1. Mr. Niall Douglas

2.  9.15am-9.45am: Review of last week’s grades  9.45am-11am: The Mayfair Set part 2  11.20am-12pm: Comprehension check on the Mayfair Set  12pm-12.20pm: TOEIC prep  12.20pm-12.40pm: Explain tonight’s reading  12.40pm-1pm: Explain this week’s group task  1pm-1.20pm: Group Work Plan

3.  Group 4 (Clemence, Julie, Louis, Manon, Steven) gave me some document which wasn’t the right one (at least this time it was in English!)

4.  What do employers say about fresh Business School graduates?  About 20% of fresh graduates are seen as “unhireable” because they are so bad  About 75% of what remains are seen as needing very substantial further (re)training (i.e. Expensive)  Even about 10% regularly submit job applications that are incoherent. The question becomes, how did they possibly pass their degree?

5.  What employers say is lacking in fresh graduates:  Students are generally good at basic knowledge skills (reading, writing, maths), generally terrible at “applied skills”  What are “applied skills”?  Critical Thinking  Problem Solving  Teamworking  Work ethic and effective work habits  Workload management

6.  So if you want to get yourself a job, you need to demonstrate to employers: 1. That you can solve problems on your own without being hand held (“point and forget”) 2. That you can handle getting your work assignments done without someone telling you how to do them (“workload management” = working effectively, not necessarily working hard) 3. And increasingly, if you’re going into a knowledge industry, you MUST demonstrate critical thinking skills

7.  What does this mean?  Increasingly Business wants employees who are researchers and problem solvers  This implies the ability to process large amounts of information very quickly and reach a good understanding of it  And the ability to spot potential problems/niches/opportunities which will add to Business value

8.  Unfortunately most Business Schools (and the Western education system) are lousy at teaching either of these  Somehow students are supposed to just “know” these things automatically  However they can be taught...

9.  I haven’t seen the exam scripts yet but...  Last week’s Group Task Reports were not very good  Why?

10.  Why on average you did so badly: 1. Not answering the question. If it says legal remedies it means LEGAL REMEDIES 2. Repeating points you already made (i.e. Padding) 3. Writing non sequiturs (meaningless comments which have no bearing on the answer) i.e. Padding 4. In particular repeating back the assignment description to me gets ZERO marks! i.e. PADDING 5. And despite my warning last week, once again a total lack of academic referencing and citations for facts

11.  Last week’s group task is VERY typical in a corporation, especially for new employees who tend to get assigned grunt work  It only takes someone experienced about TWO HOURS to do that task alone. Even someone without experience shouldn’t take more than six hours, and a group of four should get it done in no time  If you handed up what you did last week you would get FIRED on the spot in most companies

12.  So why do you think that you all did so badly?

13. 1. Manon, Sitra, Anne-Charlotte, Romain 2. Louis, Tanguy, Jeremy, Calvin 3. Camille, Leslie, Steven, Rachida 4. Maxime, Clemence, Alexandre, Julie, Hubert

14.  This is part two of a four part documentary  It details the history of how Finance became more powerful than government or the people in Britain in the 1970s  While it just studies Britain, it was very similar the world over. Why?

15.  In the 1970s Finance gained power over a much larger slice of global wealth than in the past. Why? 1. Pension funds which were set up after WW2 (about 20-25% of global financial wealth) 2. Sovereign wealth funds set up by oil rich nations (about 10-15% of global financial wealth)  Power over this wealth allows Finance to dictate policy to governments and labour

16.  Crazily this has resulted in the following:  Young people are paid poorly and made jobless by the pension funds of their parents stripping the assets of companies  As the “baby boomers” retire, capital is going to become sucked out of companies in general  Therefore asset stripping is going to become much worse i.e. it will become more and more harder for young people to have good jobs and gain wealth

17.  TOIEC prep

18.  Explain Tonight’s reading

19.  Explain this week’s Group Task

20.  Check Group Task Work Plans