Business Communications

Class Notes April 29 2008

Power Point:
Reivew for the Final:

http://www.archive.org/download/ProfCrowleyReviewforthefinal/ReviewfortheFinal.ppt

Business Communications: April 22 2008
1) Quick Review of Interview techniques
2) Interviews With Reginald Righting
3) Create an Unstructured Interview with Reginald Righting
4) Draft Letters of Acceptance or Rejection, turn in
5) Chapter 9

A Formal interview with Reginald Righting:

Questions

1) Tell me a little about yourself. Where are you from?
2) How did you hear about Fake Camp, and what do you think you will be able to bring to the camp counselor position?
3) One of our most common problems is that campers run away. If you were put into a search party to help find a camper, what unique skills would you bring to the group?
4) We really need someone who can teach an inexpensive hobby to the campers. If you were given a 30 dollar hobby budget for the summer, what would you spend it on?
5) What religion are you?
6) As you may know, we had an incident last summer where a student was eaten by a bear. If there was a similar incident this summer, and the press contacted you for details, how would you respond?
7) Tell me five things I should know about you when I am deciding whether or not to hire you?
8) How much would you expect to be paid for this position – keeping in mind that we could never compensate you for all that we will ask you to do.
9) If we needed you to be part of Parent’s Night event, during which you would help organize the student talent, show, would you be willing to take on this responsibility?
10) What’s the earliest that you can start?

A Stressed interview with Reginald Righting:
Questions

1) Why don’t you currently have a job? Or, if you do have a job, why are you leaving it?
2) When I was your age, I owned my own company and had an annual income of 75,000 dollars. Why have you not accomplished a similar feat?
3) Most of our campers are spoiled little rich kids who would, quite frankly, be better off in jail. Tell me something that you really don’t like about children.
4) Here’s a situation: A camper starts dating a counselor. You find out about it. Would you tell me right away, or would you wait until things got serious?
5) My mom used to tell me that hard work was its own reward. Do you agree? Also, how much do you think you should be paid?
6) What do you think about affirmative action?
7) There’s no I in “TEAM,” and there’s no “You” in Fake Camp. We have a strict dress code and a very rigorous schedule for each and every day. Tell me why you would fit will into our camp culture.
8) If there is one thing I hate more than kids, its alcohol. Tell me what you would do to make sure no one had access to drugs or alcohol while there were here.
9) Will you lend me 35 dollars? I’m going to lunch with an investor.
10) What’s the earliest that you can start?

Class Notes For April 17 2008

Today's Power Point

http://www.archive.org/download/ProfessorCrowleyPower_0/11.ppt

Interviewing for a Job:

Part 1) Getting to Know a Company:

Name
Status
News and Developments
Products and Services

On-line investigation of Both National and Local businesses

Job Information:
Title
Qualifications
Salary Range
Career path

The Opening Formalities:

What are Non-verbal messages?
List three/discuss
Use the interviewer’s name
firm handshake
Wait for the interviewer to ask you to be seated
eye contact and use Body language
Be conscious of non-verbal messages

Examples in Class:

The Information Exchange:

Key Points that you want to emphasize

Presenting your qualifications
List five or six key points that you want to emphasize
standard interview questions
behavioral questions
logical thinking and creativity
profession attitude

Class Notes for April 8 2008

1) Get out your resumes:

a. Flip them over
i. What did you change?

2) Cover Letters:
a. Avoid cliché fraise
b. Avoid “I”
c. Avoid boasts
d. Use language from the advertisement
e. Be positive

3) Hand back the cover letters:

a. I have not put grades on these yet, but I have made some comments. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to look a the resume that you produced for today, and I want to devise a way to include information in your cover letter from your resume that has not yet been included.

4) Now that we have thought a little bit more about the cover letter, I am going to collect your resumes, and I will be grading these drafts. Next time, I will be collecting the final drafts of your cover letters.

Moving your presentations back to TUESDAY of next week, so that we can talk about how to present

Presentation:
1) Identify your purpose
2) Know your audience
3) Organize your content
a. Introduction
(see book 415)
b. Body

See book 416

c. Close
( see book 418)

Design compelling visuals
(420)

Delivery styles:
Pick one. Let’s go through step by step and organize our presentation!

Class Notes for April 3 2008

1) Let’s get out our cover letters.
a. Last time we addressed the basics of cover letter writing.
i. Three basic things you need to do in your letter
ii. We also began to talk about finding ways to communicate our qualifications
and skills that would distinguish us from our immediate competitors.

b. I’d like to begin today with a reflective essay, similar to the one we wrote last time about your resume
i. Describe how you composed this letter. What were your strategies for convincing the reader that they should take the time to read your resume.

1. Discuss Strategies

c. Now I would like you to get into your companies.
i. As a company, I want you to come up with a collaborative statement on what your expectations are of application submission. Without your company, you need to break into groups of no later than two. Each group with will expected to produce a paragraph, 6-8 sentences in length, that will lay out a description of what a GOOD cover letter and resume will look like and what a BAD cover letter and resume will look like.
d. Groups talk about their paragraphs, and then compose a single paragraph that represents the group
e. Individual groups will present to the class.

2) Now that we have talked about cover letters, it is time for us to return to the issue of resumes.
a. In a resume you never TELL someone that you are a hardworking, dependable person who works well with others. Rather, you SHOW them that by providing experience that proves this point. This involves being specific about what you have done.
b. Hand back Resumes. I have not put any grades on these yet. I want you to rewrite them to the best of your ability for TUESDAY.

