Job Application Experiences

I have spent a fruitful spring term for studying Recruitment and Selection course and it is a really interesting and useful course that teach us some real techniques to apply in real business settings. As my major is Human Resources Management so I plan to work in the Human Resources field after graduation. This course really gives me a better understanding about recruitment and selection skills.

What is the most important thing that you learned in this class?

I think the most important thing that I have learned in this class is designing recruitment advertisements and evaluating recruitment strategies. In my opinion, creating an eye-catching recruitment advertisement is important as it determined how much candidates can we receive from different places such as websites or job fairs. After I have graduated from university, I can apply the knowledge from this topic to my future job in order to design a nearly perfect job advertisement to attract more candidates to apply my company. When the interviewer asks how can I add value to this company then I can provide these knowledge and skills to him or her in order to increase my competitive advantage.

As a company needs to recruit the best and talented employee to increase the company’s profit so an effective job advertisement is important to receive a pool of candidates and we can choose from the pool and select the most suitable person to onboard. It is important to give a brief job description and salary information and background information of the company. Also, I have learnt to avoid information that is “too good to be true”. After posting recruitment advertisements then it is important to select candidates carefully and preciously. We cannot use a huge amount of money to hire a unsatisfied candidate so we can use different strategies that we have learnt in this week to select the best candidate.

1. What am I good at?

I am good at communicating with people. I am a good lister who full of patience and give out a lot of helpful advice to them. Also, I am easy-going so people love talking with me as it seems without pressure and they can talk freely with me.

2. What do I value?

I am value in non-tangible asset such as organising skills and creative ideas. As I have a lot of organising event experiences so I can handle it well if a company wants me to promote it. Also, I can give out a lot of interesting and creative ideas to a company to increase its value.

3. How did I get there?

I got there by the love and support from my friends and parents. They give a lot of encouragements to me and support me in their utmost even I fail or I mentally collapse. They always trust my ability and give me a helping hand when I need help.

4. Where am I going?

I am going to a new step after graduation. I have to find a job which can use my ability and it is not a boring job which can also have enough salary for me to look after my parents. I want to find a job which can let me to learn a lot of skills and it is a people-oriented.

After I have took the IPIP test, I found it is quite similar to how I think myself. For the first characteristic, extraversion, I got an average mark(48) in this test which shows that I am neither a subdued loner nor a jovial chatterbox and I enjoy time with others but also time alone. It is true that sometimes I want to be alone when I got some messy problems or sadness then I would like to sit down and daydream to come out the solutions. For the second characteristic, agreeableness, I got an average mark(47) in this test which shows that I have some concern with others’ Needs, but, generally, unwillingness to sacrifice myself for others. I do not want to sacrifice anyone including myself to help people to achieve their goals but I would like to corporate together to finish it. For the third characteristic, consciousness, I got a low mark(19) in this test which shows that I live for the moment and do what feels good now and my work tends to be careless and disorganised. Living for the moment is my attitude to my life as I cannot know what will happen in the next moment so just do what I want and love will make myself feel happy and blessed. For the fourth characteristic, neuroticism, I got an average mark(40) in this test which shows that my level of emotional reactivity is typical of the general population. Stressful and frustrating situations are somewhat upsetting to me, but I am generally able to get over these feelings and cope with these situations. For the final characteristic, openness to experience, I got an average mark(40) in this test which shows that I enjoy tradition but are willing to try new things and my thinking is neither simple nor complex. To others I appear to be a well-educated person but not an intellectual. The test is true to me and accurate.

From an employer perspective, I think my personality can sometimes bring value to the company. I am average in every parts except consciousness which indicates that sometimes I am careless but I am a fast-learning person and I am willing to learn with my passion. Also, I am a talkative and cheerful person so I can bring joy to the colleagues to increase morale. Furthermore, I can notice people’s needs and emotions quickly so I can give a helping hand to them in a friendly way. My personality is go to build a friendly and joyful team setting as I trust my team and colleagues. I think I have to improve my organisation skills which I should manage my things in a more organising way such as writing down a to-do list everyday and prioritise them according to the emergencies. After that, I can be more value added to a company.

If I were in the shoes of the business owner then I would hire Avery for higher managerial level position and Jamie for lower managerial level position. Therefore, I would base on the job position to decide it. Avery can be a slacker in sometimes but she will do her best in solving difficult problems. She has the talent and knowledge to improve the company’s overall innovation and profit and this good performance is suitable for a manager or higher level position. However, if this job only requires some routine and repeated duties then it is more suitable for Jamie. He has a high consistency which leads him to follow the rules and do the job step by step so I would hire Jamie for these kinds of job.

If the position is a sales manager which is a commission based job. She has to sale as much as she can to increase her salary and give a lot of creative ideas on boosting the sales of the product. It is a challenging and creative job which is not routine. Therefore, she can use her talented creativity to help the company rising occasion and bring high performance.

If the position is an assistant of Human Resources then it is more suitable for Jamie. As it only requires routine jobs such as filling and handling leave record which needs high consistency. He just has to get the administrative job done everyday then he can leave the office. It is not a work that based on his performance to determine the salary so he can be a dependable employee and do the jobs by himself.

My Brand:

The first impression that I want to present to potential employers is a sense of enthusiasm and critical thinking. Most, if not all, interviews come with a self-introduction first and at that time I usually present confident eye contacts to the interviewer. In order to show the great desire that I want to get this job, I usually will do a lot of background research with this company and then I will present it in the self-introduction to link it with why I want to work in here. My personality strengths is critical thinking so I will show it by presenting my previous working experience and how I used these skills in there.

