UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF BUSSINESS HO CHI MINH CITY CAMPUS

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END-MODULE ASSIGNMENT
Module: Business Practice Explored
Code: BSS005-1.S1

SELF-REFLECTIVE REPORT

Student: LÊ HỒ THỊ NGỌC TIÊN FOR EXAMINERS ONLY

Student ID: 2205025075 Grade (in number):
………………..
Cohort: K60NO
Grade (in words):
Semester: I
………………..
Academic year: 2022-2023 Examiner 1
Headteacher: Nguyen Thanh Tra (Signature & Fullname)
Submission date: 16 December 2022 ………………..
Examiner 2
Student’s signature:
(Signature & Fullname)
………………..

Ho Chi Minh City, December 2022

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF BUSSINESS HO CHI MINH CITY CAMPUS
----------***---------- ----------***----------

END-MODULE ASSIGNMENT

Module: Business Practice Explored

Code: BSS005-1.S1

SELF-REFLECTIVE REPORT

Student’s fullname: LÊ HỒ THỊ NGỌC TIÊN

Student ID: 2205025075
Cohort: K60NO
Semester: I Academic year: 2022-2023
Lecturer: Ph.D Tran Quoc Trung

Ho Chi Minh City, December 2022

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
This assignment contains no content published elsewhere or taken in whole or in part
from an assignment that I have filed, qualified for, or been granted another degree or diploma,
save when reference is provided in the text of the end module Assignment. Without the
acknowledgments in the end-module assignment, no other person's work has been utilised. This
end-of-module assignment was not submitted for the evaluation of any other models or for the
granting of any degree or certificate at any other higher institution.
Ho Chi Minh City, December 2022

Le Ho Thi Ngoc Tien

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Table of contents
I. CHAPTER ONE: Introduction ………………………..……. 5
1.1 Overall……………………………………………………..……….5
1.2 Self-reflection....................................................................................5
1.3 Business Envionment…………………………………….…….…..6
1.3.1 Personal traits………………………………………….……….6
1.3.2 Business Awareness…………………………………….……...
1.3.3 Experiences……………………………………………….……
II. CHAPTER TWO: Personal fitness for business environment audit
2. Knowledge, skills and abilities
2.1 Knowledge…………………………………………….………..
2.2 Skills and abilities………………………………………….…...
3. Strenghths and Weaknesses…………………………………………...
4. Plan for improvement………………………………………………...

III. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………….

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CHAPTER ONE: Introduction

1.1 Overall:
A business can be described as an organization or enterprising entity that engages in
professional, commercial or industrial activities. There can be different types of businesses
depending on various factors. Some are for-profit entities, while some are non-profits fulfilling
a charitable mission or furthering a social cause. Similarly, their ownership also makes them
different from each other. For instance, there are sole proprietorships, partnerships,
corporations, and more. Business is also the efforts and activities of a person who is producing
goods or offering services with the intent to sell them for profit. Being mindful of the existing
business environment and adapting as necessary are the major goals of the corporate
environment. It also makes it possible to learn more about an organization's competitors,
suppliers, and customers in order to launch wise business decisions. The business environment
makes a great contribution to conducting an overall analysis of the company and making wise
business decisions.

1.2 Self-reflection:

As a student of Foreign Trade University, I was taught to assess my core understanding and
abilities for success in both professional and academic environments. Additionally, it is my
responsibility to identify my professional skills, merits, and demerits in order to create and
implement adequate initiatives to maintain an optimistic business context so that I can achieve
the goals and objectives that the subject Business Practice Explore wants to bring. Teamwork,
numeracy, problem-solving, and time management are some factors I took into account when
evaluating my qualities and skills. A personal skills audit is an excellent way to identify one's
strengths and weaknesses. I can determine where I need to improve through this approach to
make suitable options and maintain a positive working atmosphere. I can assess my
performance in carrying out various tasks and responsibilities effectively thanks to personal
skills audits. Take the example of my duties as a student of Foreign Trade University, I need
to analyze my abilities in the areas of numeracy, problem-solving, teamwork, and time
management.

1.3 Business Envionment

1.3.1 Personal traits:
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Personal traits are one of the biggest concerns for a company or a business. The five major
personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and
neuroticism. Employers care about personality traits because they may help anticipate how an
employee will interact with others in the workplace. Since then, understanding my attributes
has been a crucial part of my career development. An awareness of personal traits and others
can help people perform their best at work and enhance workplace relationships and career
fulfillment. Therefore, to be suitable as well as ready to fit into a professional environment, a
business student should: be willing to try new things, be careful and diligent, express energy
and confidence, interact with others, and restrict negative emotions.
1.3.2 Business awareness:
Through the subject Business Practice Explored, students can gain business and commercial
awareness - one of the most important things that business students should comprehend if they
wish to be successful or become a professor. From the very beginning, I found myself
interested in business, so I read many financial news and did a lot of research, enough to
identify the differences between a private limited company and a public limited company.
Additionally, I am aware of how the current economic and political issues, nationally and
internationally, affect businesses and public services. Furthermore, the course also helped me
have strategic thinking, knowledge, and creativity to suit recruiters' demands.
1.3.3 Experiences:
As a student of Foreign Trade University, to adapt heavy study program, I have put myself in
a mold to be a productive and proactive person, proactive in learning, communicating, and
teamworking. Unfortunately, I have not been able to work for any business as an employee,
but I have been working as a teaching assistant for an English center for two months. Though
it has nothing related to business, it was a nice experience as I had a chance to communicate
with many fantastic people and learned much from them. In addition, I learned many essential
skills to fit in any business environment, such as being responsible at work, teamwork right
and attaching myself to any group of people. Since the day I started my next journey at FTU, I
have improved a lot so far, and I still desire more and more self-improvement.
CHAPTER TWO: Personal fitness for business environment audit

