This week was probably the busiest and most stressful week so far. It was the last week for VEP recruitments and we were able to all agree on our dream team, after some discussion of course, so that everyone’s opinion was heard. In the end, we ended up rejecting two applicants instead of one which never crossed my mind as an option so it came to my surprise. I felt like it was the best choice since the reason we struggled between rejecting the last two applicants was because we felt like they bot equally lacked our values. It was very satisfying to finally have our applicants finalized because we put a lot of time into it but I think my team members carried more of the weight on this one. Still, I am glad that I was able to help and support the process and the final result of it all.
I had not had any of my informational interviews yet so I did all of them this week. Luckily enough due to my talking about my internship and how I am looking for a social worker to interview, it turned out that my friend’s sister’s boyfriend is one! I think how that turned out was really lucky on my part and it motivated me to talk more about my situation, ambitions, and similar topics because you never know what opportunities may open up. My two interviews are both social workers and they both had their own individual style, but overall I learned a lot and I am excited about my future.
We had a workshop on an interview technique called S.O.A.R which stands for situation, obstacle, action, and result. I made a list of situations and problems that I faced which made me do a lot of reflecting. We had mock interviews with each other where we had to tell a story that matched up with the characteristics that the job we are applying for would want. I really enjoyed it because this question comes up a lot in the interview and I usually struggle at them but now that I have a list of personal experiences that I can use it made me feel more confident. I also never considered that the interviewer would look for characteristics in the stories or examples you tell them, so I am glad that I know that now. I wished we did the workshop before our V.E.P recruitments thought because I felt like if I knew this then I would have created a set of characteristics and values we were looking for specifically and added questions like “ name a time….” or “ tell us about a situation where you had to…” in our interview.
The end of the internship is coming to an end which is kind of sad but I know I will still be continuing my work with my team and I look forward to working with the new V.E.P team. I have grown a lot in the last few weeks because of this internship and I hope to continue my growth beyond it.