identify ‘soft skills’  which we didn’t list on our classroom white board today but you believe have been critical to Jack Ma’s success. Please send your well expressed, convincing statement with perfect spelling and well constructed, short sentences to my email address by Thursday, 2/9, 3:45am.  Thank you.

3.  Our next guest for our Life Skills class will be Don Mays, the Director of the Intercultural Center at Roger Williams University.  Get to class early.

Don Mays (right) speaking to students at the Roger Williams University campus Intercultural Center.