ENG 105i Writing in Business Social Media Bootcamp & Interview Prep Day 1 ENG 105i Writing in Business

Announcements Announcements: Cover Letters due today to Assignments/Sakai. For Monday, Online profile draft due and Monday Business Roundup (Group 2)

Social Media Profiles and your Online Presence Who are you on the World Wide Web? How do you establish a professional presence and enable networking online? What are some of the ways in which you can develop a professional “brand”? 2 yous. Real and digital you. They paint a picture. LI, FB, TW

Activity: Control your online presence Google search your partner. Ensure that your potential employer only sees what you want them to see. Go beyond just typing your name. Look for websites, news, images, etc.

LinkedIn -sign up for a LinkedIn account experiment with different available sections of the profile your main goal is to create a profiles that is professional and targeted to the field you are interested in.

Examples Examples : LinkedIn Profile http://www.businessinsider.com/8-steps-to-creating-a- powerful-linkedin-profile-2013-12 Vizualize.me profile vizualize.me/Eugene#.VBh3TC5dXIQ (if you create a LinkedIn profile first, visualize me it will import your information over to their site.

On Interviews Here are some things to keep in mind as we begin preparing for the interviews...

STEP 1: Research the organization Take a hard look at the organization’s website and the job description and familiarize yourself with what they do, and try to glean what kinds of things they value from the people who work for them (especially check out the Mission page, the newsletter, and the staff bios if they have them).

Step 2: Know Yourself This is where we start to prepare some exemplary answers for standard behavioral interview questions. Let’s start with some basic questions and work up some answers. Tell me about yourself. What are your strengths (list 3 strengths)? What are your weaknesses (list 3 weaknesses)? Why do you want this job? Where would you like to be in your career five years from now? Take a few minutes and come up with one or two answers for these questions.

Know yourself, continued. Those questions, however, are just the tip of the iceberg. A popular interview method is called a behavioral interview, and the majority of the interview questions you will have will feature these types of questions.

Behavioral Sample Questions Give me an example of a time that you felt you went above and beyond the call of duty at work.  Tell me about a time when you had to give someone difficult feedback. How did you handle it?  Tell me about a time where you had to deal with conflict on the job.  If you found out your company was doing something against the law, like fraud, what would you do?  What assignment was too difficult for you, and how did you resolve the issue?  Describe how you would handle a situation if you were required to finish multiple tasks by the end of the day, and there was no conceivable way that you could finish them. 

THE STAR METHOD How do I respond to these types of questions? Try using the STAR METHOD: The STAR method is a structured manner of responding to a behavioral-based interview question by discussing the specific situation, task, action, and result of the situation you are describing. SITUATION TASK ACTION RESULT

SITUATION Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. You must describe a specific event or situation, not a generalized description of what you have done in the past. Be sure to give enough detail for the interviewer to understand. This situation can be from a previous job, from a volunteer experience, or any relevant event.

TASK What goal were you working toward?

ACTION Action: Describe the actions you took to address the situation with an appropriate amount of detail and keep the focus on YOU. What specific steps did you take and what was your particular contribution? Be careful that you don’t describe what the team or group did when talking about a project, but what you actually did. Use the word “I,” not “we” when describing actions.

RESULT Result: Describe the outcome of your actions and don’t be shy about taking credit for your behavior. What happened? How did the event end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn? Make sure your answer contains multiple positive results.

Keep in mind... Be as specific as possible at all times, without rambling or including too much information Be prepared to talk about yourself; don’t wait to be prompted Do not paint yourself in a negative light. However, keep in mind that some examples that have a negative result (such as “lost the game”) can highlight your strengths in the face of adversity.

PRACTICE Let’s work on answering one of the behavioral questions on the mock interview page using the STAR method. ACTIVITY: Take 5 minutes to craft an answer to one of the questions on the list. Then go around your group, having one of the members ask the prepared question, and you try to answer it. Afterwards, make suggestions on how to improve it.

More preparation… On Thursday, we will look at the Interview Checklist (handout and on Sakai). Mark off what things you will need to do to prepare for your interview. Prepare the rest of your Mock Interview Questions for Thursday.