Present myself in a novel and creative situation wanted ad:

Hello! My name is Andrea Leung and I am a penultimate university student with strong analytical and corporate skills.I am studying business and management in City University of Hong Kong and I am minor in Psychology. Previously I have worked as a Human Resources Intern in Thales Transport & Security (HK) Limited and Nestle. As HR Intern, I have participated in recruitment and compensation and benefits, for example, helping with payroll, arranging interviews, having a phone interview with candidates and promoting the organisation through university job fairs and so on. I help the colleagues with providing ideas of training sets and promoting ideas in different universities. I am a creative and have a strong critical skills student. As I am a business student in Hong Kong, I am now actively seeking a new business position as an Internship. I believe I can make a valuable contribution to the continued development of your company.I would very much like to meet with you to describe the work I have done in previous internship experience and my personality. Please contact me by email at andrealeung0210@gmail.com at your earliest convenience. Thank you for reading this advertisement.

The last job I had worked that was Human Resources Intern. As I am business student whose major is management so I would like to find an intern which is related to my major. Therefore, when I try to apply a job, the first thing I will look at the job title and the job description. Last year, I saw that the job description of the Human Resources Intern was mainly focusing on recruitment and selection process in the workplace and this exactly what I wanted to learn more in human resources management. The description told me that I can learn how is the interview process and the selection criteria so I applied it immediately.

When they had hired me, I started learning the process of interviewing a person by following and observing how my mentor interviewed the candidate. I keep dropping notes on the questions that my senior asked and how she responded. After that, I learnt the selection rubric on deciding whether this candidate fulfilled the requirements or not. Therefore, I think my job experience was actually similar to the job description. However, I would like to try to interview a candidate by my own but I know it is difficult for me and until I had ended the contract I still did not get a chance of interviewing. As the senior had told me before I could try interviewing a candidate before I left and in the end I did not get a chance so maybe this is the different with the job description.

Overall, I satisfied with the job as its description was overall similar to my working experience.

Usually when I saw a news about workplace discrimination, the feeling first pop up in my mind is shocked and terrible. If that company involved in this scandal and it is one of my favourite company then this scandal may give me a bad image on it and I will be disappointed. Discrimination is a prejudicial treatment in a workplace which will affect the company for making decisions of hiring, promotion and firing, based on a person’s gender, race, religion and so on. Discrimination is not fair to anyone, they maybe have an advantage on their ability and skills but they have no choice for being which gender, race or religion. This unacceptable workplace behaviour really erase a person’s huge contribution to a company.

If I find that my admired company involves in such discrimination scandal, then I will take a serious consideration on the news and see what is going on. If it is a fact then I will stop applying to work for this company as it is not worth to work in a company lacks of business ethic. In my opinion, everyone is equal in this world, no one has a higher status with their race or gender and if the company has a different value with me then it is the concern for me to apply in this job. I think I will not work happily in this company if it really does not respect for everyone. Even if it hires me, I think I will not work for a long time in there as I may sick of and cannot bear this culture soon or later. Therefore, it is better for me not to apply in this company.

When a company is considering to allocate resources on which department, it usually depends on the future profits that the department can earn and also how it impact the company’s future path. Most, if not all, marketing or product design department usually is allocated more resources rather than in the human resources department for employee recruitment and selection. I think the mainly reasons of this action should be the costs, future profits and short term effectiveness. When a company is deciding their year plan, it often comes up with launching and deciding a new product to catch the market trend and retain supporters by suiting their taste and attract new customers to switch to our brand by the new product. As putting resources on marketing and designing teams can directly reflect on the sales, so company usually tends to invest more on these departments in order to increase the sales and profits in a short term and long term way and the costs it invest is big but worth. However, company sometimes forget who think of those ideas of designing and marketing. If there are no talented and productive employees hired by the human resources team then there will not have those awesome ideas to laugh a new product. Therefore, the company always neglect the main recruitment part is because it cannot give a direct profit to a company. Moreover, the cost of hiring a talented employee is high as the company needs to provide a well-rounded package and a high salary to attract brilliant employee.

The weakness of not prioritizing employee recruitment and selection is the loss of competitive advantage compares to competitors. If the company does not want to use an attractive salary package then it is hard to lure an awesome employee. The strength of not prioritizing employee recruitment and selection is the short term effectiveness from other departments as it cannot generate direct income to the company but marketing can do this.

Recently, I am exploring job opportunities in different business aspects as I am a junior student whose major is business management. The last job that I had applied was a Human Resources Department internship from Nestle. As I know I am new to the industry and my resume is not as good as other applicants, so I have tried to prepare well during the test and interview. I applied the job through JobsDB and after a few days, I received an email which told me to do a test which about the Microsoft skills such as excel problems. I am glad that I have learnt it through my lessons so I can do well in the test and this is the reason why I receive a phone call to arrange an interview with me.

Before the interview, I did a lot of research about the company’s background and history. During the interview, the interviewer really asked me about why I choose this company and I answered a lot about the company’s background which suitable for my future career path and she also asked me the main point why this company has to hire you instead of others. Fortunately, my major is human resources management and the previous internship experience was also the same job title as human resources intern. Therefore, I take this as an advantage to elaborate more through the interview which can show I know well in this industry and I can list out the job duties of an intern of human resources management so this maybe the point the interviewer admired me. I know well about my value and it also suits the company hiring standard so it finally hired me as an intern and I did this job for three months.

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