Personal Skills Center

Welcome to the Personal Skills Center of the INFORMS Student Union, designed for students and young professionals in Operations Research and the Management Sciences. The primary purpose of this Center is to provide resources for the following personal skills:

Communication (both oral and written)
Interpersonal Skills
Listening
Personal Networking
Project Planning and Management
Time Management

General

First, assess yourself for further personal and professional development.^New!
Mind Tools outlines important life and career skills in easy to understand language. These are supported by simple examples and exercises that expand and reinforce your understanding. Backed by Mind Tools, discover the essential skills and techniques that help you excel in your career - whatever your profession.
All-But-Dissertation Survival Guide is a free monthly e-mail newsletter that aims to help doctoral students "overcome the inevitable obstacles you'll face along the dissertation marathon". Past issues can be found here.

Communication Skills

Communication skills are among the most crucial for all kinds of jobs. You can't be a good teacher without being a good speaker and writer, and industry leaders consistently agree that those skills are essential for success.

Communication Skills Quiz, and more^New!

Dictionaries and Related Sources of Language

Elements of Style, by W. Strunk, Jr.: a classic book about writing style. The entire book can be read in about an hour.
OneLook Dictionaries: a search engine for words with which you can choose to search for the definition or translation of a word, even if you don't know how to spell it exactly. It searches in any or all of about 700 dictionaries.
Merrian-Webster OnLine: a popular online dictionary.
RPI's list of Online Dictionaries and Other Tools. This has a few more dictionaries, thesauri and other language sources.
Hypertext Webster Interface: a simple word lookup with the option to do approximate search. It also includes a thesaurus, which could have your word even if the dictionary does not.

Writing Centers

University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center features an extensive, well-organized, searchable collection of academic writing handouts.
Writing place at Northwestern provides a collection of useful links for each stage of writing process.
RPI Writing Center. This is an extensive list of online writing centers and other resources, produced by Rensselaer's Department of Language, Literature, and Communication.
University of Illinois Writing Center
Writing Center from St. Cloud State University and Literacy Education Online.
General Communication skills page from Iowa State University.
Walden University Writing Center. This has useful links plus its own material.

Advice and Information from People

A course on Advanced Technical Communication See the two links near the end: one is "Wordiness" and the other is "Simplifying your Prose".
Collected advice on research and writing from Mark Leone. This has a useful list of links in writing and publishing reports or theses, how to give a good talk, and more.
Grammar and Style Notes from Jack Lynch. This is an extensive guide with some search capability. Some examples are: when to use affect versus effect, how to use metaphors and avoid mixing them, and why passive voice is overused.
Readability Counts. This short but important message from the Operations Research Review Committee appeared in OR/MS Today.
Tips for Oral Presentation from Harvey Greenberg. This was written originally for the Senior Seminar, but it serves as a general guide for giving a presentation.
Writing Proofs from Lesie Lamport The author of the original LaTeX manual offers advice on writing proofs, both from the standpoint of being less prone to certain errors and clarity of presentation.
How to Write About Operations Research A distinguished professor at Naval Postgraduate School provides critical advice on writing OR publication.

Advice from Other Societies

SIAM
- A Good Speaker Is Made, Not Born. This is a short pep talk on speaking. One of its best pieces of advice is that you should observe other talks with an ear for what you like about them (you can also note what you dislike). This is a good way to learn about writing style as well as speaking.
- How to Prepare a Poster. Although this is particular to the "poster" format in a SIAM meeting, the advice applies more generally.

Other Resources

Cooperative Communiction Skills: features a library of articles and a free, downloadable Seven Challenges Workbook that helps to improve your communication abilities in personal as well as work situations.
Resources for Science and Technical Writers: provides a list of search engines, classic readings, professional associations, software & technical support, and design tools.

Interpersonal Skills

You may be accustomed to doing things on your own, but sometimes “two heads are better than one.” Considering the ideas of co-workers, even if they are different from yours, leads to creative and effective approaches to solving problems and getting work done.

Interpersonal/ Human Skills
Interpersonal skill development from MSU counseling center
Developing Interpersonal Skills
Barbarian's Online Test Page. Learning more about yourself can open the way to improved interpersonal skills. This site points to lots of self-administered tests, ranging from IQ to emotional anxieties.

Listening

That's right. Take a quiz and find out where you are.^New!

Listening (input) may be as as important as speaking and writing (output).

Effective Listening Skills by Kenneth R. Johnson, a short article.
Improving someone's listening skills, by Herbert Greenberg and Jay J. Avelino
International Listening Association. This professional organization offers many links.

Personal Networking

The definitive explanation of why and how to network professionally is "Networking on the Network" by Prof. Phil Agre. The scope is actually somewhat broader, and it includes much excellent career advice. This should be required reading for every grad student and young professional.

Here are some gateways to people who may share some of your professional interests.

INFORMS Student Chapters, a list of INFORMS student chapters.
JobSmart's Hidden Job Market , an introduction to personal networking with a view to job search.
OR/MS Student Mailing List, a moderated mailing list of OR/MS students.
Young Mathematicians Network, a loose organization of junior mathematicians, some of whom are interested in the mathematical elements of OR/MS. They publish a newsletter Concerns of Young Mathematicians.

Project Planning and Management

As you progress in your career, you will face more and more complex and difficult challenges. Some of these may be huge - they may involve the coordination of many different people, the completion of many tasks in a precise sequence, and the expenditure of a great deal of time and money.

Project Planning and Management Techniques explains some of the specific skills you will need to run these projects successfully, helping you to complete them successfully and with minimum wastage of resource.
Project Management provides the general resources, related library links (including many others types of planning), and on-line discussion groups.
Planning a Project is a neat article looking at the creative aspects of project planning.

Time Management

Of all limited resources on the planet, this is by far the most valuable to you and forever in short supply.

Time Management Tips, a short article prepared by a self-development center in George Mason University.
Day-Timer Resource Library , one of the best collections of articles on time management on the web.
Time Management Skills, from MindTools. A serious manual on efficient time management.

This Center was originally compiled by Harvey J. Greenberg and further extended by Jeffrey W. Herrmann and Deming Zhou. At present, it is maintained by Xingchu Liu, who invites your comments and suggestions.

INFORMS Student Union Home page

Last updated June 11, 2005.