Interview Questions Flashcards
(31 cards)
Tell me about yourself.
- Passion - Drive transformative learning and connection among multicultural audiences through the encounter of new stories, cultures and experiences otherwise unfamiliar to them.
- Method - And like ISC and LDI, method is through fostering community and forging relationships.
- This is why I specialized my Masters in Intercultural Relations and International Communications.
- Because I believe that when you first focus on building community, it creates an interactive learning environment that allows people from different cultures to connect with vunerabiltiy and support each other’s development.
- Metric: In the past 9 years, I’ve collaborated with international teams, individuals, organizations, and clients in fostering paternships, managing digital communications, and leading experiential trainings.
- As a media specialist and facilitator at a training conference for peace professionals in 2018, created community among 30 experts from 27 nations by designing 7 networking events while also handpicked as the media coordinator for the conference by a former supervisor.
- I’m proud to say that the Whats app group created for that team is still active three years later.
- Based on my observations of LDI and ISC”s trajectory, my impression that ISC Academy’s goals to provide an virtual experience of an ISC school - which means it will have both of which I understand what draw s parents to LDI in the first place— its learning environment and the international community.
- Creating that virtual community and drawing the right parents and students to that community
So that’s where I come in– my communications, marketing, community building experience.
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Tell me why you want to work for us.
What excites me about ISC academy because I I think the future of education is ultimately online. Because of that, you’re willing to experiment and find the best online pedagogies for your students and teachers.
I’ve worked remotely full and part time for over five years, nearly three years now as an online teacher.
Pandemic - Virtual classes online
Had to modify my learning for a virtual environment. Had to learn to communicate differently, engage with lesson material differently, organize information, work in teams.
I’ve worked remotely full and part time for the past ? years, nearly three years now as an online teacher. I had to learn how to teach myself how to learn online and teach onlien and work in teams by myself. It was not always easy to learn how to do that.
Only reason I was sucessful was because I had years of experience at that point, mostly through teaching myself.
If you think about the careers that ISC students are most likely to have in the future, speaking multiple languages, travelling all over the world, working remotely, its important to start now teaching them how to work and operate online, but also maximize their expeirence of learning online.
And I want to work for ISC Academy because
- Tell the story of the innovative learning techniques and online pedagogies. to build an intentional online community.
What was the outcome of the ER project?
- Counseled owners of US luxury train company on multinational expansion into Great Britain, Germany, and France.
- Jump-started four business and marketing partnerships between Executive Rail and four other European luxury train firms.
- Identified 5 potential European customer bases for ER’s luxury train product and crafted 15 tailored product packages.
- Presented about multinational expansion to a group of 20+ peers, clients, academic supervisors, and reviewers. Presentation became the token standard for other students by the program supervisor.
Tell me about a time you showcased leadership.
Tell a story
Add a metric / # results
Address any objections the interviewer might have (lack of experience, career change, non-traditional background, career hopping, etc.)
You beleive leadership comes from transofmration on the inside out, and I think half of that battle is identifyng areas of transformation and then stepping up and allowing yourself to be transformed.
In Summer 2017, I was the East Asia Programs intern at IPSI
Established and assessed training material for experiential education events, including two international symposiums for professionals.
One major skills gap they had was media production and editing- graphic design and video.
Not an issue until – The main speaker Bolgona symposium, keynote speaker was Humberto de la Calle, Former Vice President of Colombia and chief negotiator of the Colombian peace process. Busy man, had to record a video instead. But they had to transcribe it from English to four or five different lanaguages.
Opportunity for curiousity and courage.
Opportunity for connection.
n the end, I succeeded in transcribing the 20 minute speech of the ambassador into 3 languages I did not know with no errors, and was shown at the conference.
When it came time for them to select a conference facilitator for their 2018 conference, out of the nearly 50 past intern groups they had, I was invited by the head of IPSI and my past intern supervisor to come aboard, and the conference supervisor as a media specialist
This particular circumstance taught me leadership development is not something that happens passively. And since then, I’ve always had my eye out for those opportunities and grab them when they come
Tell me about a time you worked with a difficult person.
