Lee Cervantes Millbern's Online Journal

Overall view of MGMT 250

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:10:02 EST

Having analyzed my initial opinion from the course and at this point in time, almost reaching the end of the semester, I can differentiate both perspectives. Of course, the one I have now, is much more valuable because I can think about the course after having gone through it, and I can say that it has not only been interesting from an academic point of view, but from a personal point of view as well. Being used to the Spanish type of lectures and the style or learning in my home university in Madrid, I am so glad of being able to compare both university styles, and it is personaly enriching to keep the positive of both parts, and therefore complementing my open minded learning style.

Part I of the learning plan

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:58:07 EST

I wanted to state that in my personal opinion, from my own point of view, it was a lot easier to execute part I of the learning plan than part II. This is, explaining who are you and where are you headed was a lot easier than having to explain how will you get there and what tools or strategies will you use in order to approach your objectives. This, in a way, is completely normal. I guess it is easier to know who you are, and what do you want from life, than how are you actually going to reach it.

Learning Plan

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:47:32 EST

Having handed in the draft of both parts of the Learning Plan, I was hoping I could get a little feedback specially from the goal setting part, because the whole characterization of SMART goals is not an easy task. So after having gone through the constructive feedback we did in the last class between classmates, I felt like I could work a little in my goals, specially in the "specific" part of them. I hope I am able to construct a well organized goal setting part of my learning plan.

HR incident

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:38:50 EST

The incident for this coming week was susceptible to many assumptions that could affect and change the decission form. It was pretty clear that both Chris and Ted should be penalized in some sort of way, but it was unclear if maybe by a written warning or by fireing one of them or both. Then again, I guess these assumptions are what make the big difference of changing the figures in the spread sheet and being over or under the industry average because, in the end, assumptions are what we have been doing since the very bigining of the simulation.

Career Center

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:30:49 EST

Hello everybody,
I wanted to point out that today's class was both interesting and at the same time a little bit missleading. The reason I am saying this is because the hexagon with the different letters was kind of ambiguous. I am sure that a lot of people felt like they could fit in two or even three different letters at the same time. For example, I felt like I fit in the artistic and the enterprise letters at the same time. Anyway, it was interesting to see where we want to see ourselves versus where we best fit in.

Maintaining our own motivation in the work place

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 22:59:44 EST

When situations are not as favorable as they should be or at least as we would like them to be, it is farely easy to break down and loose most of our motivation and therefore our incentives to achieve goals are decreased. In this case, even though our sourrounding is poor and our environment is not appropiate, we still have the personal responsability and the ethics of doing our own job the best way we know how. By doing this, we will contribute to the overall wellness, and in the end, the situation will change because everybody would do the same and this would become a chain of responsability that would safe the lack of commitment in our entity.

Lie or not lie in a Job interview

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 22:41:11 EST

Everybody who is about to comence or is expecting to have a job interview in a near future, is inevitably going to feel the incredible pressure and stress, which is due to the fact that your are putting yourself in front of a stranger, and trying to sell him/her the idea that you are the person they are looking for. A lot of questions and doubts are traveling inside our heads at that moment, right before entering the room, right before testing your habilities, all these fears arise in the interviewee because he/she knows this will affect his/her future forever. Because of this and many other reasons, fear is bossted and therefore, lack of confidence arises, and lastly the common error of lying leaves us at an undesirable position in fron of our employer.

HR Ambiguity

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 22:31:09 EST

Now that a whole ficticious year has gone by, having seen the evolution of our numbers and financial figures, I can state that the ambiguity of the simulation was greater than I thought and initially expected. Many statements are vague, in the sense that they are very dependent of what ever assumptions a certain group takes into consideration. This means that with the election of decisions in the different incidents, there is not only one appropiate decision, no fixed variables and therefore assumptions are needed in order to make a choice we think is the most effective for our hotel. Dependng on the situation and the perspective we use to look at it, our decision will have different results.

HR simulation

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:12:41 EST

This week's Human Resource simulation was incident F which was taking into account decisions related to sexual harassment. I must say, I do not even know how this is still sadly an issue in the 21st century. The first world is bragging about how modern everything is, how equality is a fundamental factor in every social interacting situation, but when it comes to reality, we see sexual harassment issues occuring in a high precentage of working environments, and this tells me that there is still a long way to complete before we really achive true equality and modernism in our small world.

Harrah's Casino

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:59:58 EST

hello everybody,
I would like to mention that having finished my Harrah's Casino case study, I found it not so easy to relate the questions with the knowledge we have reached from class. The questions were very open and I found them not so easy to approach. The fact is that I have finished the case, and finally think that I approached every question in the best way I could. My own opinion about the gain-sharing program is that it is a good policy that promotes motivation and hard work and it is also very focused towards customer satisfaction which is a very important factor for the corporation's improvement.

Class Proposal

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 18:04:57 EST

My proposal is related to the HR project. I would like it better if it were a little bit more related towards the realistic point of view of the actual company name. For example, if we have a possibility of choosing a name, a real name, its maybe because we feel related to it. So we could do some research, take the actual real model, and modify it in our own way, paying attention to the variable numbers, and seeing if we could improve market share, benefits, employees morale, etc...I just think it would give us a more realistic point of view from the project.

HR Simulation

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 17:55:36 EST

Hello, I wanted to post something about the HR simulation. I just wanted to say that the flow of my group was great. It is not easy to put a group of people together, who have never dealed with eachother before, and actually make it work. Interaction, inter-communication, networking as well as vertical integration in the project were our strong points. Tasks were evenly distributed, and we equally share responsabilities. There were no negative conflicts, as we saw today in class, our conflicts were simply running beside feedback and change of perspectives.

Career Fair

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 23:37:14 EST

About last thursday's career fair, I must say that it was a really good experience in terms of the interaction that was taking place between firms and students. Before actually being there, I thought it was big, but when I walked in there, it was huge! or at least huge for what I'm used to. The diversity of corporations was great although I would have liked more international automobile corporations being there. Anyway, since my mock interview was with Accenture, that is the first place I went to, gave them my business card, talked for 5 or 7 minutes and got their business card to contact them in the future. I also went to General Electric, since I heard that the are hireing a lot of fluent spanish speaking people, so I thught it could be useful for me to have their card, just in case; one never knows, and the more doors you can have open for the future, the better. In conclusion, I really had a good time, took home a lot of souvenirs and provided feed back on my way out on a little palm pilot. I was great.

Mock interview

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 01:06:14 EST

I just wanted to say that after going through the mock interview last friday, I actually think this is one of the greatest opportunities a student can have. I personally appreciated it because in Spain we do not have these sort of things, it facilitates us the steep learning curve of coming out of college and feel so lost in the huge labor market that is waiting for us out of the classroom walls.
We should really take advantage of this opportunity, and use these mock interviews, the job fair, and all that to make contacts, meet people, etc... It is a giant step in order to embark the long trip of our professoinal lives.

Todays class

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 17:59:55 EST

Hello,
since my first entry was not corretly posted, since I had no category, I am redoing it. In relation to the issue commented in class, the one about If a recruiter knows whether you are good for a certain job or position in a firm just by looking at your resume or refferences...I actually think that it is not enough. It is extreamly different the academic environment from the actual real life job market and also how you must integrate in a work group, several factors affect this last one.
In my opinion, no recruiter knows if you really fit in a certain job until you have been trying it out for a defined period of time, which will tell you, at the end, If there is going to be a reciprocal situation of being comfortable, from the employers point of view and the employees point of view. Conclusion: Employers don't work with resumes, they work with people. -Lee Cervantes