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Higher National Diploma in Business
BTEC National Diploma in Business
Unit Title: HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGMENT
Unit Tutor: BA Malcolm Willins
Assignment 2: Job Interviews
Statement of authenticity:
I certify that the work submitted for this assignment is my own. Where the work of others has been used to support my work then credit has been acknowledged.
Student’s signature: ...................................
...................................
Date: ................................
Student Name: Piotr Półtorak, Michalina Jonak
Group Code: Amhnd02nd01
Date: December 4th 2009
· Job Ad
· Interview Questions
In our interview we choose following questions:
1.Which is your strongest trait as a teacher? (3pts)
Asking the above question we expected our interviewer gives one concrete trait not few of them. We wanted to check his/her self-confidence and if they know their value. All in all, we wanted to check them from their better sides.
Possible answers:
ü My greatest strength as a teacher is being able to connect with the children and getting on their level
ü patience
ü It is important the answer shows candidate’s hard/tangible skills. For example, classroom management, curriculum development, or technology integration.
We give 3 points for this question as it was the way of helping them to emphasize their best features.
2.What do you do with an obnoxious student? (5pts)
Answer should highlight candidate’s ability to deal immediately with a potential issue in a calm and controlled manner. Include questioning the student to find out the underlying cause of the problem, explaining the negative impact of his/her behavior to the student and coming to an agreed commitment to appropriate behavior in the future. We pointed this question with 5 points as it requires creativity and we wanted to check if our candidates are able to control their emotions and cope with stress. They may also answer that they had to deal with this kind of situation before.
3.What would you do to calm an angry parent? (5pts)
Answers should demonstrate candidate’s ability to work together with parents to help and assist students, to encourage parents to provide the right support and environment for optimal learning and candidate’s ability to remain non defensive and positive. Support answer with examples is very appreciated; e.g. I’d like to gain their trust that I act in the child’s best interest and therefore, report as often as required and welcome parents’ contribution. Severe complaints are addressed to the school principal if necessary. Similar to previous question we wanted to know if our candidate had this problem in the past and how he/she coped with it.
4.Give an example of how would you boost your student’s self-esteem? (5pts)
We wanted to check creativity and pedagogical knowledge of our candidates. We give 5 points as it is not so difficult question and candidate has an opportunity to impress us. Possible answer:
ü It's a good idea to think of all the times you have worked with a student individually. Most likely, you were not only teaching them something that they were having a hard time with, but in doing so you were giving them a boost in self-esteem. Working one-on-one with students is the most effective way to boost their self-esteem because they feel special, noticed as an individual and not overlooked in the classroom.
ü prizes, additional points, voluntary work.
5.When did you feel like a successful teacher? Give an example. (10pts)
This time we count on creativity and we expect that the candidates have some experiences. We wanted to check how they understand successful teaching as it is obvious that everyone has different values and priorities. This aspect is the most essential as far as teaching the students is concerned. Hence, we point this question with 10 pts. This is an opportunity to gain our trust. Taking into consideration the answers, we look for concrete examples, concrete and detailed description of situations when candidate was fully involved, motivated and satisfied with the students.
· The Point System Description
For particular question we gave different points. One question was only for 3 pts as it was question both for relax, eliminating tension and in order to show the best features of the candidates. Next three questions were pointed max for 5 pts as they required being more involved, honest as well as creative. They reflected the character and personality of the candidates. Finally, the last question was pointed with 10 pts as it provided us with an opportunity to familiarize with candidates' previous experiences and get to know his/her on more emotional level, as question touches upon extremely important past experience that was not only pleasurable, but helped to shape the candidate in the field of teaching. Candidate was able to gather max 28 points only from the questions.
The number of points gathered was very essential. However, it was not the most crucial aspect if it comes to our choice. We took into account the entirety of the interview process that is posture, body language, appearance and attitude. If someone impressed us, he/she received some extra points for the aspects I mentioned or they lost points for lack of them.
· Summary and Conclusion
The results of our interviews turned out to be decent. Some of the answers were quite similar, some were more or less diverse in their manner – it all varied in different candidates. In the end, most of our interviewees lived up to our standards. The best answers by far were provided by Gosia, who not only have had real experience in teaching, but provided detailed examples and had good ideas on how to deal with obstacles that were illustrated in our questions. Some of the answers were quite original and good at the same time, which was pleasant to hear. Magda for example, when asked question # 1, she was the only one to consider her doing some mistakes and talking with her student about it. This proved, that she strives for gaining more experience and being as of a teacher as she could be. Tomek was the only one that had a stronger attitude towards the matters from our questions (but he lacked qualities of a good teacher in our opinion). Some people lacked confidence, like Agata or Ania, which is not something that we want in a teacher. Tomek was perhaps a little too confident, when we take his lack of experience into account. Nevertheless, most interviewees had the right attitude and there were no extreme cases (but of course some were better than others). What’s important, all of the girls that were interviewed looked good and it was clear, that they’ve put lots of work towards their rather formal appearance. The same cannot be ascribed to the male candidates, Jacek and Tomek, who’s look was unfortunately too casual and thus inappropriate for the occasion.
When it comes to our questions, there should’ve been some changes made. Perhaps rewording some of them could’ve helped some understand them better and give more thoroughly detailed and to-the-point answers. Question # 2, asking of the strongest trait proved to be a little misleading. Only 3 of our applicants provided us with one trait, which was requested in the question. The rest started pin-pointing all of their attributes, with some completely side-tracking from the main idea and giving some examples, what was done by Jacek. If the question specified that we need only one answer, perhaps the answer would be better. Most people normally give number of their positive traits when asked such a question, and situation during our interviews proved this statement true. Also the question with an angry parent wasn’t such a great idea in our opinion. Most answers provided looked pretty much the same: “I would calm down the parent, talk with him, blame it on the curriculum”. Although the question provided some insight on a given candidate, but perhaps there could be a different question used in replacement, perhaps dealing with an extreme case (e.g. “How would you react if a group of your students were trying to imply violence on you”). The rest of the questions gave us a good perspective of all our candidates in our opinion, we would stick to them in the future.
In the end, the person we’ve chosen to work as a new English teacher in our school was Gosia. She was impeccable – she scored 33 points in a scale of 28 points (5 extra points). What we really liked about her was her friendly attitude. She’s a kind of person from whom an warmth emanates instantly after the first word exchange. That wasn’t the only reason for us hiring her, of course. What gave her advantage over the rest of our candidates was her experience. Not only did she work in a school previously, she also teaches privately. She gave us a really good proof of her experience as a teacher in the 10 point question, which was making a challenged student pass his English class with a B. The kid was really hard to work with, as his English skills were really poor. Gosia thoroughly explained her grace of that fact and provided an amazing example of her teaching abilities and experience in the field. With every other answer she stuck to the point and didn’t change the subject of the conversation. Even if simple, the answers included a detail explanation and examples which incorporated relativity to our questions. The rest of her attributes, like formal appearance, previous successes and good hand when it comes to kids only made it easier for us to make our final decision.
Contact:
Piotr Półtorak *b3nny@wp.pl ( 781-874-653
Michalina Jonak *michalina.jonak@wp.pl ( 509-392-447
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