What is most important information to get across about the story?
InLearn podcast with Erika Carlson, that part of establishing trust with parents is speaking truth to them. Being honest about what you can and cannotdo and where you need their investment.
Jan 2020-May 2020, Part of professional experience requirement for my Masters prgoram. Executive Rail, Luxury Train company provider, Multinational expansion into Europe. Tasked my partner and I with market analysis, communications & marketing plan, forge partnerships. Complete autonomy, 3.5 months.
What was the problem?
Different work priorities and styles. I noticed a trend in my partner’s behavior, where he would commit to do something but then fail to produce that work. From past experience, I knew this could jeopardize the final product if this behavior continued as final products were due.
How did you solve it?
Address the problem early.
Communicated clearly with him and set boundaries. Didn’t assume ill intent.
After several times, went to my supervisor and notified her about the situation.
When issue continued into late semester
Spoke with him clearly and firmly. Defined boundaries and consequences. Go to professor if he didn’t complete share of the work. Followed through on word.
What is the metric?
Jumpstarted four international partnerships and generated 15 new itineraries for five potential customer bases in 3.5 months.
Rated top marks for the project and presentation by both supervisor, peers, and clients. ER related to my supervisor that we did an outstanding job and that they would commence in implementing our suggestions for the project.
Based on what I’ve seen of ISC Academy, top priority moving forward is to maintain the trust and solidify partnerships with parents, and engage them as active participants. When it comes to my role in admissions, it is important that as the first person contact with them, I build trust with them right then and there, especially to uphold ISC goals.
Tell me about a time you failed.
Failure isn’t the opposite of success, It’s a part of success.
First commitment is learn, purposeful truth seekers and speakers.
second commitment to love, says we are connected, courageous, and compassionate in relationship to ourselves and each other especially applies here.
What is the most important information to get across about the story? How did you fail?
When it comes to conceiving ideas and starting projects, especially involving other people, Campaigners have exceptional talent. Unfortunately their skill with upkeep, administration, and follow-through on those projects struggles
Worked on a thesis during the Masters Program on sustainability and tourism.
First time project, W./ Advisor.
Failure: Difficult, but I refused to ask for help and communicate with my advisor.
Ended up having to extend the thesis for a semester because I didn’t finish on time.
What is the metric?
Finished my thesis.
Employed those strategies in my next long term project with Executive Rail and successfully completed an autonomous project with another partner in 3.5 months with minimal supervision from clients or school.
How did you turn around the problem? What did you learn from the experience?
Increase my self awareness.
Design solutions to the problems I identified.
Honest communication - No shame in asking for help. Clarify expectations..
Took initiative to learn and employ self management strategies. Ex. Timer
Give grace to myself and others while calling myself to a higher standard.
What is an obstacle you’ve overcome?
What is the most important information to get across about the story?
What was the problem?
As a virtual English teacher for Chinese students, one of the obstacles I face is personalzing lessons to my students. I want my students education, like ISC’s goals, to be holistic and transformative, but what that looks like can be different for each child.
VIPKid Teacher - teach about 20 Chinese students per week, rotating pool of about 50 to 70 regular students., given standard curriculum to teach.
30 minute for each student –cover about 20-25 slides of material. Reward students throughout the lesson with stars.
Student named Andy, 3-4 classes per week, smart student, but distracted. Wouldn’t get through the slides on time and I couldnt get him to engage with the lesson material.
What were the strategies you used to find success?
Thought was that he want. He wants to be entertained and to earn stars.
Extra engaging. Enjoys racing my prop monkey.
Visual reminder of stars.
What is the metric?
We started getting through all the lesson material. Engaged, feel like he’s incentivised to learn.
What specifics can you include that showcase you did your research on the company?
How does your experience prove out your value as it relates to the role/company?
While in this role as a MAC, I wont be teaching students directly as a teacher, I do have an understanding in an intercultural context online what it means to learn, love and lead students, mainly by paying attention, empathizing and meeting them where they’re at. Where this comes in at ISC is in admissions , listening and paying attention and learning the needs of a family and their students will be invaluable.
