Running head: DEVELOPING JOB INTERVIEWING SKILLS 1

Developing Job Interviewing Skills

Parker Owen

Emina Hadrovic

Bobbi Reynolds

Ryan King

Salt Lake Community College

DEVELOPING JOB INTERVIEWING SKILLS 2

Developing Job Interviewing Skills

More and more students are graduating every semester and ready to tackle the

professional world with a leg up by having a degree in hand. But without the right tools to

successfully woo a future employer how far will these new graduates get? Not knowing the right

words to say or unsuccessfully implementing skills learned throughout ones educational career

can ultimately hurt success in landing a career in the field that they have been working towards

their whole life. If these aspiring future professionals have more job interviewing experience

then they can have a more successful career and a greater overall quality of life. This

communications plan will ensure the success of new graduates in interviewing by providing the

skills and knowledge to alleviate any stress or discomfort that one can face by going into a job

interview.

Purpose / Objective

The purpose of this communications campaign is to help the graduating class of Salt Lake

Community College students perfect their interviewing skills. Our plan is to hold a mock job

interview two weeks before finals at the Taylorsville Campus and is geared towards any

graduating student regardless of degree. The reason for this interview is to give students an idea

of what to expect in interviewing with future employers and help them realize the importance of

developing certain skills needed to succeed in landing a career. We plan to reach out to these Salt

Lake Community College graduating students with flyers, social media and newspaper ads.

Audience Analysis
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The target audience for this communication campaign is the graduating class of Salt Lake

Community College with any degree who are looking to pursue a professional career. Below is a

demographic and psychographic profile of this audience:

Demographics (Summers, 2016)

35% white males, 35% white females, 2% Black, 16% Hispanic, 4% Asian
50% of the students at SLCC are male, 50% are female
The male to female ratio is 1:1
77 % of white students graduated, 2% Black, 11% Hispanic, 4 % Asian
The average age of male students 24, female students 23.
43% of students plan to transfer to a University, 19 % plan to obtain a job

Psychographics (Douse, 2015)

Students are aware that sooner or later they have to grow up and pursue a career they enjoy. They

realize the job will require an interviewing process before they get hired but may not be aware of

what skills are needed to gain favor in the employers eyes.

Generally graduating students are in their early to late 20s and are classified as millennials

who face issues when it comes to job interviews because of the following reasons

Inappropriate attire, not doing enough research about the job, being overconfident, and not

showing long-term commitment.

Context

Time: 2 weeks before the semester ends, Friday April 14, 2017. It will be held 1:00 P.M. - 4:00

P.M.
Location: Salt Lake Community College, Taylorsville Redwood Campus. Will be held at the

Student Center, 2nd floor room 201.

There will be managing employees from diverse companies that will be present to hold the

interview and evaluate the prospect.

Based on this information the key points we gathered is the average age of graduating

students range between 23-24 years old and 19% of those students were planning to get a job
 DEVELOPING JOB INTERVIEWING SKILLS 4

right out of college rather than transfer. We plan to focus especially on that 19% of students

because they will be the ones who will be interviewing for jobs the soonest, the earlier they

prepare the more time they will have to develop the skills learned from our campaign.

Messaging Goals

By having the objectives and purpose of this communications campaign, also knowing

demographic and psychographic profile of the target audience, this team has set the following

messaging goals:

Think

Understand this campaign is to teach myself what to expect when interviewing for a career
Understand that interviewing takes time to master
Understand that all of the skills I have learned over my college career will be exhibited in a job

interview

Feel

By experiencing an interview first hand, it will help with my confidence in future endeavors
Interviewing is a lifelong skill that can always be improved on
By practicing my interviewing skills and professional communication, it can greatly improve my

chances to land a career

Do

Use all of the skills and knowledge acquired from this campaign to take into a real world

professional environment
Alleviate and reduce some of the anxiety that can be caused from going into a job interview
Practice study skills with peers outside of this campaign to further improve interviewing skills

Key Messages

With this campaign there are going to be many things these students will learn and it may

be overbearing. So here are some key points and takeaways we want them to know:
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Preparation is vital to your confidence and success. The more you prepare the better the outcome

will be.
Develop confidence in yourself by being presentable, having a clean haircut, wearing the

necessary clothing (most likely business professional), and speaking clearly.

