Author: louisl

I feel that one of the most important things I have learned this term is more details and in depth knowledge on discrimination and key laws and regulations that are crucial to know, understand, and be aware of when recruiting and hiring. I say this topic because I plan to go into HR for my career, and will be starting off in an HR role post graduation, so in order for me to be successful and aware of potential discrimination and disparate impact that can happen in the workplace, and avoid discrimination in all forms completely, I need to understand these laws and discrimination forms in detail and know this information like the back of my hand. 

Additionally, when dealing with sensitive and confidential topics that come with being in HR, it is important to know and be aware of the laws and regulations that can protect businesses and protect employees. Also, understanding what isn’t protected. There is always potential for HR managers to make appearances in court for certain reasons or situations, so it’s important to know what you and people are protected with, or how to defend discrimination claims when needed. For example, knowing what the Equal Employment Opportunity laws and regulations are and what they can offer for employees and in HR. It is crucial to know what the “protected classes” specifically are under the EEO, as not all classes or groups are protected under this law – only race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, and national origin. Also, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only prohibited discrimination under these protected classes, and adding more classes (military experience, marital status, genetic info), but it also made it so retaliation against people who bring up discrimination complaints. Knowing the protected classes, and being aware of where discrimination can easily hide in the workplace, is key in avoiding lawsuits and being an overall just company.

It is clear that discrimination still exists in our world today, in many forms. So it is so important to me in my career to make a difference and not fall into ignorance and be aware of my biases and those around me, so I can do better for any company I work for and create a healthy working culture for ALL my employees! 

1. What am I good at?

• I am a very outgoing and reliable people person. I thrive in working in diverse teams, where everyone collaborates and shares their ideas to create something great. I know when to take initiative and communicate goals affectively to anyone, and I am very straightforward and assertive when it comes to getting any tasks done, especially during high pressure circumstances. 

2. What do I value?

• I value healthy working and life cultures, and teamwork. I would not be able to participate in a job where I could not interact and communicate with many people on a daily basis. It is crucial that I am working and within environments that are supportive and recognize people’s accomplishments, but also know when to  communicate mistakes so growth can occur. Passive working environments are not for me – I need genuine confrontation that can help myself and my peers grow to be a better team, given in a positive manner. I also value good benefits over a larger salary, but I do expect to be paid according to the work I am doing in a given job and I will stand up for that whenever necessary in my future. 

3. How did I get here?

• I got to this point in my life, graduating from OSU with a degree in business management and wanting to pursue human recourses for my career, from involving myself in controversial sorority leadership roles, taking a chance with an internship in an industry I was foreign to, and pursuing more dedication and interest in the field of HR by taking certain college classes and participating in seminars based on the topic. I also have always known that I want to work with all different walks of life and be a leader in my career within the business industry. 

4. Where am I going?

• I am striving in the direction to be the head of HR for a business company one day. That would be my ideal job in working towards within my early career. Because I value healthy working cultures and working with much diversity, I want to help create a company culture as such with much of my own influence in being the HR leader. I want to instill my values and a positive and constructive working culture, while also the values of others, in order to help create a great working environment. I also want to educate others in an HR leader role on the importance of taking care of your body and healthy living for all employees outside of work and within. I want to do this by creating a health and wellness program for a company within HR to use and have as a benefit for employees. 

For extraversion, my test came back scoring very high on this indicating that I am “sociable, outgoing, energetic, and lively.” It also mentioned that I prefer to be around others most all of the time. I scored highest with the friendliness, gregariousness, and assertiveness domains of this trait. My score for agreeablenesscame back as average, indicating “some concern with other’s needs, but also having an unwillingness to sacrifice myself for others.” I scored highest on the cooperation domain for this trait. I came back with a high score for conscientiousness, meaning that I “set clear goals and pursue them with determination” and people know I am reliable and hardworking. I scored highest on the self-discipline domain for this trait. For neuroticism, I scored very low. This explaining that I am very calm and composed in high stress situations, and I do not react with intense emotions towards such situations. Lastly, my openness to experiencescore was fairly low, indicating that I “like to think in plain and simple terms,” and that “others describe me as down-to-earth, practical, and conservative.” 

If a potential employer were to look at my scores, they might say a strength of mine is that I am very sociable and outgoing, and also assertive when it comes to interacting with people and getting to know others or a company. Assertiveness can be a positive trait in being straightforward, getting things done in the workplace positively, and not beating around the bush. Another strength to an employer from my results could be with my conscientiousness trait and that I know how to set goals and pursue them with determination, as companies wants in their employees to accomplish overall goals. Being a reliable employee, as mentioned in my test, is also a strength that employers count on and look for in candidates to know that they are serious about a job. 

A potential weakness for myself can be that showing an average score for agreeableness could indicate that I lack higher concern for the well-being of others, and sympathy for others, so employers may see this translating negatively in group work settings with many other employees involved. Another weakness to an employer could be that my openness to experience score was low in the imagination and artistic interests domains, so this could translate in myself not being as creative of a thinker as other employees may be. Thus, I probably would not fit well within a design type of job. 