What is a time you’ve had success? How did you achieve that success?
An an online distance learning program, ISC’ Academy’s largest outreach makes sense will be via digital marketing and social media.
Contributed marketing and communications to 7 different organizations with nearly 3 years combined experience. All but one of these organizations were multinational companies specializing in some form of experiential and educational programming. 2017 to present, most volunteer work has been with media production.
But I think my greatest success out of all of that was at Meridian International Center in 2018 because skills I applied myself to social media marketing and the nature of the project.
Managed program materials and virtual communication for the US Department of State’s 2017 Next Level program – a six-week public diplomacy initiative sending American hiphop artists to Azerbaijan, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
A few strategies I implemented ot attain success.
Adopt growth mindset- Say “I’ll try rather I don’t know how.”
Track social analytics and maintain consistent posting schedule.
Variety of content
Curated graphics and posts that mixed original media from the next level tour,
promoted and engaged with similar/partner organizations and promoted their material,
Posted interactive media One post was a history of hiphop through the years that could allow you to hear hip hop at different times in its evolution.
- Spearheaded online engagement with Northern African, Eastern European, and Middle-Eastern audiences online for Next Level, increasing Facebook engagement by over 10,000 followers in four months. Supervisor Athena Hsieh complimented me on how I took ownership of Next Level and really made it my project.
ISC has several audiences right now you want to target: Chinese sduents living abroad, Maybe there’s other audiences? How I’ll help you is by finding out what content they want to engage in and curating content to them.
What have you achieved in your work as a virtual English instructor?
- Facilitated over 3500 one-on-one, language classes across time zones for over 500 students, driving student success by creatively adjusting lesson plans to individual needs using games, props, and multimedia.
- Achieved a perfect 5.0 rank as an excellent teacher across over 1850 class reviews.
- Officially recognized by VIPKid and parents for student encouragement, a dynamic classroom environment, and positive communication.
What work did you do for Atlas Obscura?
- Advised a tourism department seeking to hire and retain international partnerships with sustainable experiential providers. Noted by the international experience department for clearly articulating the company’s mission and goals for growth.
- Conducted interviews and qualitative analysis of contractors providing tours in Uganda, China, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Peru, and the Galapagos Islands.
- Developed recommendations for sourcing, attracting, and evaluating firms based upon firm’s investment in local communities, facilitation of cross-cultural exchange, and compatibility with Atlas Obscura’s mission.
What work did you do for IPSI?
- Established and assessed training material for experiential education events on peace building, including skill-building simulations and media for international symposiums in Bologna, Italy and Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina.
- Composed and published briefings on East Asia Peace building news in IPSI’s Peace and Security Reports for over 50,000 professionals around the globe.
What work did you do at Meridian? Accomplishments?
- Managed program materials and virtual communication for the US Department of State’s 2017 Next Level program – a six-week public diplomacy initiative sending American hiphop artists to Azerbaijan, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
- Spearheaded online engagement with Northern African, Eastern European, and Middle-Eastern audiences online for Next Level, increasing Facebook engagement by over 10,000 followers in four months.
- Organized, hosted, and documented a variety of cultural, diplomatic, and academic events, domestically and worldwide, sponsored by Meridian International alongside Cultural and Communications department.
What work did you do for CET academics?
- Completed intensive report on the range of educational partnerships among US-European and Chinese institutions. Report utilized by CET to consult with US Education Providers establishing partnerships with Chinese universities.
- Managed biweekly communication between CET and research team for the duration of the project.
How many years have you been working remotely?
Over 5 years
How many instances have you contributed to marketing and communications?
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What have you achieved in your work as a TESOL instructor in China?
- Executed and adapted long-term lesson plans to expand 15 students’ conversation, listening, and literacy skills, with all students passing their English exams with scores of over 95% by the end of the year.
- Noted by parents and supervisor as an excellent instructor with an aptitude for designing creative learning activities using recreation and multimedia.
- Designed and presented over 15 presentations on value lessons while collaborating with staff and faculty to manage school wide events and activities for over 35 students and staff.
