Business Awareness Interviews

As students of business, you learn a lot of theory about marketing, finance, HR, economics. In
PD workshops you may learn about communication skills and how to self-reflect. How does this
all fit together, though, in real life? What do real business people do in their jobs on a daily
basis? What better way to find out than to ask two business people what they do? You may be
surprised by their answers!
The reflection report of both business interviews needs to be included in your final portfolio for PD1,
to be handed in at the end of the PD1 course via Brightspace. Go via Activities to Assignments to
submit the complete Portfolio to be downloaded from Edubook. The reflection report is a mandatory
part.

Preparation:
 Prepare two interviews with two different business managers working internationally;
 Beforehand, create a list of questions to raise;
For example: Focus on the company, the manager’s responsibilities and tasks, the type of decisions
the manager makes and the competencies needed for his job such as team work, planning,
(miss-)communication, how to give and receive feedback, how to deal with different personalities
and cultures, etc;
 Contact potential persons to interview and arrange at least two appointments; if you are lost for
ideas on how to go about this, you may want to ask the student assistant of your group.
 Hold the interviews and record everything said using a recording device (e.g., your smartphone);
 Summarise your findings and reflect on the competencies found relevant for the job in relation to
your personal competencies, your profile and ambitions. For the purpose of ‘competencies’, you
may want to think of the outcome of your MBTI test, for instance, or your team role and your
communication skills.

Reflection report:
 Write a report containing a short summary of both interviews and a personal reflection on the
interview in which you relate the competencies brought up in the interviews to your personal
competencies, your professional profile and ambitions. Note that you do not have to write out a
transcript of the interview nor the answers that the interviewee gave. The reflection report is about
what you’ve learned from it.
 Include what you have learned about yourself during the whole interviewing process: finding
interviewees, using your network, how to approach them, setting a date, putting together the
interview questions and determining the structure. Which skills have you developed, to what extent
 Business Awareness Interviews

as well as what would you do differently next time. Maybe you have already experienced a
difference between the first and the second interview;
 The summary and reflection should be 1,500 to 2,000 words, excluding appendices;
 Include the following in the appendices: date, time, place of the interview, duration; organisation,
name, job title, phone number of the persons interviewed; all questions raised;
 add the audio-recording in Brightspace and make sure to include contact info.
 Do not forget to align all the details of your report with the AMSIB Reporting Guidelines.