Blog Post: Most Important Thing I Have Learned

Though we have learned a lot of topics in this class related to employee recruitment and selection, one of the topics that really stuck with me was the lecture on closing the deal. You can spend a lot of time and money on finding the right candidate, but if you are not able to close the deal, all of your hard work and capital is wasted. In our group presentation, I also worked on the closing the deal portion. One thing that I found really interesting with this particular topic in mind, is the importance of understanding and using the 5 F’s.

The 5 F’s are five selling points that you can focus on, if you think your applicant is reluctant to accept the position you are offering. The 5 F’s include fit, family, freedom, fortune, and fun. These five points, are aspects of an applicants life, that they may feel will be impacted if they take the job being offered to them.

The fit selling point focuses on emphasizing how the applicant will satisfy things that the company needs based on their values. By emphasizing this selling point, you can let the applicant know that they will be making a difference in your organization, or making a change in something that they value such as their community. The second selling point is family. By focusing on the family selling point, you are taking into consideration the applicants family, and how accepting the job will affect their personal lives. For example, if you find out that the applicant is having to move, you can do things such as helping pay for their moving costs in order to make their transition easier. The freedom seling point can be used to show the applicant that they will be able to maintain autonomy and will have the ability to make their own decisions in the position. The fourth selling point is fortune. This selling point focuses on emphasizing the financial stabiity and upward progression that the applicant could have at the company. The fifth dimension is fun. This selling point focuses on emphasising the company culture, and the relationships that the applicant will be able to make within the company

By focusing on these five selling points, you can show an applicant that you are invested in them and their work at the company. After all, people like to feel as though they are being listened to and their needs are being met. Not only will knowing this topic help me in the future if I am ever tasked with hiring an employee, it will also help me when applying for jobs myself. I can evaluate whether the company will value me, based on if they seem to have an interest in these five selling points.

Week 9 Bloog Post- Self Reflection

1. What am I good at?

Some things that I consider myself good at include working collaboratively with other, and being able to train others. I gained this with my 5 years of working in customer service. At my job at Baskin Robbins, I had to train all of the new employees, and found that I was very good at interating and getting along with other employees. Furthermore, I think that I am good at communicating with those that I do not know in a professional manner. I have had to work with and help may clients through my accounting internship, and had to communicate professionally with clients and tax managers in order to do my job. I also feel that I am good at task management. I am very timely, and when I set goals for myself, I do everything I can to achieve these goals, even if sometimes it means overworking myself.

2. What do I value?

In my personal and professional life, I value respect and honestly. I do not respond well if I do not feel that I am being respected. I also make sure I respect others when I am working with them or communicating with them. I also value honestly. I grew up in a family that valued honestly, and I try to incorporate honesty in everything that I do. If I do not think someone is being honest, I find it really hard to trust them or work with them.

3. How did I get here?

This is a relatively hard questions for me to answer. I faced a lot of struggles growing up, both financiallty and mentally. With that being said, I always tried to find the motivation to keep trying to meet my goals. I made a goal to go to college, and even though my family told me I was crazy because my father did not go to college, I succeeded at this goal, and am graduating soon. I think my determination got me to where I was in life.

4. Where am I going?

In the future, I want to pass my CPA exams and get my CPA license. Furthermore, I want to have a family and own a home. These are my three main goals in life. I believe that my career goal of working as a tax accountant at a public CPA firm will help me meet these goals.

Blog Post: IPIP Results and Reactions

I took the short version of the IPIP test. After taking the test, I found out that on the personality dimension of extraversion, I scored low, indicating that I am introverted. I also found that on the personality dimension of agreeableness, I have an average score, indicating that I have some concearn for others’ needs, but don’t like to sacrifice myself for others. For conscientiousness, I had a high score meaning that I have clear goals and determination to complete the goals I set for myself. Under neuroticism, I have a high score, meaning that I get upset easily (which is very true) and tend to be sensitive and emotional. On openness to experience, I scored low, meaning that I like to plan and be practical.

If a potential employer were to look at my results, they may see some of my strengths as being hard working and having the ability to set and stick to my goals. I have strong determination that is very important to have in the workforce in my opinion. I also think that my average agreeableness score could be a strength as it shows I have concearn for others’ needs, but also can hold my own opinions.

Furthermore, if an employer were to look at my results, I may show weaknesses in extraverson, neuoticism, and openness to experience. My low score in extraversion may be a weakness, because in a lot of industries it is important to work in groups, and these types of settings give me anxiety. Furthermore, they may see my high score in neuoticism to be a weakness because I hold strong emotions and they may feel that I will not be able to seperate my personal life and emotions from my work place. Lastly, they may see my low score in openness to experience as a weakness because a big part of working and adapting is flexability and this score may show that I do not have much flexability. With this being said, my ability to plan and be practical could also be seen as a strength in terms of time management and my ability to complete tasks.

Blog Post: Typical versus Maximal Performance

If I were a manager at a job and was presented with these two individuals for hire, I would hire Jaime because as a business owner you need to think of long term results and having someone who is consistent would be more productive and cost saving then hiring someone like Avery who has a high-performance ceiling.

A job that I feel Jamie would be a good candidate for hire would be as a delivery driver, due to their low potential and high consistency. This is because being a delivery driver requires consistency every day as deliveries must be made on time, but there are not many skills that are required for this job outside of the ability to drive and have strong time management. There wouldn’t be times where they needed to push their limit, but instead consistency would be more important.

