UNAIR NEWS – As an agent of change, a student is required to master various skills. Soft skills like public speaking are mandatory, especially in the Society 5.0 era. Apart from developing skills in college, students should acquire non-academic skills, for instance, joining organizations, communities, or internships.
Student Executive Board (BEM) of UNAIR Faculty of Public Health (FKM) collaborated with UNAIR Airlangga Public Health Student Association (APHSA) held a webinar on improving public speaking and internship skills in Society 5.0 era. The webinar on Sunday, June 12, 2022, featured the former President of BEM FKM in 2019-2020, Herlambang Yahya Yudhistira SKM and an intern of the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry of the Republic of Indonesia GERILYA, Khairullah Fathinnuzul Heryawan.
The first guest speaker, Herlambang, delivered his material on public speaking. He said that a public speaker should pay attention to detail as a public speaker should provide correct information using understandable language.
“Public speaking helps students in making a career in the future. However, it’s common to find speakers who make mistakes during public speaking,” said Herlambang.
Herlambang stated several common mistakes in public speaking, for instance, the lack of attention to the audience, the use of emotional sentences, and talking too fast. He also added that a public speaker should understand his/her audience to deliver information that will be well-received by the audience.
“Public speaking is more than just verbal. We have to master verbal, vocal, and visual. Verbal is the message, vocal refers to the voice and tone, and visual means our body language,” he said.
The scope of public speaking, Herlambang continued, is not limited to giving a speech or being a guest speaker but also to presenting, rhetorics, Master of Ceremony (MC), giving sermons, and so on. Therefore, he emphasized that developing public speaking is essential for students’ self-development in the future.
The second guest speaker, Khairillah, gave a presentation on an internship in Society 5.0 era. He stated that an internship is important to develop non-academic skills.
“Internship is mandatory, I suppose. It’s different from professional work life. When we make a mistake as an intern, we can fix it and learn from it,” said Khairillah.
He added that internship is not limited to their own specific major. Not to mention the Kampus Merdeka internship program which let students take internships outside his/her expertise.
“Internship registration is a long process, it requires administration stage, writing essay stage, and interview. In writing the essay, we should elaborate on the major we took and the field of internship we are interested in,” said Khairillah.
He advised the students to develop their public speaking skills as it will help in the interview stage, particularly for the Public Health students. Khairillah stated that communication and public health are two sides of the same coin.
Author: Dewi Yugi Arti
Editor: Nuri Hermawan
