Journal 18:
Job Title- Marketing Specialist
General Job Description- The Rolling Clouds is looking for a organized and driven individual to join our teams as our Marketing Specialist. In this position, you will be responsible for promoting and selling our handbook to decision makers at the University of New England, helping us creating a valuable resource for first year student. You will also be helping us reach out to other colleges and universities, helping us craft a perfect handbook for each.
Major Duties and Responsibilities- Your main responsibilities is to become completely familiar with our handbook, and being able to accurately pitch that to universities. We want someone on staff who believes that we have the best handbook, and is able to make sure that university staff understands how valuable our resource is. Other responsibilities is to be able to create and present presentations to the board of these universities, that show what our handbook is about and the advantages of using it. Establishing relationships with members of colleges and universities, to create connections for future collaborations and partnerships. Working collaboratively with the Rolling Clouds team in order to create a cohesive and understanding team.
Minor Duties and Responsibilities- Minor duties include research and staying completely on top of understand current research. Keeping up with trend and activity of competitors, this makes sure that Rolling Clouds is staying with or above the curve for handbooks in this genre. Gathering feedback and criticism from colleges and universities about how to make our handbooks better, and stick out more. Attending conferences, shows and seminars to network The Rolling Clouds brand and promote our inventory.
Qualifications- Have a Bachelor’s degree in a business, marketing, or a related field. Have previous sales experience, minimum of three years, preferably in brand creation and marketing as well as the education field. Excellent communication and presentation skills. And have the ability to formulate positive relationships with decision makers at the universities.
Key Competencies-
Required- Have strong interpersonal skills, the ability to work independently as well as collaboratively, and meeting or exceeding the sales target for each specified date. Being able to understand the transition to college and create a comprehensive understanding for first year students. Accelerated problem solving skills and customer service skills.
Preferred- Understanding of different software sites, and a basic understanding of how to use them. Creativity and finding different ways to make a handbook, specifically in its visual appeal.
Journal 20:
My role in this portion of creating the job description was rereading each of my team members answers, being a scribe and creating a combined and cohesive job. We worked together in class on Tuesday to talk through each portion of the job description and piece together different portions of our answer to create a final job description. I feel the best out our title, general job description and qualification. We spent a lot of time Tuesday trying to understand what the job would entail, and how it would work with the foundation we have created. We also worked well to understand jobs and see how we could make sure each of us contributed to this creation. I think that these three things are really descriptive and highlight the type of job that we are listing and are showing what we expect from someone who would be applying for this position. Some questions that I have for peer review are, how can we make this something that someone would want to apply for? What is working within the description, and what isn’t? And where is an area that needs improvement?
Journal 21:
Three questions I would ask in our interview:
- How would you be able to pitch The Rolling Clouds handbook to not only a university committee but to first year students?
- What about this job interests you the most and why?
- In situations that involve miscommunication, how did you handle this situation? What would you like to better the next time a situation like this arrives?
Three big moments to focus on:
- I created and now am the President on a medical missions club on campus. I am responsible for creating new fundraising ideas, communicating with our team as well as those on campus, reaching out to business to help sponsor us or create fundraisers, and organized a trip for 20 students to go to a third world country.
- On top of all of the outside of school responsibilities that I have, I continue to keep up deans list status on my academics. I am able to keep things on tasks and be able to work at the highest level with lots of things on my plate.
- I also run a restaurant, and have been for the last six years. Being able to handle the stress at such a young age, and being able to keep the restaurant afloat is very important. So being able to work on that and work others in that specific high intensity and environment that it requires is something that I always bring to interviews like this.
Three questions a committee asks:
- How have you dealt with adversity in your life?
- What is your reason for applying for this position?
- Where do you see yourself in this organization in 5 years? What is your long term plan for this employment?
There are some things that I question about our sample job description. I think that we need to rework the way that we have things listed and how we are able to make sure that we are clear and concise with what we are asking of the applicant. I think being able to completely rework and reword each section of our job description is really important. And when we find that, then we will be able to have something that flows and that works well with our team and values. Having it be succinct and coherent is the next best step to make it seem like other job descriptions.
Journal 22:
Problem solving- Having the ability to logically work through obstacles presented within the criteria of the job. While coming up with complete and coherent solutions.
Journal 23:
What we learned from this first interview process was that there are so many things that you are responsible for when you are interviewing someone. My group had the ability to do two interviews in class, the first one was a little bit rough and was harder than anticipated. We were the first group to go today, and really moved into this with no idea of what would be coming for us. We have all been interviewed before, but never were the ones doing the interview. After the feedback that we got, we were able to make adjustments to our interview process for the second interview, and that was much smoother. I think going forward we need to create a script of sorts, for the start and end of the interview, that way we are on the same page and are able to get the same information out to those who we interview in the coming classes. Besides that I think just being confident in interviewing, and removing the awkward pauses and filler words would make our interview that much smoother.