3) Let’s get back into our companies.

Class Notes for April 1st 2008:

1) For today, you have read the rest of chapter 13 and have brought your resumes with you.

a. Pass out FAKE CAMP assignment

1) Reflect on the writing process. How did you organize your resume so that it best reflected the interests of your potential employer? (Five minutes)

2) How can you improve your resume?

3)Now that we’ve thought about our resume, it’s time to think about the other half of the applications package, and that’s the Cover Letter:

Goals for a Cover Letter:
1) Seeks to arouse interest in the resume:
2) Introduces the resume:
3) Interprets your resume in terms of employer benefits:

The cover letter is designed to convince the employer that your qualifications are adequate for the position. Let's look at some bad examples. Look at the GOOD example on page 496

Gain the reader’s attention
1) How did you hear about the job?
2) Identify the job you are seeking
3) Explain how your qualifications suit you for the job

Provide Evidence of Qualifications:

Education is more impressive than work for people just graduating, so focus on that. Show that you can reflect on your job, and what you did well in your job.

How do you close?
One page, single spaced. Singed at the end.
The General Writing Details are really good here

Begin to Draft the Letter!

Business Communications March 27 2008

There are two basic steps to the resume process:
How have you looked for a job in the past?
Printed sources
Networks
Career Service Center
Employment Agencies
Website. Monster.com Mainejobs.com

1) Gather relevant info for decision making: Education and Experience, References
2) Identify unique selling points about yourself.
3) Identify career opportunities. Mainejobs.com
A general resume will not be enough. You will need a targeted resume, one that reflects the requirements of the employeer.
Six parts to a standard resume (scanable resume 488):
• Identification
• Objective
• Career Summary
o Include Education
o Work on this in class
o Effectivly Summarize work experiance
• Qualifications
• Personal Information
• References
• DON’T LIE!
SPECIFICITY IS KEY!

Class Notes for March 25 2008

Part 1:

1) Blog is live
2) Assemble into your companies.
3) First order of business: You have to fire one individual from your organization.
4) That individual must organize a brief presentation that they will deliver to another organization
5) That organization will hold interviews.
6) Individual companies must take an another employee, or they will go under.
The basics of a resume. What is it that you are going to want to know about a potential employee?
List these things
How do we present ourselves to our employers?
What are the areas we cover? Round of interviews
How should be present ourselves?

Business Communications March 20 2008

1) Hannaford Event! Go over the letter. How is it a good letter? How is it a Bad letter?
2)
3) Get out your homework for today.
4) In your groups, go through each paper and discuss what makes sense, and what does not make sense. How could it be improved?
5) Each group is going to be responsible for compiling this information and presenting it to the rest of the class, either from their chairs or from the front of the class. Your presentation should outline what you think is the most important information you have collected. Imagine that you are speaking to a group of potential investors. Your job is to try and persuade people away from their current companies.
6) How are we persuasive?
a. Get their attention
b. Introduce the produce and create interest in it
c. Present Convincing evidence of the value of the idea
d. Encourage action.
7) Now let’s think about business presentations, and how we can improve on what we just did.
a. Logically organizes
b. Objective
c. Prepared for a limited audience
8) Formal and Informal reports (we are going to change forever!) Short or Long (very good good graphic on page 303.
Reports follow a problem

Class for March 18, 2008
1) New Technology
2) Finger in the chili
3) Bad News: Sunshine Shoe Shine went out of business over break
a. You are on your own now, and are going to have to form a company
b. You have been given severance of 100,000 dollars.
c. You have decided to start your own company.
d. What will your company be? What will you sell? What kinds of services will you provide?
e. Get into groups and brainstorm possible kinds of business. These need to be businesses that you think you could form.
f. After you have come up with a business, you are going.
g. Type of Business
h. Organizational structure
i. Anticipated salaries
j. Location, cost
k. Required materials, anticipated cost
l. 4 requirements
i. What is the business
1. Statement of Organizational Structure
2. Anticipated Salaries
3. Location
4. Cost
Produce some documentation.
Now that you have created your business, we can begin to think of the kinds of reports that you are going to generate for your business.

Chomp the yard
The Dug Out
Yum Yum Donuts
Broadway Carwash
Princeton’s Auto Care
Broadway Car Wash

LAYOFF!

Your company has determined that it cannot support one of your current employees, either for financial reasons or for personal reasons. Thus, you must LAY THEM OFF or FIRE them. However, you are also finding yourself in position where you will need to HIRE a new employee, someone who is willing to work for LESS!
Part 1)
1) Each member of the group must explain to the rest of the group why they should not be Laid off.
2) The group must agree on who will be laid off.
Part 2)
1) Laid off employees should all meet on the left side of the room for discuss how they will create very basic resumes.
2) The surviving members of each company must draft a basic advertisement that lays out what they are looking for in their new employee.
Part 3)
1) Laid off employees will begin to interview with their new companies.
2) After the interviews are complete, groups will meet to discuss who they thought the best candidate were.
3) Those currently waiting to be hired will meet to discuss what they think they could have done better in their interviews.
Part 4)
1) Each company will make an offer to the individual they want to hire
2) Individuals will choose new companies.

Business Communications

Monday, March 24, 2008

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