INSPIRATION PROJECT: UNIT 2 INTERVIEWING 1

Inspiration Project: Interviewing

Rachael Shoff

OGL 482: Pro-Seminar II

Lawhorn

01/20/2024
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Inspiration Project: Interviewing

For module two I have chosen the interviewing option for my paper. I have chosen the

interviewing option because as a leader I think it is important to have strong interviewing skills. I

also want to grow and develop my own personal interviewing skills. I chose this to not only

challenge myself but also learn from this experience.

One of the most important items I found while creating these interviews was ensuring

that my own resume was up to the challenge. I utilized vmock for a previous assignment in this

class. The first thing I thought to do was strengthen my own resume. This would teach me how

to research other professional resumes. This was an eye-opening experience when it came to

learning strong resume building skills such as presentation, action-oriented verbs, and bullet

points.

Another item I researched for this paper was building your own resume template. This

not only keeps you on track, but you can also score your interviewers with each question. That

way when you reflect on the interview you can remember certain things you liked and disliked in

addition to the answers to the questions given. After building better resume writing skills and

researching various interview guides and templates, I decided to create my own resume template

to use on the three people I have chosen to interview. I took notes for each interview to

remember each of the answers.

Learning from Interview One

For the first interview I conducted I chose to interview my husband, Eric Shoff. I chose

my husband as my first interview of the three because he works for an industry I know very little
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about. That field being Information Technology or IT. I also have a very hard time

understanding what exactly he does for a living. He is also a leader in his own space. I thought it

would be a good learning curve for a leader to interview a fellow leader in a very different

organization. I started with basic interview questions and then moved on to other formal

questions. For this first interview the questions are asked by me, Rachael Shoff. The answers

provided are by Eric Shoff. Basic information Where is your current employer? Ford Motor

Company. What are your everyday job roles and tasks? Updating software, completing tickets,

writing code, and managing meetings. Are you currently happy at your place of work? Yes,

although very stressful I do enjoy the fast-paced energy and environment. What is your highest

level of education received? Bachelors in computer information systems – Saginaw State

University. Question One: “What is something you value in an organization when seeking a new

opportunity?” Answer One: What I value in an organization would have to be the freedom or

flexibility to be able to work remotely. Prior to the pandemic we were forced into an office

cubicle setting. During the pandemic we had to work remotely. I have since really valued being

able to work from home.” Question Two:” What is your ideal work schedule?” Answer Two:

“Ideally, I would prefer to work Monday through Friday from 8:00am to 4:00pm. However, I am

also flexible with the time throughout the week. I really do value my weekends and prefer not to

work Saturday and Sunday. I currently work about 56–60-hour work weeks and would prefer a

typical 40-hour work week.” Question Three: How does your current organization align with

your long-term career goals? What would you look for in a future organization to align with your

long-term career goals?” Answer Three: “My current organization offers opportunities for

promotion through regular mid-year and year-end reviews. For a future organization what I

would look for would have to be job security and opportunities for development.” Question
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Four: “Tell me about a time that you were unhappy with a leader in your space and why? What

was the outcome?” Answer Four: “I was very unhappy with my previous supervisor; the reasons

why were I felt unappreciated and was never rewarded for going above and beyond. I value my

work ethic. This supervisor also engaged in politics that stunted my career growth. I spoke with

my supervisor’s boss and was able to be relocated to another manager. My new and current

manager is career focused and works with me instead of having me work for him. I have

received two promotions since I switched supervisors.”

Learning from Interview Two

For the second interview I conducted I chose to interview one of my closest friends,

Ashley Kaufman. Ashley is a social worker for a non-profit organization. I chose to interview

Ashley because I have never worked in social work. I also thought she would be an excellent fit

for this assignment because I know how patient she needs to be in her line of work. Patience is

something that I lack because my job is always now, now, now or go, go, go. To interview

someone who has patience was a goal of mine. For this second interview the questions are asked

by me, Rachael Shoff. The answers provided are by Ashley Kaufman. Where is your current

employer? MCREST (Macomb County Rotating Emergency Team.) What are your everyday job

roles and tasks? Assisting residents with housing, answering resident phone calls and emails,

ensuring residents actively searching for jobs, ensuring residents understand this is a short-term

solution and not a long-term solution. Are you currently happy at your place of work? Yes and

no. I love my job because I get to help people. I hate my job because people can be so cruel.

People are ungrateful, and people abuse the system. What is your highest level of education

received? Bachelor’s in social work – Central Michigan University.

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Question One: “What is something you value in an organization when seeking a new

opportunity?” Answer One: “I appreciate when a job values the work/life/balance model.

Because I work in social work I often have to work with people that have mental health

disorders, substance abuse, and mentally in a bad place, so sometimes that can be draining

because I am not a counselor but feel like I am one when dealing with my residents.” Question

Two:” What is your ideal work schedule?” Answer Two: I am pretty open as long as I have some

form of a set schedule. I do not necessarily like when my schedule changes week to week. I

value my time and I like to plan ahead, so knowing my schedule in advanced is helpful.”

Question Three: How does your current organization align with your long-term career goals?

What would you look for in a future organization to align with your long-term career goals?”

