Job Offer

Job Offer Organisation: Mishima Corporation Position: Administrative Secretary Key Performance Areas: Communications and Personnel Administration Availaibility: Apprenticeship - Immediately Full Time - December 2004 Qualifications: Matric Certificate Experience: Apprenticeship – Nill Full Time - 3 years Salary: R3000 per month negotiable Contact: Lee (021) 686 686 6 Email: [email protected] Fax: (021) 686 686 7

Costing The advert will be placed in two separate newspapers. It will utilize 10 columns/cm in the Cape Argus and will be published without the picture. This will cost approximately R839. The advert will be more gloriously placed in the Cape Times taking up 20 columns/cm including the picture. The reason for this is because the Cape Times is seen to have a greater distribution than the Cape Argus. The advert will cost approximately R1270.

Pre-Interview Preparation The HR department will respond to queries about the advert and provide clarity to interested candidates. Candidates’ CVs will be reviewed as soon as they are received and candidates that are seen to have potential will be short-listed prior to the interview process. The HR department will organize two or three HR specialists to conduct interviews. A meeting will be held where all interviewers will be briefed on what to look for in a candidate and a head interviewer will be elected to interview short-listed candidates. In the meeting interview times would be scheduled to be around ten minutes in duration with a five minute interval between interviews to review the candidate and prepare for the next candidate to be interviewed. Each interviewer is encouraged to ask at least one question related to the candidates status and background. On the day of the interviews security would be informed of candidates arriving to be interviewed and a reception will be held to welcome candidates. Refreshments and light snacks will be served to candidates as they wait in a spacious lounge reserved as their waiting area. A team of receptionists will be in charge of seeing to any possible needs of candidates. Interviewers should inform the head receptionist to handle all of their calls and take messages for them. Finally interviewers should also on the day familiarize themselves with the CVs of their allotted candidates at least 30 minutes prior to the whole interviewing process.

Questions Applied Learning •

Describe a situation in which you learned something complex in a short period of time.

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Tell me about the most recent software program you’ve learned. How did you learn to use it?

Defense: These questions were chosen to see if the candidate is capable of adapting to changing working conditions by applying knowledge and experience gained over the years.

Follow-up •

Have you made sure that materials were ready and delivered on time? Give an example.

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After you schedule meetings, conferences or trips have you ever double-checked the arrangements? Tell me about a time when you did this.

Defense: These questions were chosen to assess the candidates competency at checking performance standards after doing a task; and whether the candidate would modify there performance afterwards if the task was perceived to be not up to standard.

Contributing to team success •

Describe a time when you needed to share information that would benefit your team/group. What did you do? What was the result?

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What are some specific tasks you’ve completed that directly contributed to accomplishing a team goal?

Defense: These questions where chosen to assess the candidate’s ability to work in a team environment and whether they would positively influence the team

Stress Tolerance •

Describe a time when your workload in school was particularly heavy. How did you respond?

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Have you ever worked in a job with a high level of ambiguity? Give an example. How did you handle it?

Defense: These questions test the candidates ability to handle situations that are not part of everyday working conditions and the candidate’s tolerance of the stress accompanying anomalies.

Communication •

How many different languages and cultures are you familiar with? Give an example of a culture you would like to encounter in the job environment.

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Are you comfortable with working closely with a co-worker who happens to be of the opposite sex? What type of situation would be uncomfortable for you?

Defense: These questions are designed to give an idea of how easily a candidate can overcome ethnic and gender differences that are in most cases unavoidable and essentially have to be overcome.

Adaptability •

Tell me about the most challenging change you’ve faced at work. What did you do? What were the results?

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Tell me about the time when you had to adjust to companywide reorganization. How did you respond?

Defense: These questions are asked to get an idea of how the candidate adjusts to change in order to give an insight of how the candidate might react to change.

Energy •

Tell me about a time when you had to put things together in sequence at a constant tempo. What did you do to maintain your pace?

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People often make errors after they work long hours on the job. Tell me about the last time this happened to you?

Defense: These questions are asked to give the candidate an idea of what they are getting themselves involved in. The purpose of the questions is not the scare the candidate but to measure their reaction to the idea of having to work especially hard for really long periods of time.

Building Strategic Work Relationships •

Occasionally other people’s work priorities conflict with yours. Tell me about a time when this happened to you. What did you do?

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Describe a time when you wished you’d been more collaborative with others at work. What did you do?

Defense: The organizational culture of Mishima Corp is something to the effect that working on your own merit can only get you so far whereas working in tandem with others can be a more rewarding and growing experience. These questions are asked to give an indication of how well the candidate would fit in the organizational culture if they were hired.