Agenda Setting: Researching for Appropriate Content

As we discussed within our small groups, the goal of yesterday was to start researching and understanding the company your putting The Interview Script together for.

By gathering as much knowledge as you an about the company, your goal for yesterday was to understand:

1) Who there audience is, and
2)How the company addresses that audience --through it's company goals, through its advertisement, through its press releases.


Creating a Preliminary List of Interview Questions

Some groups have already begun to do so, but here are some rhetorical considerations to make your script strongest.

Content: during an interview, the interviewer may be ask a variety of questions, not all of them in specific regard to your resume. Below are today's prompts to help you come up with different areas for lines-of-questioning that an interviewer might ask a candidate for a position:


1) An competent Interview Script will ask questions that address company needs, company history, company ideology. You've been doing the research on this stuff already, so this first thing your group will do today is to write down at least 5 company-geared questions.


2) Another area for questions might be "expertise" questions. These kinds of questions ask about specific parts of the job, and measure the candidates theoretical and practical knowledge of their "field". Remember: You are looking into the fields of "public relations" OR "marketing," and you are to have started looking into finding, at minimum, some basic information on these fields of study through academic journals and reference material.

You'll have to research, "What does a public relations person do?" Or, "What does a marketing person do?"

If your group hasn't yet, find an article and/or book that gives you a basic understanding.
Write out some of the basic duties and basic field knowledge needed to perform job well.



Planning/ Researching Strategies


Make a second list of field knowledge questions (5-10). If you have time or feel ambitious, start to think back to your first list made today and start making this list of field- knowledge questions more specific towards the job.

Field Knowledge includes two things*:

1. General skill level and knowledge for the general position (lawyer, doctor, public marketing)

2. Specific Area field knowledge within the larger field (International lawyer, criminal lawyer; pediatrician, cardiologist; sports marketing, environmental public relations)

This is important, and you will be graded on how well the content of your group Interview Script reflects having researched and incorporated general field knowledge AND Specific Area field knowledge.

Your group should discuss, and then research, which Specific area your company would be included in.



The Real World: at an interview, one should also ask or expect to be asked questions that relate to what is currently happening -- in the economy, in the field, ...in the global culture.


To this end, it is important to do research through periodicals for trends in the marketplace, and similar areas. To do this, again, you can go to the periodicals-section of your local bookstore (I like Borders sections), but also use the Internet to go to reputable business/new magazines such as the NY Times, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN and The Wall Street Journal.


TIPS:
1) You may want to divide these duties among your group members.


2) When it comes to #3, you may want to discuss as a group what you are looking for when you are reviewing periodicals. What kind of subjects/articles are you looking for? Should the researcher be looking within a certain section?