Author: Joanie Welever

For this week, we are asked to think about our last job we had and whether the job description influenced our decision on whether or not we would apply for the position. For my last job, and still my current one, I would say that the job description influenced my decision a great deal. I work as a teacher at an after school program where I help students learn how to improve their reading through a teaching format called SIPPS. When I heard about the job, I was told to go to the Corvallis District website. When I got there I was very impressed by how organized and detail-oriented the website was. I was able to find the position almost immediately and found an in-depth description of what the job was going to be like and how my team and I would work together.

I will say, while the Corvallis School District did a great job of giving a detailed description of what the teaching job was going to be like, I do have days that I would not have expected to happen. As a teacher, there is the baseline rules and regulations that you are given, and how you should react in certain scenarios, but children have a lot going on in the first eight hours of their school day, and when they get to us at Pages, my reading program, a lot of them are tired and dysregulated. This means that most days we are helping students regulate themselves and learn valuable life lessons on top of the reading lessons they are already doing. There are so many different family situations too and that can impact a student’s learning ability and focus a lot.

When looking into the applicant’s perspective on applying for a job, there is the uncertainty when filling out the application of what the hiring personnel want. When I applied to my current job as a teacher, I tried to highlight my most critical skills that I thought pertained to the job. I also knew from experience that it is good to have specific examples on how your skill set can be portrayed and always have your resume handy. When I first submitted my application, it took them three days to get back to me. I felt that their promptness to the hiring process made the job even more endearing. The communication through email was thorough and I felt they were very clear on their expectations for the role. I was asked extremely in-depth questions about my experience working with kids and it made me feel like they actually cared about the type of person that they would be hiring for the teaching role. After I was interviewed, they gave me a realistic callback time when they would get back to me on whether or not I was to be hired. It is my understanding from the many experiences I have had in the workforce that you can tell how the company culture and job expectation is going to be based on the interview process. I have had jobs where they were lax on their communication or they asked very surface level questions and the job ended up reflecting the interview process. This job currently has been the best job I have had in a long time, and it reflects greatly from the interview process.

The scenario describes a company that you love being under claim that it was facing a lawsuit about being discriminatory towards people with different backgrounds such as ethnicity, culture or beliefs. Would this change your opinion?

I think what I would do first is I would look into the claims, because there is millions of new articles out every day that have claims that don’t have any research or evidence to back them up. Most of the time it is about celebrities, such as when the world thought Asher and Kunis broke up, but they happen about companies too. Only after I did my own research would I decide if I would change my views. If I found the claims to be true, then it would one hundred percent change my views on that company and I would stop supporting them. I feel that my morals are very strong and that everyone has a place here on earth and for a company to make people feel less than is not somewhere I would want to work.

While it is extremely important to put effort into the interview process and the hiring of new employees, there still needs to be focus on employee retention and making sure the company is getting the right kind of press. There are companies that will focus on marketing or on product design over employee recruitment and selection because they are trying to have a solid foundation for their company before adding on more people. It is important to build the backbones first before laying the groundwork. While there is reasoning why companies will do this, there are both pros and cons to this decision. The positives include having a great jumping off point for a company that will give them the opportunity to be able to do great in-depth research into the people they are hiring, and the organization’s reputation will improve from the press and bring in a lot of candidates. Some weaknesses of focusing on marketing and product design before employee recruitment could be if the company is not much bigger than a mom and pop store then they run into the possibility of an unstable work environment and make it harder to find candidates to fill employee spots. It can also lead to some resentment from the current employees if the work from marketing and everything is too much on their plates. It is a delicate balance that a manager has to decide for themselves and their organization on whether or not it will be beneficial. The manager also has to be willing to take on some of the work to help their employees not become burnt out.

When looking into the applicant’s perspective on applying for a job, there is the uncertainty when filling out the application of what the hiring personnel want. When I applied to my current job as a teacher, I tried to highlight my most critical skills that I thought pertained to the job. I also knew from experience that it is good to have specific examples on how your skill set can be portrayed and always have your resume handy. When I first submitted my application, it took them three days to get back to me. I felt that their promptness to the hiring process made the job even more endearing. The communication through email was thorough and I felt they were very clear on their expectations for the role. I was asked extremely in-depth questions about my experience working with kids and it made me feel like they actually cared about the type of person that they would be hiring for the teaching role. After I was interviewed, they gave me a realistic callback time when they would get back to me on whether or not I was to be hired. It is my understanding from the many experiences I have had in the workforce that you can tell how the company culture and job expectation is going to be based on the interview process. I have had jobs where they were lax on their communication or they asked very surface level questions and the job ended up reflecting the interview process. This job currently has been the best job I have had in a long time, and it reflects greatly from the interview process.

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