Reflection

My overall learning experience.

What did I learn?

Firstly, I’ve learned to design job advertisements for recruitment and had acquired the skills to make them look attractive to attract the target job applicants. Additionally, I’ve learned to design the advertisements while adhering to the legislation under the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices. It is crucial that I know what is considered as merit-based, non-discriminatory, and equality for all job applicants. For example, for the Growth Marketing Manager position, the phrase “At least 5 years' experience in growth or performance marketing” and “Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Marketing or relevant field” clearly shows what qualifications the candidates should have if they want to apply for the job.

Secondly, I’ve acquired the skills of designing a series of interview questions based on the selected recruitment advertisement and assessing the candidate’s suitability for employment. It allowed me to learn the insights provided by the candidate and evaluate every part of the interview, which includes his skills, knowledge, and personality traits, as well as his professionalism in behaviour, verbal and non-verbal cues. Moreover, the series of questions crafted must be able to allow the candidate to have a rough gauge of what my company offers and are looking for.

Finally, I have the opportunity to hone my communication, leadership, and digital skills to design the webpage of Collateral and carry out an interview with my friend.

Communication skills are the most important skill a person should have as it allows others to understand and digest information more accurately and quickly. In the interview role-play, as the HR Executive of Collateral, I must be able to articulate what are the requirements needed for the job role and what candidate my company is looking for. Relating to communication is leadership skills. As an HR Executive, I must be as prepared as the candidate so that he will have a good impression on me as well as the company. Moreover, these two skills come hand in hand and it shows my competence as an HR Executive and an interviewer.

How can I apply my learning in the future?

Leadership and communication skills are two of the most in-demand skills in today’s workforce. They allow me to be the best leader I could be for group projects as they bring out the best of my abilities and motivate others to work together in achieving a shared goal.

Being an aspiring entrepreneur, I also believe that the acquired digital skills will allow me to design aesthetically appealing and easy to read webpages, with informative and succinct content, that will appeal to candidates who are interested in joining my future companies.

Furthermore, Mr Mario, my lecturer for the module ‘Human Capital Management’ said: “An organisation’s people act as the power source for the tree (refering to the organisation), feeding the tree and driving growth.” A company cannot lose sight of the foundation that it was built upon and must be aware of what’s happening at the roots. Having the ability to assess individuals based on their skills, knowledge, and personality traits will enable me, as a future entrepreneur, to hire the right people for my team.

What is one area I could do better in my role-play interview?

One area that I could do better is to have a more casual conversation instead of looking and sounding very stern. I feel that for some questions, I could follow up with responses that will allow the candidate to know more about the job role he is applying for and how it will be like working at Collateral. For instance, his response of having substantial knowledge and experience in web analytics and his familiarity with tools like GA360 when I asked “How would you be an asset to our company”, could be a great opportunity to follow up with what Collateral’s Growth Marketing Manager needs to do on a day-to-day basis, and where the tools mentioned by him will come into play when he is working at Collateral. This way, there is a two-way conversation instead of only me asking him many questions, so that he could better understand the culture of the company and how the company operates.

Additionally, I feel that I should ask more probing questions in the role-play to better access the candidate’s suitability for employment with regards to his skills, knowledge, and personality traits. In the role-play, I only probed two times and both of them are based on the candidate’s response. For example, the candidate’s response to the question, “How long did you work for your last employer?”, was vague and did not have much details about why and how it was an enjoyable experience. Hence, I probed with “Could you elaborate on why was it an enjoyable experience?” to gain more insights on the previous job experience so that as an HR Executive, I could better understand how Collateral could support him if he were to be selected for the job.