Journal 24:
During this round of interviews I had a different role than in the first section. This time I was able to observe all three of the interviews and take notes about what we should do better the next time that we interview others. I was able to observe how the other interviewers conducted their interviews and the questions that they asked the interviewee. It gave me really good insight on how we can conduct our interviews in a more seamless manner. It gave me more understanding about how we can create a better interview that matches the criteria for the type of applicant that we want for the position. Overall it was really helpful to see these interviews and be able to observe how we can correct our process and move forward in a positive way to select the best candidate.
HR Report:
Ranking of Candidates:
1. Bernie
2. Ben
3. Evan
We chose this ranking due to the overall air each interviewee had during their interview section. We chose Bernie as our top candidate because of his ability to quickly think on his feet and be able to generate content that is necessary to the question. He was able to answer questions quickly and with ease, with a confident aura, and lots of background information that made him a star candidate. He gave really good answers about his strengths and weaknesses and failures, while still staying true to who he was, and showing us how he has become better. He was able to recall situations with angry customers, how he calmed them down and desescalated the situation. Being able to see that he can use his communication skills effectively in all sorts of situations really highlighted the type of candidate that Bernie is. While confidence was a major factor in how we decided on the candidate, the plethora of experience that Bernie had, and show cased to us, was just as impressive. With Bernie’s ability to think, work, and communicate effectively under pressure we know that he will be the best fit for this position within the Rolling Clouds team. We choose Ben as our runner up candidate due his ability to recall back to times he used communication skills, and how valuable those skills are for him. While he was able to give us really good explanations for each question, he seemed a little bit nervous and had some anxious tendencies. While these anxious ticks could show his care for this position, it also gave us an inkling that he would have a harder time under pressure, with a lack of confidence in some areas. We know that confidence will grow over time, so that created a hard balance between picking our first and second choices for this position. But overall, the lack of confidence and anxious moments that Ben had in his interview is what placed him in second. We chose Evan as our last place candidate for this interview because his only trait that stood out to us was confidence. He was very confident, introducing himself right away to the committee and capturing their attention with his voice. However, that confidence only seemed surface level, and the lack of in depth responses really showed us that he did not have as much experience as the other candidates. While he did have a great interview, and left us with a positive impression of him, it was hard to separate confidence from experience. But when we looked at these two ideologies separately it became abundantly clear that while Evan made up for his experience in confidence, it just didn’t seem like enough for the environment that we are trying to establish at Rolling Clouds.
Rejection Letters:
Subject Line: Your application for the Ambassador of Student Recruiting at The Rolling Clouds
Hi Ben,
Thank you so much for your interest in the Ambassador of Student Recruiting position with The Rolling Clouds. We appreciate you taking the time to come visit us at our office and interview with our team.
Unfortunately, you were not selected to continue in our hiring process. We have decided to move forward with another candidate who we believed aligned more closely with our requirements and needed skills.
However , we were impressed with your background and knowledge within this industry and feel you would be a great addition to our team. We will keep your resume on file for the future in case we have roles that open up. Otherwise, we wish you the best of luck in your career endeavors.
Thank you!
The Rolling Clouds Interview Committee
Subject Line: Your application for the Ambassador of Student Recruiting at The Rolling Clouds
Hi Evan,
Thank you so much for your interest in the Ambassador of Student Recruiting position with The Rolling Clouds. We appreciate you taking the time to come visit us at our office and interview with our team.
Unfortunately, you were not selected to continue in our hiring process. We have decided to move forward with another candidate who we believed aligned more closely with our requirements and needed skills.
However , we were impressed with your background and knowledge within this industry and feel you would be a great addition to our team. We will keep your resume on file for the future in case we have roles that open up. Otherwise, we wish you the best of luck in your career endeavors.
Thank you!
The Rolling Clouds Interview Committee
Reflection of The Project:
Overall I really liked this project. I think that it was really helpful and informational into the world of hiring and being part of a committee and also being interviewed. Having the ability to be part of an interviewing committee, which isn’t something that many of us have had the ability to be a part of yet, was really informative. It showed me a different side of the process that I had yet to fully understand, and it also showed me how I could better myself within an interview process. Seeing a rubric and then taking notes and understanding each candidate as we interviewed them really showed to me what I wanted to be able to change about myself, in terms of the style that I get interviewed, and how I want to be able to adapt and excel in any way that I can to fit the mold of a position I really want. I think that this project, in particular, gave us really good skills that we can use for years and situations to come. This project gave us real skills that could be necessities in the real world, and created a positive environment for us to test these skills out and figure out how to be a productive member of a hiring committee.