Answer Three: “My current job does not have room for growth. It is frustrating that I can’t go

anywhere else in my space. I would like to have the option to be considered for other positions in

the company. But, since we are a non-profit, we do not have the funds to support movement

within my company. I would like to have the chance to prove myself and move forward within

another business. I think that working for an organization that is for profit versus a non-profit can

provide more room for new positions or promotions.” Question Four: “Tell me about a time that

you were unhappy with a leader in your space and why? What was the outcome?” Answer Four:

“One time at my office we were threatened by a resident with a firearm. Myself along with three

of my coworkers locked ourselves in an office and called 911. I was unhappy with my current

boss because we had no training previous to that happening. One of the girls locked in the office

with me was pregnant. Afterwards we asked if we could have some form of training in case that

happens in the future or for new employees, and we were told it was not possible because of
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funding. My boss recommended that we all take a self defense class. It seemed like she didn’t

really care that we were threatened or put into that situation.”

Learning from Interview Three

For the third interview I conducted, I chose to interview an old coworker of mine,

Cameron Brown. Cameron is a veterinary assistant and we worked together for three years. We

remained good friends after he parted ways with our company. He is still in the veterinary field

today and I thought it would be interesting to interview someone who is also in the same line of

work as I am. For this third interview the questions are asked by me, Rachael Shoff. The answers

provided are by Cameron Brown. Where is your current employer? Hartrick Animal Hospital.

What are your everyday job roles and tasks? Patient care, keeping notes, drawing blood, taking

x-rays, inventory, assisting veterinarians. Are you currently happy at your place of work? No.

What is your highest level of education received? Associates degree of Business- Macomb

Community College.

Question One: “What is something you value in an organization when seeking a new

opportunity?” Answer One: “Tuition assistance. I feel strongly that more jobs should offer

tuition assistance to the staff. I just finished my associates degree and unfortunately had to take

out a student loan to obtain it. I am unhappy with my current job, so I went back to school to try

and better myself.” Question Two:” What is your ideal work schedule?” Answer Two: I have

always had jobs where I need to work weekends or the job is open on the weekends. I would love

to work somewhere and have weekends off. I also appreciate having holidays off. My job right

now only closes for Thanksgiving Day, Christmas day, and New Years Day. I see a lot of my

friends and family having all these other holidays off and I think that is nice.” Question Three:

“How does your current organization align with your long-term career goals? What would you
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look for in a future organization to align with your long-term career goals?” Answer Three:

Right now my job doesn’t. I am unhappy right now with my job and I have been applying to

work other places. For my next job I want to have more of a management role. I like working

with people, so I am thinking of switching to more of a business approach.” Question Four: “Tell

me about a time that you were unhappy with a leader in your space and why? What was the

outcome?” Answer Four: One of my past jobs was working hard to be promoted to assistant

manager. I was sent to other locations to help and train new associates. I was promised that if I

stuck through the training and the other location got back up on its feet that I could transfer to a

location that had a need for an assistant manager. I transferred to a new location and was given

the title of assistant manager but was never given those tasks or the job description of the

position. I was treated like any other employee. I was very unhappy. I ended up leaving that job

because I did all this work to get that promotion but I did not feel that they valued me.

Biggest Take-Ways from Interviews

When developing my interview guide sheets, I was hoping to come up with some of my

own good questions. Where I work currently, they have a template. I didn’t want to just use any

template, but I liked having it as a guide. I was very comfortable interviewing the three people I

chose. They have been part of my life for a long while. It was interesting to hear how each of

them treated the interview. I felt that they all treated it professionally. One thing that stood out to

me that I liked was hearing how they all valued time off. When asked about their ideal work

schedule they all had similar answers. One thing that surprised me in the interviews was to hear

that Cameron was unhappy with his current job. He works for what I always had thought was

great company. Cameron and I used to work together. I still work at that office. He moved onto

other things because he was unhappy at his previous position. I was bummed to hear that he was
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unhappy where he was because I have been considering applying there. How I will think

differently and what I will do differently because of this assignment would be developing my

listening skills. I did not realize how much I was fidgeting during the process. I just hope that

none of them noticed my fidgeting. What I found out to pertain to my leadership style would

have to be that I am open to hearing anything. I believe heavily in an open-door policy, and I

want everyone and anyone to be comfortable when speaking to me or coming to me with an

issue.

Summary

I really enjoyed this assignment because I had never made up my own interview

questions before. Where I work, we have our own company wide template we use for each

position we are hiring for. I had always followed that template system. I really enjoyed asking

the ideal work schedule question. We don’t ask that question at my company because if you

don’t have open availability, you won’t be eligible for hire. That is there way of keeping work

related schedule issues low. You cannot have a set schedule and you can’t have availability

restrictions. I also appreciated updating my own resume prior to conducting the interviews to

gain insight.
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References

 Career Assessment, Pathways Planning System Login: Kuder journey. Kuder Journey®.

(n.d.). https://journey.kuder.com/home/dashboard

 Tips for a successful interview. University of North Georgia. (n.d.).

https://ung.edu/career-services/online-career-resources/interview-well/tips-for-a-

successful-interview.php

 11 leadership interview questions to help you prepare. Coursera. (n.d.).

https://www.coursera.org/articles/leadership-interview-questions

 Free interview templates and scorecards. Becky Simon (n.d.). Smartsheet.

https://www.smartsheet.com/interview-templates

 Resume module. (n.d.). https://www.vmock.com/resume/

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Question One:

What is something you

value in an organization

when seeking a new

opportunity?

Question Three:

How does your current

Question Four:
organization align with
Tell me about a
Question Two: your long-term career
time that you were
What is your ideal work goals? What would you
unhappy with a leader in
schedule?” look for in a future
your space and why? What
organization to align with
was the outcome?
your long-term career

goals?
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Where is your

current employer?

What are your Are you Highest level

everyday job roles currently happy at of education

and tasks? your place of work? received?