Obviously from learning what I have from this weeks lecture, I would have to know more about what the company is and what the position for hire entails. But, if I were to hire Avery or Jaime, I would have to choose Jamie. Consistency in employees to get their work done each day and be reliable is hard to come by these days in my opinion and from my experience working. Even the simple day to day tasks that can get boring are just as important to overall company success that Jaime does well at and Avery does not. Also, there can always be training and development when it comes to Jaime being successful and confident in reaching her highest potential – this can get better for Jaime with practice and help from caring management and a good working culture. I would get frustrated with an employee like Avery, each day not knowing what I will get from them, even if they can thrive at their best for the company on occasion – usually this means they’d choose to excel only when it best suits them, and not having an understanding of the companies overall goals. Those actions from an employee can upset employee moral and other employees could get the idea they could act the same as Avery, and then no one would show working consistency. 

I feel that Avery would excel in a job that has a lot of variety and different creative elements involved that they could show their passions for when needed. The job would also have less day to day regularities, and more instances where each day of work and product or service is different and unique. For example, these jobs could include being a surgeon or professional athlete, or even a form of an artist or interior decorator. Avery would be more valuable here over Jaime because when crunch time approaches with any of these kind of jobs, Avery would high perform and Jaime would struggle under the pressure. 

Jaime would excel at more of an office type of job where the day to day responsibilities are important but very consistent and create minimal opportunities for problem solving. Also, a job that would not be within a leadership realm, as managers/leaders can be pushed to their limits daily and have to be productive under pressure often. Avery would not be valuable in an office job, and it seems they’d get bored and have no motivation to do the same tasks each day, even if they are crucial to business success. 

My brand and the first impression I present to employers is my confidence, dedication in all that I do, personable communication skills, and that I’m a team player who knows when to have fun and be productive. Additions to my strengths feature working in teams, quick learning and adapting abilities, reliability, public speaking, and leadership. Some of my weaknesses are wanting to control things that I cannot control, needing immediate gratification, and being very blunt. By communicating significant life experiences that I’ve been through, with humor also intertwined in the seriousness, I can tell a story about my brand and why I have these qualities today. 

To communicate this information through a form of a situation wanted ad and story of myself, I can use resources like LinkedIn and Handshake on the internet to promote my own career desiring profile (my story) with my brand, to be geared a certain way towards a given job role and my strengths. These websites are very visible to prospective organizations. Also, handing out resumes and cover letters can be another way to put my story out there in the hands of organizations for given roles I would be suited for and for those looking for someone like myself. 

The last job I had was my internship with Target as a Executive Team Leader Management Intern. To be honest, I remember the first job description I saw for the internship was when I applied for it through Oregon State University’s Handshake portal, and the description was very vague and more on what Target is about. The reason I applied for it was because Handshake said that my profile matched with all of the Target internship’s preferences for the job. So really, initially I didn’t pay much attention to the job description before I applied as I was keeping an open mind to all my internship options, but also thought I would never really end up working at a retail store. 

Once I continued interview after interview with Target, I decided that the internship and working for the large corporation would be a great experience in management training for me. I learned more about what the job entailed during the recruiting process, but not really with any paper job description aside from what I first saw on Handshake. When I got to orientation for the internship was when I was given a formal handout of job description expectations, but I already knew what the expectations were for the job from the interviews before I accepted. I will say that the descriptions I was given later in the recruiting and on-boarding process did somewhat align with what I actually did during the internship. 

The description made it seem like I was going to be doing a lot of the tasks I learned independently, but that never really happened. I was always alongside another Executive Team Leader that was training me, not really doing tasks alone because I was new to retail – so that did make sense. The descriptions did align with what they promised and what I was able to do for leadership experience and managing multiple teams, sales, giving input in ETL meetings, and more. As the internship progressed, I was able to run a given ETL’s department on my own, with some help from the Store Director, while the ETL was on vacation. I will say the job description was helpful and accurate, but definitely glamorized to attract candidates. Giving the internship a shot and getting into retail without much of an initial job description was a gamble that ended up working out in my favor and I loved the internship! 

I do not have a copy of the job description.  

If one of my favorite companies was accused of widespread discrimination against individuals throughout the company, of any discrimination grounds, I most definitely would no longer support them or want to work for a company like that. We live in a time where discrimination of any case is just not acceptable anymore as maybe the past had once allowed. Why would I want to backtrack on how far we’ve come from history is ridding of discrimination more and more over the years, by working for a company that continues to promote it? Working for a company that is not diverse or does not open up their company to many different people with different backgrounds would sound miserable to me. Diversity is key for a company to have growth in ideas and innovation as different walks of life give different views and new ideas from their own experiences and their own upbringing. 

It is one thing for a company to make a disparate impact on their employees, but another for a company to have widespread discrimination throughout the entire company that is disparate treatment. More purposeful widespread discrimination is where I draw the line – and at companies not willing to move on from the past and create more diverse and inclusive work spaces that society promotes today. 

Although, I will say that I wouldn’t mind being hired on as an HR person or consultant for such a company, ONLY IF I knew these discrimination cases were finally coming to the surface and my job being hired on was to work in ridding the discrimination within said company and creating a new equitable work environment. I would only potentially apply to work for a place where discrimination came to light if I knew I was being hired on to make a change and fix those mistakes in their business and rid of any discrimination.