O Marketing pessoal e as praticas de procura de emprego: um estudo exploratório com recém-diplomados

Atualmente, o mercado de trabalho é um domínio competitivo e não basta ao candidato a emprego deter qualificação superior. Apesar de uma sociedade assente no conhecimento, ciência e tecnologia, assiste-se a uma desvalorização relativa do diploma a quanto do acesso ao mercado de trabalho. As exigências da competitividade apelam á mobilização de varias competências e condições de empregabilidade, desde as mais técnicas e cientificas(hard skills) até ás mais pessoas e sociais(soft skills). No contexto dda ciência do marketing, os conceitos de marketing pessoal e de marca pessoal, embora apresentando ainda escassa pesquisa cientifica e frágil enquadramento concetual, têm assumido discussão e reconhecimento crescente. O marketing pessoal, associado a uma atitude de proatividade e devidamente sustentado, converte-se numa vantagem competitiva, evidenciando o valor e a diferenciação do individuo no processo de procura de emprego. Realizou-se um estudo exploratório, sob uma abordagem qualificativa, utilizando a entrevista semiestruturada e que se aplicou a uma amostra constituída por 12 diplomados em situação de procura de emprego. Considerando o tipo do estudo, as conclusões obtidas devem ser, necessariamente, contextualizadas á investigação. OS resultados demonstram que os diplomados em causa, ainda que de forma inconsciente e não devidamente estratégica, reconhecem importância ao desenvolvimento do seu marketing pessoal e promoção da sua marca e imagem no contexto das praticas de procura de emprego. Apesar da prudencia e limitação quanto á generalização de resultados, a presente dissertação serve de motivação para uma melhor reflexão sobre o binómio marketing pessoal e a procura de emprego.

Linking Research and Teaching: an Applied Soft Systems Methodology Case Study

This paper links research and teaching through an applied Soft Systems Methodology case study. The case study focuses on the redevelopment of a Research and Professional Skills module to provide support for international postgraduate students through the use of formative feedback with the aim of increasing academic research skills and confidence. The stages of the Soft Systems Methodology were used as a structure for the redevelopment of module content and assessment. It proved to be a valuable tool for identifying complex issues, a basis for discussion and debate from which an enhanced understanding was gained and a successful solution implemented together with a case study that could be utilised for teaching Soft Systems Methodology concepts. Changes to the module were very successful and resulted in significantly higher grades and a higher pass rate.

Lab-on-a-Chip turns soft : computer-aided, software-enabled microfluidics design

The current practice of designing microfluidic Lab-on-a-Chip (LoCs) limits reusing designs and makes sharing tasks among researchers difficult. One way to achieve that objective is to borrow best practices from engineering. Also it takes a lot of skills to design LoCs. Design-by-assembly in which a LoC can be designed by configuring, laying out subsystems can help new researchers to develop custom chips. Flexible, reusable, and rapid-prototyping-feasible LoC designs can be achieved by fabricated modular microfluidic blocks. However, challenging problems still persist, which limit the usefulness of prefabricated blocks. We propose software microfluidic modules (SoftMABs) based design technique to solve issues fabricated modules face. By configuring SoftMABs, integrating them, the new assembly of SoftMABs can form a 3D LoC design ready to be prototyped. The proposed method can make designing a complex LoC less challenging, and collaborating among laboratories easier. We created SoftMABs and designed a custom microfluidic chip by assembling SoftMABs like LEGOs, dragging-and-dropping them. Later we reconfigured them - by replacing a SoftMAB with another module - to make a new LoC. We believe this computeraided method is an interesting and useful LoC design technique.

A Soft Computing Approach to Quality Evaluation of General Chemistry Learning in Higher Education

In contemporary societies higher education must shape individuals able to solve problems in a workable and simpler manner and, therefore, a multidisciplinary view of the problems, with insights in disciplines like psychology, mathematics or computer science becomes mandatory. Undeniably, the great challenge for teachers is to provide a comprehensive training in General Chemistry with high standards of quality, and aiming not only at the promotion of the student’s academic success, but also at the understanding of the competences/skills required to their future doings. Thus, this work will be focused on the development of an intelligent system to assess the Quality-of-General-Chemistry-Learning, based on factors related with subject, teachers and students.

Talking about watching : using the video card game and wiki-web technology to engage IT students in developing observational skills.

Designers need to develop good observational skills in order to conduct user studies that reveal the subtleties of human interactions and adequately inform design activity. In this paper we describe a game format that we have used in concert with wiki-web technology, to engage our IT and Information Environments students in developing much sharper observational skills. The Video Card Game is a method of video analysis that is suited to design practitioners as well as to researchers. It uses the familiar format of a card game similar to "Happy Families,, to help students develop themes of interactions from watching video clips. Students then post their interaction themes on wiki-web pages, which allows the teaching team and other students to edit and comment on them. We found that the tangible (cards), game, role playing and sharing aspects of this method led to a much larger amount of interaction and discussion between student groups and between students and the teaching team, than we have achieved using our traditional teaching methods, while taking no more time on the part of the teaching staff. The quality of the resulting interaction themes indicates that this method fosters development of observational skills.In the paper we describe the motivations, method and results in full. We also describe the research context in which we collected the videotape data, and how this method relates to state of the art research methods in interaction design for ubiquitous computing technology.