2. Knowledge, skills and abilities

2.1. Knowledge:
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I was equipped with Pestel - a handy strategic tool to help us understand market growth or
decline as well as help us understand the business position, opportunities, and direction for our
activities enterprise. Six crucial and distinctive elements represent each letter in the word
Pestel, which stands for Politics, Economy, Society, Technology, Environment, and Legal.
Pestel is used to conduct market research, marketing strategy development, product
development, and corporate strategy advancement. To start a business, it is essential to analyze
a company's industry structure and corporate strategy, so I also learned the Porter's Five
Forces, which include Competitive Rivalry, Supplier Power, Buyer Power, Threat of
Substitution, and Threat of New Entry. Porter's Five Forces allows us to gain valuable
insights into your current market. This can help us to develop a strategy to succeed.
Besides academic knowledge, the course also offered practical knowledge like the current
financial statement of Vietnam or the next Economic Crisis coming, and what we should do to
avoid being left behind. After finishing the course, I found it is interesting to read news and do
research relating to finance, mainly because I can kind of understand processes and reasons.

2.2 Skills and abilities:

For economics students like me who want to enter the business world, there are many skills
that we need to be equipped with, but one of the most important skills ever would be
communication skills. Communication skills in the business world are essential. As a modern
business learner, you are expected to have communicate ideas, information and intentions
effectively and professionally in a variety of contexts and formats, including verbal and
written communication. Communicating clearly with members of your team and those of
various departments, customers and other key stakeholders of the company is essential for
virtually any role in the business world. And that is what I have been focusing on the most
lately, because I want to broaden my network for my future career, so I can say that I can
communicate well and know how to behave in different situations and phenomena. Creativity
and innovation are also the two things I want to have greatly improvement as today's business
environment is defined by innovation and creativity. In an increasingly competitive
marketplace, companies are looking for new ways to capture customers' attention and reach
the top of their industry. Being able to think outside the box and come up with new ways of
doing things, whether it's a small-scale change to a process in your specific role or a company-
wide innovation, is a huge plus.
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3. Strength and weakness

3.1 Strength

I consider myself a highly effective leader regardless of the category or responsibilities

assigned to my group and me personally. I have three years of experience as a high school
monitor, and I successfully completed my responsibility as a class leader. I tracked their
improvement process, identified each member's strengths and weaknesses, arranged a suitable
position and duty for them, and advised which major they should follow based on their
personal characteristics. Our class was one of the top 3 classes with the highest scores in our
school back then. That means I've done my part as a core leader and team member. One of my
significant assets is my ability to develop new ideas and innovate in myriad ways. I always
write down every thought that comes to my mind in a notebook, no matter how strange or
inappropriate it may seem. Most of the time, it works, but occasionally I can come up with a
new concept that's exactly what I need using the thoughts I've written. Many challenges or
unforeseen circumstances can be resolved quickly without slowing down my and others'
effectiveness by using creative approaches to study and work.

3.2 Weakness:

One of my biggest problems is that I don't have practical skills in an actual business
environment. Specifically, I don't have a basic understanding of job interviews or resume
writing, as I've never been to a job interview that required a resume or cover letter. This
hinders my basic understanding of job interviews or resume writing, as I have never attended
an actual job interview that required a resume or cover letter. This clouded my job prospects
as I applied for several positions but did not receive a positive response.

4. Plan for improvement:

I planned to improve my IELTS band score to at least 7.5 to have a better background and
apply for a scholarship when I exchange to the UK campus. This test is scheduled to be held in
May of 2023. After obtaining the IELTS score, I plan to focus entirely on achieving a
bachelor's degree, which is projected to be completed by 2025. After that, I will work in the
UK for two years and search for a master's scholarship simultaneously. I am longing to pursue
a Communication master's program.

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CHAPTER THREE: Conclusion

After completing this self-reflective report, I had a chance to reflect on what I have learned
and how I improved. Business Practice Explored is one of my favorite courses so far, as it
helped me further investigate what I am interested in - business. I took the course seriously
from the very beginning so I could understand my personal traits, strengths, and weaknesses to
fit in an actual business structure. Now, I can set my goals and maximize the proportion of
success in life. As a consequence of the self-evaluation, I am one step closer to my
dream job of becoming a businesswoman.
CHAPTER FOUR: References

1. “Top Business Management Skills Companies Look For.” Top Business Management Skills
Companies Look for | Champlain College Online, online.champlain.edu/blog/top-business-
management-skills. Accessed 13 Dec. 2022.

2. “MindTools | Home.” MindTools | Home, www.mindtools.com/at7k8my/porter-s-five-

forces. Accessed 13 Dec. 2022.

3. “Business Awareness.” Business Awareness | Oxford University Careers Service, /business-

awareness. Accessed 13 Dec. 2022.