Oregon State University|blogs.oregonstate.edu

Effective an Ineffective Training:

  May 3rd, 2022

I haven’t had many job training experiences in my life that have gone well or didn’t go well, but I have taken many classes that I have liked and also didn’t like. The one class that has provided me with great experience is BA 260 and the worst class that I have struggled learning in is currently BA 466.

BA 260 is the introduction to entrepreneurship, and it is a class where you come up with your own company and give multiple presentations and pitches to your classmates and then later on you enter a competition with all of the students from the other classes, and you try to get your business to be invested in by different judges. Now, my team didn’t make it past the first round in the competition, but I learned so much from that class about pitching, and it was also one of the best groups I have had for a group project to that degree. We worked great together and they were all such nice people, it made it easy to work with them, and that is very rare when it comes to group projects. From the lecture slides I was relating this class on the importance of training. In the slides, it states that training is important because of the impact on employee performance. I think this class and activity was important because of the real life experience that I have gained from it. I think I will use this in the future, if I ever have the opportunity to create my own business, and get people to invest and buy in. I have learned and trained on what techniques work, and what can be better.

The class that is an absolute disaster right now is BA 466, it is my Capstone class and one of the hardest things I have had to try and learn. I am 6 weeks in and still have no clue what is going on. The teaching is ineffective, and the simulation is based on luck and randomized, so when you go to practice it is different every single time. I wish I could explain the concept, but I show up to class, pay attention, and still I have learned nothing. If this class was structured differently with more guidance, it would be so easy to get through. Right now, I am just getting by and it is rough, I have never experienced such ineffective class structure.



Implicit Bias:

  May 1st, 2022

For the implicit Bias test that I took is the age bias test. The results from the specific test was “Your responses suggested a moderate automatic preference for Old people over Young people.” I am not sure how I felt about it because I got a 30% and 30% for the old people compared to the young people. I had a 17% for the slightly automatic young people compared to old people. The information that I gathered are interesting. Some of the words sound about the same between the “slightly automatic” and the “moderate automatic.”

I personally answered all of these questions truthfully and I do believe that I have no implicit bias towards anybody especially when it comes to age. I think that people have a bias when it comes to age because of the capability that different age groups can have. When it comes to hard work and a lot of computer and technological work, businesses might prefer to work with younger people because of their knowledge and capability to learn about new technology in the business. People might want older people for phone answering because they know how to do that. Workers are just leaning more towards younger people, but I think if you learn quickly than anyone can do a job. I had a 1% of an automatic preference for old people to young people, which I think can be accurate.

I have taken other implicit bias tests before and I will say I had a split down the middle when it came to the topics that I selected.



My Interview Experiences:

  April 28th, 2022

The interview that has stood out to me the most, was an interview that I went through recently through OSU. I work in the MU as an Event Coordinator, and it has been the most effective interview experience I have ever had. It was such a professional interview experience where I was able to showcase and apply what I have learned about interviews through the college of business. When I first started, it was a group interview and I was nervous thinking that the other person is better than me. I think having a group interview was the most effective way to conduct the interview.

For me personally it was a difficult interview. I had just gotten my tonsils taken out, and was just at the point to where I could speak, barely. When the interview started I made it known that I had just gotten my tonsils removed and am going to speak the best that I can. I let the one girl who started go first to answer the questions, and it was really nice to have because I was able to focus and get rest when I spoke. It was a really helpful process. I think the method that was used for the MU is their recruitment message, they were really on point with their job description and what they expect of us, as an applicant. They really wanted people to be hired, so they started off the interview by announcing the job description again and making sure that we knew what it was all about. I was really happy about that, and felt like they cared about us. The MU is a really professional and respectful place when it comes to conducting interviews.

I also wanted to reflect on a bad interview that I had as well, where I was the person who was conducting the interview and observing. It was just recently where my job was looking for someone in a higher up position and wanted feedback. I can say, that there was plenty of feedback about this candidate. For starters the candidate was an hour late, parked in the wrong space, and forgot to print off his resume, so he had to leave to print it off and come back, and that started the interview now an hour and a half late. He did not have the credentials and it left a sour taste in everyones mouth when he went through that, and also answered the questions half answered, like he didn’t care. You could say that was a very disrespectful and ineffective interview.

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My Job Description Experience:

  April 21st, 2022

I am about to be an OSU grad this spring and the job search has been difficult to say the least. I have had the worst luck and frustration when it comes to the job title and the job description not matching up. I want to be an event planner and when I was searching on Linkedin, I saw a posting for an event coordinator for the city that I was searching for. The job description clearly did not match the title. The title should have been “Event Assistant”. The job description said you have to be on site at all events that you are assisting with and that you are on a one year probation before getting paid. It also said that you don’t work with clients, you work with the people who work with the clients, and you do the paper work.

This is not what an event coordinator does. An event coordinator is a step below an event planner, when someone else is planning the event, and you are helping the client with the process of planning. I was very unhappy and felt like a let down when I saw this posting. I wanted to apply for it if it had a better description. That is where I feel like job descriptions really need to be correct because here I was really excited to apply and then after reading to find out what I would get myself into, I did not want to apply. Companies can lose good candidates if they don’t have their description together or seem organized.



Management 453: Blog 1: Sydney Holzknecht

  April 6th, 2022

One of the first companies that I chose to look at was Wegmans Food Market in New York, one of the things that always stands out to me is the company culture that companies have, and with each of these companies I looked at the first thing I viewed was the company culture. This company had an 89% for company culture. I think that is really important, and it was the number 4 rated company to work for in the U.S. I would like to be the kind of manager that people get along with and are really happy to go into work and are comfortable to come to me when they need anything.

The second company that I looked at was sales force in San Francisco. This has an even higher company culture rating of a 90%. That is another very important thing when it comes to culture. Something that I do feel like could be challenging is when a company is too eager and too happy with their culture. I think that when a company is too good with their culture that sometimes problems can occur, and things can go wrong. For a company like this I would want to be the kind of person who can solve those problems when they occur.

The third company is American Express with an 89%. This is a pretty popular company because it is a credit card that is popular. Having an 89% for the company culture is something that is important and good to know especially if you are a customer and especially an employee.