Educational institutes organize workshops to provide employability and other life skills to their students. They rope in the so-called famous speakers from the industry and yet the workshops don’t yield the expected results, wasting a considerable amount of time and money. If you or your institute have had a similar experience, this article is for you. Let me tell you how to conduct a workshop that gets you the desired results, with the help of the following three stages.
Let's say we are going to conduct a workshop on Resume Writing. Here is how we can plan and execute it for optimum impact.
Stage-1. Planning:
Identify the gap between the current and the desired skill level of the students: Conduct Tests, Interviews, Simulations, etc. Ask the students to write resumes and check how well they write and how much they know about writing resumes. Create a training plan and design content: After identifying the gaps, create a training plan that can fill these gaps. The plan and content should focus on giving them a hands-on experience in writing resumes.
Stage- 2. Execution:
A specialist trainer should facilitate the students to understand all the necessary things required to write a resume. e.g., Design, what and how to write, research, and a lot more. The trainer should help them find suitable resume templates online. The students should be asked to write their resumes and discuss them with their peers and the trainer. The trainer should check their resumes and share constructive feedback.
The ideal duration of a workshop depends on the gap between the existing skills and the desired skill levels of the students. The more the skill gap, the more the duration. Most educational institutes organize workshops that are hardly 2 to 3 hours long. They hardly consider the skill gap and the amount of content to be covered while deciding the duration. This is one of the main reasons for the failure.
Stage-3. Evaluation:
Check if the students can write good resumes as a result of the workshop. If they can, we consider the workshop to be successful. If not, the planning and execution of the workshop requires more refining.
Thus, an ideal workshop needs meticulous planning and has to be conducted by a specialist trainer who ensures the participants learn to apply the skills learned in real-life situations. The practice and feedback from the trainer are vital, without them, the workshop has very little impact. The post-workshop evaluation helps in knowing whether it delivered as per expectations or not.
Sawan is a Learning/Training consultant with over thirteen years of rich experience in training. He has been associated with companies like Amazon, Various Multinational and Domestic Companies, Leading Training Organizations, and prestigious Educational Institutes. He is a go-to person for setting up and leading training teams, managing training programs, and creating and curating content for online and offline learning. He is passionate about helping companies revive their training interventions and enable their workforce to achieve business goals.