Write down 3-4 skills the Employer will suggest and practice developing those skills until they

become natural.

Channels / Media

In selecting the channels for this communication campaign, this team has considered the

nature of the message, its purpose, the channels available to the target audience, and how the

audience consumes information. Based on these criteria, the team has selected the following

channels:

Face-to-face
o On April 14th from 1:00pm to 4:00pm. The mock interview will be held in the Student Center on

the second floor room. 201. There will be face-to-face contact with multiple people practicing

interviews.
Flyer
o These flyers will be hung around campus to get the information out to all graduating students.

We will hang these flyers weeks in advance so it will give students enough time to schedule the

mock interview in their busy schedules.

Facebook page
o We will have a Facebook page for the students who use social media to access all the information

about the mock interview.

Newspaper ad
o We will post an ad in the SLCC Globe newspaper to reach students who read it.
Video
We have a video we will present that shows 8 steps for the perfect interview. We will play this

video while students are waiting for their turn to Interview.

Website
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o We will have a website that combines all of the channels we have created so everyone can have

easy access to all the information.

Email
We will type up an email that will be sent to multiple employers we plan on inviting. These

employers will hold the position of hiring employers at their firm and will be expected to bring

similar questions to ask the students during the mock interview.

Tactical Planning

The portion below will give a visual representation of who, what, how, and when our

project will all come together. It is important to understand all of these elements to get your

project to come together perfectly.

Who (Audience) What (Message) How (Channel) When (Timing)

Graduating SLCC Clear We 2 weeks before
students statement of key messages. bsite mock interviews
Fac
ebook Page
Graduating SLCC Clear Fly 1 week before
students statement of key messages. ers Mock Interviews
Get students to Ne
come to campaign wspaper ads
We
bsite
Fac
ebook Page
Graduating SLCC Clear Fac Day of Mock
students statement of key messages. e to face Interviews
Skills to discussion
enhance interview Cor
Acknowledge porations
the struggle of interviews Vid
eo
Em
ail for further
questions

Conclusion
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By experiencing a job interview first hand, future graduates can be better prepared to face

a real life interview with employers to one day land a dream career. It is not expected that one

can be a master interviewer right out of college. But with the application of everything that will

be taught in this campaign the future professional can be much more relaxed and equipped to

handle even the toughest of interviewers along with some of the most mind bending questions

that would leave even some of the more experienced professionals perplexed.

Debrief

This campaign went pretty well as we had plan though there were minor updates and

changes we made to satisfy the needs of both students and employers. For example we decided

to create a page on our website that was geared toward the employers who were going to be the

interviewers at the event based on the advice that our Professor gave us. This page explained

what was to be expected at the event and what wed like them to bring. Though it was a good

decision to make that page we would suggest to those who may do something similar, would be

more detailed when explaining what would be taking place at the event and what we expect of

the employers instead of a general outline. As far as the other changes, most were just minor

tweaks to make the website more user friendly and appealing to a SLCC student. Overall this

campaign was a great success, perhaps next time it would be cool to actually go through with all

of it rather than it being fake.

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References

Allen, Laura. (January 31, 2017). 5 ways to have a great interview and land your dream job. Fox

13 Salt Lake City. Retrieved from

http://fox13now.com/2017/01/31/5-ways-to-have-a-great-interview-and-land-your-

dream-job/

Douse, Sadie. (June 15, 2015). 6 Interview Shortcomings that Cost Millennials a Golden Job

Opportunity. Looksharp. Retrieved from

https://www.looksharp.com/blog/6-interview-shortcomings-that-cost-millennials-a-

golden-job-opportunity

Summers, Debbie. (2016). Student Demographics. Salt Lake Community College Fact Book

2015-2016. Retrieved from

http://performance.slcc.edu/factbook/B_student_demographics/index.html

Summers, Debbie. (2016). Student Input. Salt Lake Community College Fact Book 2015-2016.

Retrieved from http://performance.slcc.edu/factbook/G_student_input/index.html