Week 10 Homework

Elevator Pitch:
First of all, thank you for giving me some of your time today. 
I'm a software developer most recently graduating from Boise Codeworks with a Bachelors in Forensic Anthropology from Purdue University. 
I came from a fairly extensive business managment and IT recruiting background and have about 2 years overall experience in the IT Industry. 
I've spent the last 3 years building my knowlege and network of the IT Industry, having maintained numerous strong and successful relationships with IT professionals which have influenced me with the goal and passion of becoming a software developer. 
I've worked with numerous languages and methodologies within team development projects, including Agile/Scrum, Vue 3, JavaScript, and C#. 
I've always been passionate about software development and I'd love the opportunity to bring my creative problem solving and leadership abilities to this position.


Interview Questions:
Talk about a time when you had to work closely with someone whose personality was very different from yours.

While at Purdue, during my undergraduate studies, I lived in a Fraternity and was positioned as the Archon, which is essentially the regional manager of operations from Michigan to Alabama and all throughout the Midwest. I lived with over 80 different personalities under one roof as well. Having managed over 60+ chapters of our Fraternity it was difficult to work closely with so many different personalities while being solely responsible for the safety and culture of our members. During one scenario, I was tasked at interviewing individual chapter members across my region in order to find the rightful recipient of our most dedicated member. Not only was this member supposed to be the most dedicated to their chapter, but also their community and their personal education. This member was to have shown numerous hours of community service and volunteer hours, as well as having accumulated the highest GPA. During one scenario in particular, their was a bit of a struggle with some members at one chapter to participate in helping me find one member that fit this criteria. I knew what needed to be done but was struggling to get their cooperation, so I decided to speak to the chapter at their weekly chapter meeting all at once. I spoke about the importance of this award, the scholarship, and overall recognition this would ultimately be packaged with for this member. I spoke about the friendships and strong relationships that followed membership in our fraternity and that my purpose was to help one of their friends get the recognition they deserved. Although this still didn't win over every member that day, it did ultimately end my search for the best candidate for this award within my region. This member would go on to compete nationally against all other members and although they didnt win the award, they were awarded a ten thousand dollar scholarship and a five thousand dollar donation to the charity of their choice. I consider this my first victory in professionally overcomming personality differences with a successful difference making outcome. 


Describe a time when you struggled to build a relationship with someone important. How did you eventually overcome that?

During my first year working at TEKsystems as a Technical IT Recruiter, I would work with not only top IT talent, but would also frequently work face-to-face with the businesses and clients seeking out top talent for their respective projects. After only a couple of months on the job, I was tasked with meeting with a new business that was projected at bringing in over a two million dollar contract with our local office and was warned that the administrator I was working with did not like or trust recruiters due to her personal experiences in the past. During our first meeting the business admin was a bit stand-offish and cold, not allowing anything to pursuade their dicision to work with my company based off this preconceived notion. While the meeting itself was not a success, I was on my way out of the meeting with the admin and was on my way to my car. As I turned to look at the admin a final time, I saw a couple of IT professionals I had previously had lunch with only a few days prior. I reach out to these familiar faces and made sure to let them know I had met with one of their admins, mentioning I didnt believe the meeting was successful and asked for any advice they might offer. The next day, I came into work early, as I normally do, and checked my emails. I found out that one of the colleagues I spoke to the day before was a close friend of the admin I had just met with and spoke to them personally on my behalf. While I don't know the details of this conversation, I was invited to lunch with this IT professional and the admin the following week to discuss the business relationship further. During this meeting I was not only able to show my personal successful track record, but my office's success, and our importance of treating our clients and recruits like they were extensions of our own family. Ultimately, I landed this contract and have been able to maintain a close relationship with this admin to this day.

Tell me about a time you needed to get information from someone who wasn’t very responsive. What did you do?

