Kaitlyn Crow

Mr. Ratliff
ISM-1
4 October 2019
Trauma Surgery
Research Assessment #4

Personally, I found the ISM business symposium to be very helpful in developing my

professional skills. The most beneficial aspect was definitely the interviews with the business
professionals from the area.
Even though neither of the professionals I interviewed were involved with medicine, I
found our conversations to be extremely helpful. The first professional I spoke with was Ms.
Hannah Sartore, a talent acquisition specialist. She spends most of her time advertising and
interviewing potential employees for her company. We had an excellent conversation and at the
end she told me the qualities she saw in me that she would seek out in a candidate she was
interviewing. I found this very helpful, since I now know what my top strengths appear to be
from a first impression, and I know to continue to highlight these strengths. She gave me notes
about expanding on my responses to interview stories so that the interviewer does not have to ask
more leading questions. I had always made an effort to keep my responses brief so that I do not
ramble and repeat myself, but I now realize that expanding with more details presents me in a
better light. She also gave me the note that I should add my title at an organization underneath its
name on my resume, which I will do.
The other professional I spoke to was Mr. Prasad Ayela, a client executive for the
company Altran. He asked me a lot of questions about my future plans and gave me his advice
on them, which I really appreciated. We spoke a lot about college, and he said that I was the only
student he had met all day who was aiming for a prestigious college outside of Texas and that
this was very admirable. I hear a lot of people tell me that the smart thing to do is to go to a state
school where I would excel, and it was refreshing to hear an accomplished professional reaffirm
that my dreams are rational. Overall, both interviews helped me develop my professional skills
further and I believe that there is a lot to learn from mirroring their composures.
Another aspect of the business symposium that I enjoyed was listening to the speaker. I
admired her vivacity and how she balanced her authority with her humor. Her notes about
advertising your professional self were especially helpful. She spoke about formatting your
resume to emphasize your contributions and removing phrases like “helped with” or “assisted
with” and replacing them with direct action phrases. I will do this on my own resume in order to
highlight my own skills. I found her presentation very motivational and I plan to apply her notes
about entering a job as a professional “partner,” not an employee.
 I found the networking times to be beneficial because they allowed me to meet new
students and hear their feedback on my original work. The students I met were very impressed
with my original work idea and I feel much more comfortable about sticking with the idea of the
emergency response scenario game.
In my opinion, the ISM business symposium was extremely helpful, and the only
suggestion I have is to attempt to have smaller groups and clearer directions. However, I realize
that this is not likely to be logistically realistic.