College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Andy Plaice
Hirendira Sandoval
Brandy Stephenson

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

For our Social Change Project, we formed a workshop entitled Sharpening Your Interview Skills. Our mission was to sharpen the interview skills of people preparing to re-enter the work force. Our primary focus was to offer assistance to less fortunate people in need of some coaching on this subject, in order to better prepare them for today’s workplace hiring practices. Our hope was to provide this workshop to individuals that have the will to learn but have never been offered the opportunity to do so.

Our goal was to develop a workshop with an atmosphere similar to an interactive coaching session. During the workshop, we discussed the entire hiring process from picking up/completing an application and creating a resume to preparing for and delivering a competitive interview. Additionally, we planned to offer one on one coaching and training for individuals throughout their interview process. This would rely primarily on the people that attended our workshop calling us directly for support. The format of the workshop included our presentation and time for discussion with the participants as a group and with each individual if they so desired.

Originally, we had planned on doing this presentation for several centers, not realizing how much time and effort it would actually take to just complete one workshop. Due to a limited number of weekends and the difficulty of making arrangements with each center’s activity coordinators, we decided to offer our assistance to one organization called SPIN (Supportive Parents Information Network). As the name suggests, SPIN is a support group for parents in the North Park area. They offer assistance to battered mothers, homeless parents and children, as well as impoverished families. We felt that offering assistance to a group that was already attempting to help themselves was the most productive way to get our message out to the people we wanted to assist.

On Saturday, November 17th, we all met with Joni Halpern at SPIN (Joni is the director of SPIN). When we initially started our presentation, we only had four parents in the room with us. Joni explained that the biggest problem with planning events for SPIN was that none of the parents had reliable transportation. They either relied on San Diego’s public transportation, which is extremely difficult, or they drove jalopies that broke down every other day. However, slowly but surely, we started to get more parents showing up for our presentation. When all accounted for, we had nine parents eagerly asking questions on how they can make their resumes look sharper, how to answer application and interview questions, etc. The very relaxed atmosphere made for an easy presentation. We were all able to see each other face-to-face and the parents felt free to ask any questions they wanted answered. Additionally, all of the parents were given contact information so that they could reach us with any future questions they may have. We have all also agreed to do this again for SPIN and look forward to being able to help out these motivated parents.

We all walked away feeling really good about what we did that day.

When less fortunate people, such as single or low-income parents do not have the means or skills needed to acquire a decent job, society should be there to help. As noted before, while many of these less fortunate people may have the will to position themselves better for the future, they may not necessarily have the skill, know-how or courage to do so. Our goal was to empower these people with the skills and confidence it takes to make that first impression that is so essential in landing a good job. We feel that we helped the parents take the first step in this direction.

As students of SDSU, we are fortunate to have learned many skills other people have not had the opportunity to acquire. We were able to use these skills, in addition to many ideas of ethical and social responsibility we have acquired in this class, to successfully complete our project. The Ethic of Care asks us to “recognize and take seriously the moral worth of relationships, particularly those characterized by caring.” Caring for your neighbor is certainly a foundation from which we developed this project and probably the main ethical framework from which it was developed. This is especially true after meeting and speaking with the members of SPIN. By simply caring for your neighbor, groups can come together and help one another succeed. From a Utilitarian point of view, this project also made sense. If you take a look at the cost/benefit analysis on the following page, the benefits certainly outweighed the costs. While most of these items are intangibles, we all agree that even from a strictly selfish point of view, our costs did not exceed our benefits. The feeling we received from helping the SPIN members was astounding and far outweighed the costs associated with creating this workshop.

We feel that our Social Change Project was definitely a success. While we were not able to assist as many social programs as we originally intended, we were able to help out nine parents with their search for a new job. On Friday, November 30th, Andy stopped by SPIN to drop off some follow-up material for two of the parents, Rosa and Hilda, and had the opportunity to speak with Joni about our presentation on the previous Saturday. On the Sunday following our presentation, Joni was able to meet with most of the parents that attended our Sharpening Your Interview Skills meeting. She stated that all of the parents thought that our session was one of the best they had had and felt that they learned quite a bit. She specifically stated, “They were pleased with the manor in which we interacted with the them and felt that they could openly ask questions that they had and didn’t feel as though they were being talked down to.” We all learned a great deal from the Social Change Project and look forward to working with SPIN again.