Ellen’s Blog

I am going to study abroad in Barcelona for three months with two of my best friends and I am excited to explore different parts of the world. I have only traveled to Canada and Mexico, I am excited to travel elsewhere. I have been doing my research culturally because I am living over there and I know that there are those differences.

Given that I don’t know anything about doing business or living in a different country. People in Spain are more emotional and nicer than Americans honestly. They also have a more laid back attitude and less worried than the rest of Europe. One article I read said that Spain, “lives life to the fullest.” They love to eat, drink, dancing and music, which is part of understanding their culture. It is important to understand this and not go into a meeting or anything with too aggressive of an attitude. This is good for me to know because I usually go into things with a strong and loud attitude, but after research this may seem to harm me in the long run in Spain at least.

It was very interesting to read this and do research, I think that living in Spain for three months will be even more research. What better way to learn a culture and how people live than to imerse myself in their culture.

Sources:

Spain. Business Culture. (2019, November 27). Retrieved November 30, 2021, from https://businessculture.org/southern-europe/business-culture-in-spain/. 

This week was a great time for this discussion, a lot of us very soon are going to be going into the “real” world. After graduating college will move on to “big kid” jobs. The thought of that kind of stresses me out, but overall I do not get that stressed out. I used to be the most stressed-out person, I would let everything stress me out. Recently, I have not been letting myself get too stressed out.

After taking the life stress inventory, it didn’t stress me out but it scared me in a way. It told me that I have a 50% chance of a major health breakdown in the next 2 years. I don’t know that based on the questions I believe that to be true, but who knows! If I took that test and got those same results a year ago I would have let it drive me crazy, even though I have no control over what it says or if that happens in the next 2 years. I think this change came with learning to control what I can control and letting the rest go. I still care a lot about what happens and what I do, but I’ve learned to let my little stressors go.

I believe this to be helpful because in my future career there are going to be times where I am a lot more stressed than I am right now because I honestly don’t have that many problems right now. I also don’t cope with my stress in ways that the coping test talked about, but I think that is okay because everyone copes differently.

When thinking about what to write about when thinking about compensation and certain behaviors I thought about my dad’s career journey. My dad has worked for many companies but only a few different industries along the way. When I was little he would travel all the time, he’s always been in sales.

Not only did he travel a lot for work but we would move whenever he would get a better offer. On our first move, my family was not happy, I had to leave my friends and so did my mom, as well as her job. But it was in the best interest of our family and my dad’s happiness, and he was making more money. Luckily another thing was that we were moving closer to the rest family as well.

My dad has always had our family’s best interest in his heart but also sets amazing goals for himself and continues to set them. There are many things connecting this to our course material. What I respect most about my dad’s decision to switch jobs is that he usually does it when he’s unhappy not just for the money.

This week’s post will be about training that has been beneficial for a few jobs that I have held. For two of my jobs, I have had to complete food training and get my liquor licenses for the state of Oregon. These training are put in place for many reasons and have proven helpful to me over these two jobs. My first job was working as a server and bartender at a golf course and the next was working at a Super Food Cafe.

First, they are to mitigate the risk of employer liability. They help to show the health inspector that we were trained from an outside source on how to properly handle ourselves when working with food and drink, along with preparing and handling food.

Going off of these training once we have them our employers can continue their training which is how they create their organization’s culture. These pieces of training have looked differently for both my jobs but played off of the knowledge they expected me to have after completing my previous pieces of training. After implementing different pieces of training both of my jobs have had areas where they evaluate their employees after training is completed.

I believe that this process in both of the companies I have worked for has been incredibly helpful and in line with what we have learned about training this week.

I have only been interviewed a handful of times, some of the jobs I have gotten are simply from recommendations. The jobs I have interviewed for, the interviews have all been very different.

My first “real” interview, I was so nervous and it ended up being the easiest interview I have had. It was a casual interview but still formal, which made me feel comfortable even though I was nervous. I believe they had a strategic plan on the types of students they were hiring and it was apparent in the interview. The questions reflected this and at the end when they asked, “if I were an animal what animal would I be,” this showed that they want people to still be able to have a good attitude while working seriously.

The most formal interview I have had and most prepared I felt my employer was, was for my internship this summer. I believe they had no bias because of the types of questions and the fact that I didn’t necessarily check all the boxes. I feel that the way I answered the questions and presented my experience is what got me the job. This has to do with some of the readings this week as well because my interview was virtual, I feel that this way of interviewing is going to become more substantial due to the convenience.

Lastly, the two most recent interviews for jobs I’ve had were casual and more about if I would fit the company culture and what type of worker I am. I feel that there are advantages and disadvantages to this type of interview. If I become too close of friends with my bosses then I feel that there is a boundary that is hard to see. This boundary can get in the way of them being a boss or a friend. I think there is a level of bias that is formed as well.

Overall, I think life is a series of different types of interviews and it is a good thing because it gives me the opportunity to practice.

I have only ever worked a few jobs, some minimum wage service jobs, and this summer as an event planner’s assistant. I have worked at a golf course in many different positions and now work at Pollen in Corvallis. This summer was different from either of these jobs because it was not a service job and was something I could see myself doing out of college as well. With that being said the job description for all of these jobs I’ve had are extremely different. 

I am someone who enjoys structure with freedom. What I mean by this is a job description is a structure that is given but then when I am given freedom to do my job, I appreciate that trust. That trust is something that is earned to interpret the situation case by case, but it does not come with the job description. 

In my first job my description changed rapidly as I continued to do better work, I gained more responsibility and with that came new job descriptions. However, as this was a good thing it got ore stressful and challenging to balance the difference roles. With any job when your job description changes, this was an easy job to learn the new tasks. Moving forward into my professional career this will not be as easy, it may take me longer to adjust to a change in my job description. I believe that it can be easy to maintain however given the correct tools and support. 

In the simulation it is interesting to see how things change based on our teams’ decisions to do one thing or another, because this will be real life. A job will depend on your decisions as your role in the company. Challenges come into play when these decisions pile up to negatively reflect your job description. However, I believe that if I have a growth mindset I can continue to adapt to whatever changes may come my way. 

After looking at 2020’s Fortune Best Companies to Work for it was interesting to see the similarities between all 100 of the companies. Looking at the learning materials from this week I can see why that most commonly written characteristic from employees is how the company cares about them as people. I think this is a summary of all the good aspects of what a manager can be. I took the number 1 company, number 50 and number 99 company. To see that there was not many differences in what was said about the companies was interesting.

Hilton was the number 1 company and their employees spoke about how they were not just a number but actually cared about. Power House Remodeling Group gave their employees what they needed to be successful and hired people that supported one another. Lastly, Delta Air, they are a team and share goals. I think all of these companies like I said practice good management based on these bits from employees, by creating a supportive, team and caring work environment.

After reading through different aspects of HR and management in general and the tactics that go along with those the main word that comes to mind when I think about what kind of manager I want to be is fair. It incorporates my values and ethics into one word. Making sure that the work environment is diverse, inclusive and a supportive one. In the same breathe this is what would be challenging, no matter how good of a job you do someone will always think you are being unfair. That is why being the boss is always a challenging job. Being fair and sticking to personal and company values can keep you on the right track.

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