Presentations

So far the class presentations have gone really well. I was really surprised at my own performance even though some of the animation on one of my slides did not work exactly as desired.

When the assignment was explained on Monday, I was really excited because I thought that it would be a great opportunity to get my documentation together for the last few weeks of studio work. Unfortunately, I received the sign-up sheet last and therefore I only had 48 hours to put this presentation together.

Last semester my class in Charleston spent at least a month developing a sleek and powerful PowerPoint presentation. This was both a great help and a great hindrance to my presentation last Wednesday. It was helpful in that I already knew exactly how I wanted to present my presentation. It was a hindrance because I had great expectations for my presentation and its quality. I was also daunted by the fact that I had already gotten the idea into my head that I would present my current project and ask for feed back.

Amazingly, I was able to deliver a presentation that was decently put together and successful. If I had been given more time to prepare I think I might have been able to better gear my presentation to the concerns of my audience. For example, I don't think I really explained which parts of the master plan that I showed would most likely be happening (if any).

Of all the presentations so far, I think the one that best addressed the needs and or view point of their audience was the presentation given about how music can help us through a bad day. The presenter's name is not on his handout, but this short presentation delivered a positive message in a time riddled with midterm exams and I appreciated that. I also really appreciated getting a free Top Gun CD! :)

Cover Letter Inspiration

At first I was not very interested in reading these articles about a cover letter. I thought I understood the goal of a cover letter, to introduce yourself and your strengths. Thankfully, I did sit down and read through these articles because they bring up a very good point. The goal of a cover letter isn’t to introduce but to sell your strength in accordance to their needs. This is wonderfully helpful advice, especially to someone like me who has never been a fan of “personal advertisement” as I like to refer to the concept of selling yourself. Now however this seems like a more obtainable goal since I have something to focus on.
That being said these articles also brought to light the dire need to be proactive during a job search. A final paragraph which requests action from the reader and promises that I will take action in the event that they do not is a wonderful suggestion, and the example cover letter showed how such a thing can be written without sounding snobbish or aggressive.
I am now extremely excited about working on my cover letter and resume this week. Also, I think I have some really out of the box ideas about how to present them. Hopefully, these ideas will help me stand out in a field that is based on innovation and graphic presentation.

Job Interview Advice

The two articles I chose for this week's blog were entitled "How to Handle Illegal Interview Questions" and "How to Answer the Toughest Interview Questions." As you can tell from the titles of these articles, I was looking for articles that would advise me on how to answer the difficult questions. Saddly, these articles fell drastically short of their headline's promise of information.

The article about illegal interview questions simply identified commonly ask illegal questions and the laws that prohibit them. While it was interesting to learn about the specifics of the age discrimination law; I had really been hoping for more advice on how to anwer quesitons about marriage and childern. The only good advice the article provided was to strive to answer the intent behind an illegal question by restating the question in a legal format and then proceeding to answer.

Likewise the article on how to answer the toughest interview questions did not satifactorily advise on how to answere questions. Instead this article focused on the importance of these questions and the desierable impact of your answer. I am glad to learn from this article that the "silly question", for example "If you were an animal what would you be and why?", is really stiving to see how you act under pressure and in unexpected situations. Also, the article gave very good advice on how to answer the quesiton about where you see yourself in so many years. By answering this question baised on your values and acheivment goals the employer can get a better sense of where you want to go in life.

In the end both articles succeeded in making me realizes that at some point in the near future I really need to sit down and aswer these questions before I go into an interview.