Knowing work environments differ greatly, understand and demonstrate effective work habits, and act in the interest of the larger community and workplace
Ways to Develop Professionalism
- Regularly attend classes and participate in discussions.
- Contact your supervisor (or professor) if you are going to be absent.
- Dress appropriately for whatever the dress code is for your particular employer.
- Be on time (or slightly early!) for your scheduled shifts.
- Take responsibility for any mistakes you make and determine how to fix them.
- Be respectful of diverse perspectives and opinions and learn from them.
- Join professional associations related to your major and/or career goals.
- Review the learning outcomes on your syllabi and talk to your faculty about how you are developing this skill in your classes and with which assignments. assignments.
Ways to Demonstrate Professionalism on Your Resume
- How you solved a problem or what your accomplishments were on the job or as part of classes/projects/research.
- Communication skills you developed in working with diverse groups of people.
- Teamwork you learned/developed working on projects, on the job, in classes, on teams, and in clubs.
- Embed professionalism experiences into the descriptions of your experiences with statements such as: “Took on additional responsibilities above and beyond job description” or “Sought out additional training opportunities to learn more about XYZ that was integral to job performance.”
- Use action verbs in your descriptions such as collaborated, completed, compromised, fostered, refined, and solved. More action verb options.
- Resume Resources
Sample Interview Questions to Demonstrate Professionalism
- Discuss a time when you went above and beyond for a customer (or in creating a product).
- Discuss a time you did something even though it wasn’t part of your regular job responsibilities.
- Describe a time you made a mistake. What was the mistake and how did you go about addressing or fixing it?
- Interviewing Resources