WRITING OBJECTIVES GUIDE

What are Objectives? Very simply, objectives are goals that you want to achieve / accomplish for the project. Objectives should be realistic, measurable, practical, and realizable. Objectives can be categorized into domain objectives and personal objectives. Domain objectives relate to your specialization HR, Marketing, Finance etc. Personal objectives refer to things that you are interested in that is not necessarily part of your specialization. For example, you may be interested in how businesses maximize shareholder wealth through various investment policies but your specialization is Marketing and not Finance or you may be interested in learning CRM software and how businesses use it to manage customer relationships etc. How should objectives be written? Objectives should be listed as PRIMARY objectives and SUPPORTING objectives. PRIMARY objectives are high level objectives. They are broad in scope. Each primary objective must have: (i) Description of the objective i.e. define what you mean. (ii) SUPPORTING objectives. SUPPORTING objectives are specific more detailed objectives that specify how you will achieve your PRIMARY objectives. (iii) Methodology you will use / apply to achieve your goal. Here you simply list the various methods you will use to realize your objectives. You will provide more detailed information about the methodology later under methodology section of the paper. The following are a list of commonly used methods. Personal interviews Group Discussions Survey Onsite observations Research external sources Example: The following is an example of how your objectives will look: Primary Objective: To gain an understanding of the following HR processes (1) Performance Appraisal (2) Payroll processing Description: Performance appraisal and payroll processing are processes common to all businesses. My objective is to develop a in-depth understanding of how businesses perform these processes in general. Supporting Objectives: To identify what criteria are used in the performance appraisal and how assessments are made for each criteria To understand how decisions are made pertaining to performance evaluation. i.e. what is the process for decision making Etc.

Methodology: 1. Interviews Personal interviews will be conducted with the relevant stakeholders. The interview will provide information about the performance evaluation process. 2. Document analysis A detailed examination of performance appraisal documents (forms) will be conducted. From this examination detailed analysis will be performed as to the criteria and methods used in performance evaluation.

TIPS:: When writing your objectives think about:: What you are interested in. What do you want to learn. What will help you in the future. What new skills you want to learn. What business area you want to learn more about. For example, what does the marketing dept., Information systems dept., Human Resource dept. do? What business processes you want to learn about. For example, sales process, product marketing, advertising and promotion, Enterprise resource system management, Manufacturing process etc. etc.