1. What were your motives for helping this person?
During my last job, I was asked to work with our VP of Admissions to create an international recruitment strategy for the upcoming academic year. I had experience in international recruitment and she was fairly new to this realm of higher education. Being new to this position and university, I thought this would be a great way to connect and learn more about the institution I was working for.
2. Did you benefit from this relationship in any way? How?
By working together on this international recruitment strategy I was able to benefit by meeting various colleagues on campus, learning about my new surroundings and being able to connect with my supervisor, who to this day is a close colleague.
3. What was your role in the helping relationship? In what way do you think you helped this person? Looking back, is there anything that you might have done differently?
As we built the international recruitment strategy for our university my role was to take my past international recruitment experience and build a model that would benefit the university moving forward. I shared overseas contacts, school information, and data on international student recruitment. Looking back, I would have wanted to visit the campus a bit more while building this plan. I commuted between my state, where the university was located and overseas. I think being more present at the university in those first few months would have helped instead of small visits between trips.
4. Was there anything that this person did, said, or believed that you did not agree with? How did you react?
I was very lucky to work with a colleague who was patient and understanding. She tried to always see all sides of the situation before making decisions which helped us along the way.
5. Did you learn anything from this relationship?
During this experience, I learned how to be confident in my own knowledge. In the past, I had always worked with others who had more experience in the international recruitment world, but in this job and in the university, I was the one who held the most experience in this area of education. I was fortunate in the fact that my colleagues not only trusted me, but allowed me to implement our strategy into our recruitment plans.