A job that I feel would fit very well for Avery would be an on call emergency room nurse. One reason that I think this job would fit her is because they would be in high pressure situations that would be everchanging, and therefore, it would be important for them to have a high potential-ceiling, and as they would have lives in their hands, it is important that they are the best at what they do. Consistency would not be as important, as since they would be on call, they would not be working overly long hours.

Blog Post: Critiquing a Recruitment Ad

I would describe my professional brand as organized, and positive. I would also like employers to think that I am outgoing and friendly while still maintaining a professional attitude. Some of my strengths include strong time management and my ability to work cohesively on teams. I also feel that I am very outgoing and have a strong ability to maintain relationships with clients. Some of my weaknesses include that I do not have a large professional, but I am working on expanding my professional connections currently. If I was trying to communicate this to organizations through the means of a novel and creative situation wanted add, I would make a poster or post that included information about my skills and college education. I would also try and make it lighthearted by adding a joke about accounting, as this is the industry I am hoping to go into. I would post this on job search sites such as indeed to employers would see it.

Blog Post: Job Descriptions

The last job I applied for was for an busy season internship position at an accounting firm. I do not have a copy of the job description, but included using Microsoft Word, excel, and Sureprep verification software in order to help prepare personal 1040 returns for clients. The job description was relatively short and didn’t give very much detail. While my current job as an intern matched the job description that was posted, I have ended up doing much more than what was in the job description. From working at the company, I learned that offering the internship was a relatively last minute decision, and I think that this is why the job description was relatively vague. I have not used excel and word very much in my job, but I use the SurePrep software every single day. In the job description it asked that I worked 20 hours every week. I ended up working upwards of 30-40 hours most week, but this was out of my own choosing. Overall, I knew that the job would be a little random as it was mostly just helping out tax managers with various projects. With that being said, if I was applying to a different job, I probably would have been a little uneasy with the very vague job description. I like to be prepared for jobs I am working for, so I usually prefer a longer job description to a short one.

Blog Post: Experiences With Discrimination

If I heard about a claims and a public lawsuit against company engaging in widespread discrimination, I think that it would alter the way I feel about the company. I think it is important to support companies with good company policies that treat their employees with respect, and I would not feel comfortable supporting a company that I knew was doing otherwise. With this being said, I have personally worked for companies that had managers that were discriminatory both towards certain races as well as genders. I unfortunately cannot say that I stood up and left the company. Instead I continued to work there for 2 years after the discrimination began. Since I personally faced discrimination in the work place, and have learned how harming it can be, I do not feel comfortable supporting other companies that do the same. With this in mind, I would also not like to work for a company that has claims against them for discriminatory practices. I personally learned from my decisions to stay with a company that engaged in these activities, and am more cognizant looking for jobs now.

Blog Post: The Case for Recruitment and Selection

Hiring practices, with recruitment and selection are a big part of a company’s success as people are the ones that run the company. Some organizations may decide to allocate more resources to things other than hiring such as marketing of product design. These companies may allocate more resources to these elements of their operations because they feel that getting customers to buy their products will be their biggest determinant of financial success. Other reasons that companies may not allocate as many resources to employee recruitment and selection may be that they do not fully understand the cost of hiring an employee that does not fit the job, or they may have a more automated process that does not require a large labor force in order to operate. 

Some potential strengths associated with allocating more money to business processes other than recruitment and selection include having more financial assets to go towards advancing their product lines and making their customers more aware of their products or services. Another potential strength of this is that they do not have to employ as many individuals in these recruitment and selection jobs which may decrease their labor costs. With that being said, there are also substantial weaknesses associated with not allocating resources to employee recruitment and selection. Some of these weaknesses include a high cost of employee turnover and a negative impact on company culture. If someone is hired that does not fit the position, the company will have to allocate even more resources to hire a new person to fill the position. They will also be paying a worker that does not fit the position a salary even though they are not correctly doing their job or do not positively fit into the company culture.

Blog Post: Job Application Experiences

The last job I applied for was at a mid-size accounting firm located in Lake Oswego, Oregon. I met and became aware of the company at an Oregon State University career fair. When talking to the recruiters at this company, I found them to be very welcoming and professional. They seemed like they wanted to get to know me both professionally and personally, as well as tell me about why they felt I was a good fit for an internship position at their organization. After talking to these recruiters, I felt that I had a pretty good understanding of the culture at the company, without ever having to step foot in the firm. Furthermore, when filling out their online application, all of the questions seemed to be behavioral questions structured in a way that I could easily talk about my past job experiences, as well as the things I learned in these positions. Overall, I felt that both the company website as well as job application were very well structured and organized, which made it very easy to learn more about the company and apply for the job.

The ease I felt having a professional conversation with the recruiters at this company made me want to look more into what the company did and what it could offer me. I found that the company’s website was very easy to navigate and gave me great information about the company and the types of clients that they work with. I also had a very easy time finding the company on social media accounts such as Instagram and LinkedIn. When I opened the job application, it was very organized and every portion of the application corresponded to a drop down menu where you could see the portions you had completed as well as ones that still were incomplete. Overall, I think the organization that I experienced in every part of my job search at this company really drew me in. Everyone was very professional, but always had a smile on their face and was willing to answer any questions I had.  The positive company culture made me very excited to apply for the position. I actually ended up getting an interview with the company, and was offered a full time position once I graduate. I am currently completing a busy season internship at this company, and can attest to the fact that the company has maintained their professionalism as well as positive company culture that I experienced in the job application process.