Reference no: EM133630918

Professional Insight

Learning Outcome 1: Plan for a professional career and develop an understanding of the knowledge, experience and skills required in a dynamic employment market

Learning Outcome 2: Communicate for a range of professional purposes both orally and in writing

Learning Outcome 3: Evaluate teamwork skills in the context of preparing for a professional career and identify and plan for their ongoing development.

Learning Outcome 4: Critically review industry trends and the impact on future employment expectations.

Description

A dynamic, global and technology driven business environment means the way organisations recruit is undergoing significant change. Trends in recruitment include; increased automation of the recruitment process, increase demand for a diverse range of candidates and more emphasis on transferrable skills, amongst others1 (Schidman et al. 2017).

Using the knowledge and skills developed through Assessments 1 and 2, you will source a role that matches your desired career path, research the organisation you are applying to, write an application for that position and prepare for and participate in a mock interview. During this process of applying for a job you will need to reflect on your current learnings, activities and skill development, and on the skills and knowledge you still need to develop to be career ready.

Task 1: Mock Interview

Each student will participate in a mock interview and all interviews will be conducted via Zoom.

To prepare for your interview please follow the instructions below:

Interview Preparation Check that your equipment is working (microphone and camera) and that you have a quiet place to undertake the interview.
Your interview will be a mix of behavioural (including a question about your weaknesses) and organisational questions. Use the mock interview sample questions (with week 10 resources) to prepare answers and practice your answers with a friend or family. Make sure you use a wide range of examples from your experiences.
At the end of the interview (as in a typical interview) you will be asked if you have any questions. You should prepare a question(s) to ask the interviewer. The interviewer will not answer the question but give you feedback on the appropriateness of the question.
Attend the week 10 seminar and read the week 10 resources on interview skills. There will be an opportunity at the week 10 seminar to check your equipment.

Performance on the day

You must arrive 10 minutes early for the interview. Please wait in the virtual waiting room. You will be invited into the room when the interviewer is ready to start, as in a real interview.
Remember you are being assessed from the moment you enter the room so:
Dress professionally
Think about what is behind you. For example, if you are in your bedroom, is your bed made, what is on the wall?
Try to appear confident and relaxed - preparation will help.
Try to make eye contact with your interviewer.
Do not read from notes when you are being interviewed.
Even though interviews are fairly formal, try to communicate your enthusiasm and let your personality shine through.
It is quite acceptable to ask for questions to be repeated if you did not hearor understand them. Think about responses carefully without having overly long pauses.
Avoid ‘yes' ‘no' answers.
Be polite, avoid interrupting and thank the interviewer at the end of the interview.
If you are late (as in a real interview situation) you will miss your interview and will be unable to reschedule (except in exceptional circumstances).

Task 2: My Application

Title Page, Table of Contents
A title page, and table of contents must be included in this report.

Executive Summary, Introduction and Conclusion
(not required)
Section 1: My Role and Organisation 1a. My Role
Suggested word count: 100 words (approximately).
Find an internship or job opportunity that closely matches your desired employment path in your selected industry. Please include a screenshot of your job advertisement in this section. If you are in first year or closer to the start of your degree, please choose an internship or work experience role. If you are close to graduating please choose a graduate role.
Explain why you have chosen this role and how it aligns with your desired career path
Please note: Suitable positions to apply for will be discussed in the Week 8 seminar and with the Week 8 resources.

1b. Why this role and organisation
Suggested word count: 400 words (approximately). A minimum of 3 (three) references are required for the ‘why do you want to work for us' answer.
Potential employers want to know that you are the right person for the role, that you are enthusiastic about the role and that you want to work for their organisation over all other organisations. That is why the first question in any interview is often along the lines of ‘why do you want to work for us', or ‘why should we hire you'. Your answers to these questions can have a strong impact on both the rest of the interview and your likelihood of getting to the next round.
To help you prepare for these style of questions you must answer the following two questions:
Why are you the best person for this role? In preparing this answer you must convey to the interviewer that they should hire you over all other applicants. To do this you need to identify why you have the required knowledge, skills and experience to perform the role. Use examples to support your answer.
Why do you want to work for us? When answering this question, you need to explain why you want to work for this organisation over all other organisations. You must show evidence that you have researched the organisation and understand the industry the organisation operates in. You must consider (minimum 3 references required):
The organisation's market offering, location of operations, plans for the future and the relevant leaders of the organisation as well as the position you are applying for.
The organisation's culture and values, for example, their mission/vision, corporate culture and values (internal), their reputation (external)
Any notable industry changes that will impact the organisation's operations e.g. regulatory changes, Royal Commissions, trade agreements
You should relate your answer to you, for example how does the organisations values and culture and industry changes align with you values, strengths (Professional Dashboard) and desired career path?

Section 2: My Application

Suggested word count: 800-1000 words (approximately). As application requirements vary across jobs, we allow flexibility in the word count in this section. Please note: you must write succinctly and will be penalised if you do not do so and you must not exceed the page length requirements.

Prepare a tailored application for your role that includes the following elements:

Your application must:
Address the selection criteria.
Fulfil the application process requirements.
Be free from spelling and grammatical errors. Applications will not be considered for the next round in the application process if they have errors.

We recommend that you use the resume template provided with the assessment (and week 8) resources. This template has been designed in conjunction with DeakinTalent and industry experts. It has also been designed to optimise its effectiveness with Applicant Tracking Software. Many large graduate employers use Applicant Tracking Software (artificial intelligence scanners) when processing applications and resumes with pictures, borders, graphics and/or unusual fonts may be rejected by this software and therefore do not progress to the next round.

To test and improve your resume, we recommend you run your resume through the VMOCK software which gives you feedback on its formatting and line-by-line feedback on the information you have included. A link to VMOCK can be found with the Week 9 Resume resources. Please note you only have 10 resume review attempts with VMOCK for your Deakin lifetime and therefore we recommend you finalise your resume before using the software and only use it once for feedback.

Section 3: My Interview Preparation

Suggested word count: 200 words (approximately).
Focusing on the transferrable skills in the key selection criteria of your job role, choose one criteria that you see as the most important.
Using the mock interview suggested question guide (see week 10 resources), identify a behavioural question that could be asked about this selection criteria and prepare an answer to this question using the STAR framework. Set out your answer using the format in the box below:

Situation (Briefly) describe a challenge you were faced with.
Task What were you tasked to do to overcome this challenge?
Action What did you do? Logically explain the steps you took.
Result What was the result? How did you achieve? What did you learn? What would you do differently in the future?

Section 4: Reflection - My Professional Insight Journey
Suggested word count: 300 words
Reflect on this unit and what you have learned about yourself through the course of this trimester and how this has influenced your career planning. To do this:
Use your time capsule answers from Seminar 1 to reflect on what has changed since the start of the trimester. What did you learn? Have your views changed?
Reflect on whether you are missing skills required for your desired career
What will you do towards becoming job or career ready as a result of this unit? Include a screen shot of your time capsule answers in your appendices.

Conclusion
Not required
This is the end of the written part of this assessment item. The information you have gathered and analysed in this report will form the basis for Assessment 3, My Application. Please see Section 5 for important presentation and formatting instructions.