As a Technical Recruiter, this is probably one of the most cruicial obstacles of the job and being succesful. I had a position I was attempting to fill for a major company in the Boise area, where they were seeking a Product Owner with a Scrum Master Certification and this candidate needed to have experience with a system they were migrating towards. During the first week I was fortunate enough to find the ideal candidate I knew could fulfill their needs, however, this individual loved the outdoors and camping in rural areas. During my first conversation with this candidate, I had asked the individual, if for any reason I needed to find them within short notice, how could I get in contact with them? The candidates answer was, "I'll be camping at this location, come and find me". Well, the site they would be located at was about 120 miles away form where I was currently living and I never thought it would come to that dire of a situation. However, I was more wrong than I could have imagined. The candidate landed the position and the paperwork for onboarding was being sent out the next week. I called the candidate immediately with the good news but was unable to get a response for 2 days. Come to find out this paperwork had a time cap on it and was needing to be completed within a 3 day timeframe. I had already wasted 2 days attempting contact and decided I wasn't going to let this opportunity fall away without doing everything I could for this business and the candidate I'd become friends with over the past weeks. I hopped in the car, having no idea where this candidate was located, and decided to drive to the location previously mentioned in a final attempt to get this news and paperwork filled out. 120 miles later, I'm sitting at the front of a deserted campsite, lost, and hoping I can find my way home before the sun went down. On my way out I decided to check one last location in the area and to my amazement, found my candidate and his camping trailer. Concluding this crazy situation, I was able to get the paperwork filed and finalize the candidates position with the business before the deadline. This was easily one of the most stressful and bizarre situations I've had in my professional career, but overall, was still able to end up successful in my outcome.  


Tell me about a time when you made sure a customer was pleased with your service.

During my time at Enterprise Rent-A-Car our companies goal was always to maintain friendly customer-oriented relationships. However, my personal goal and challenge was to not only be friendly, but go above and beyond every day to make our customers' day in any way I could. While working at the Boise Airport location one afternoon, I had a gentlemen get off his flight and come down to the rental area visibly grieving. I didnt know the reason for his emotion, but I knew that I wanted him to come to my line right away so I could help. I asked him how his day was and how I could help like usual and the gentlement began to cry, letting me know his mother had just passed away unexpectedly. I left my booth having finalized his rental and walked with him to his vehicle. This was a bit unorthodox but I just wanted to make sure this gentlement found his way without any disturbances and he seemed to like the company. As we approach the car, I inspected the vehicle and let him know if he needed anything to come back and we could chat if he wanted. Having just heard his situation, I empathized with his loss and didn't expect him to come back, but wanted to offer some form of kindness if I was able. He didn't return until he returned his vehicle the following week and I was fortunately their working my typical afternoon shift. He decided to seek me out personally and wanted to chat about our previous conversation telling me that the kindness I offered him helped him realize that he wasn't alone in his troubles and that he couldn't believe a stranger would care to help or listen. I'm still in contact with this gentlement today and he helped me to realize that every interaction can change someones outlook on life for the better. 

Give me an example of a time you managed numerous responsibilities. How did you handle that?

At Enterprise Rent-A-Car, I was an Assistant Branch Manager, assisting in everything from employee development, branch sales, vehicle maintenace, cleaning vehicles, delivering vehicles to customers and businesses, and more. While the day was chaotic, it was manageable but difficult. I would time-box myself for every task at hand and prepare the day an hour before opening the branch. I would write down all of the tasks as well and deligate these tasks out to other employees as needed so we could have successful days and have time to have fun while completing our goals. I found that being a manager was more about working for your employees than the other way around and ultimately this was the most fun I've had during my professional career, despite the chaos and numerous responisibilities required. 


WhiteBoard Experience:
During my experience with WhiteBoards, I worked with Dallen. I struggled a bit to explain my work and found that I need a bit more practice working on WhiteBoard problems before I interview confidently. I think my understanding of even the easy WhiteBoards is lacking at the moment and I think I need to simplify my problem solving into sections as opposed to tackling the problem in one fell swoop.