- Developed and delivered five-week Phonics Program for Chinese English teachers at sister school.
- Directed Chinese colleagues in ensuring proper translation of teaching materials and school notifications.
What did you achieve in your work at IPSI as a facilitator?
- Supervised all networking for a two-week, career-development conference on peace building, implementing seven community-building events connecting over 30 experts from 27 nations.
- Administered logistics for three keynote speakers and managed multi-day simulations and professional trips to the U.S. Institute of Peace & World Bank alongside a diverse team.
- Oversaw multimedia production of events as the official conference photographer, producing over 5000 high quality photographs for future use in IPSI communications.
What is the purpose of ISC?
iSC Academy is committed to providing a transformative, holistic K12 education in an online community to develop globally-minded individuals who learn, love, and lead.
What audiences is ISC Academy currently targeting?
- Current ISC Students
- K-12 students who wish to grow in their capacity to communicate in English or Chinese
- based on national curricula and prepare high school students to take the College Board® AP exams in May.
- partner with Chinese families serving in various vocations abroad, supporting them by offering online Chinese language and culture courses.
- K-12 part time and full time international students
What are the big initiatives and goals at ISC Academy?
- Simplify and standardize tech
- Marketing & Communications
- Admissions & Partnerships
- Recruitment of Staff
- Virtual Community Building/Maintaining Trust
- Training/Experimentation w/ Online Pedagogy for teachers, students, and staff.
Tell me about a time you demonstrated teamwork,
In Spring Semester of 2017, I took a course in Managing International Education & Intercultural Programs. As part of this course, a team of two other students and I collaborated on a consulting project for CET Academics - a study abroad company with reach in 14 countries. Completed intensive report on the range of educational partnerships among US-European and Chinese institutions.
This was a time sensitive project to be completed within three in a half months and then presented to heads of departmentat CET.
We quickly ran into a problem–there was little to no literature on these types of organizations and we weren’t familiar with who to contact at these places to actually talked to.
Major challenge we faced was discovering ….who is in charge of these programs, who do we talk to, how do we get their contact info, are they in China or here. Due to my strengths with ideating, I was able to figure out different research pathways we could try. One such ideation was me brainstorming who we could find close to home? So I typed in the keywords of our project with AMerican University.
Lucas Olsen’s thesis. - Key in helping us get the major categories of universities down. This opened the door to a whole world of resources and gained us contact with the people we needed to speak with.
However, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the efforts of my teammates.
Yuyang - Chinese native, provided her cultural perspective and helped translate.
Karen led us in project management and made sure we had everything in on time.
Report utilized to consult with U.S. Education Providers establishing partnerships with Chinese Universities
I serve the teams I’m in as a investigator and troubleshooter. II network my teammates with the resources they need to do work well and I diagnose issues before they become major problems.
Based on what I’ve observed, some of the major audiences you are seeking to attract are .Chinese student abroad, K-12 international student etc. As a teammember I would serve ISC academy in a commonunications marketing role by helping you find the rosoruces and contacts that will connect you with those audiences.
What follow up questions will you ask at end of interview?
- Is there anything in my qualifications or resume that you’re hesitant on that I can clarify for you?”
- What’s the biggest challenge you are currently facing inside and outside of MAC?
- One year you’re looking back at this hire, what has this person done to exceed expectations on every level?
For Shirley: What is the most unexpected lesson you’ve learned while working as the Admissions at Yantai?
For Eva: What was your original vision for reaching that audience and how has it evolved?
Describe your Masters Study.
Master’s Degree in Intercultural Communication (2020) from the School of International Service at American University. My degree explored the intersection and impact of culture and communication on geopolitical, economic, and technological relations among peoples, societies, and nations. I focused my studies on intercultural programming and transnational education with skill-building in communications and media production. I maintained a regional focus on the culture and history of China.
How many year experience do you have working with multinational audiences?
Over 8 years of combined experience working with multicultural audiences and organizations, including over 5 years of experience instructing and working alongside international and foreign students.
Contributed to professional development and experiential learning programming alongside 5 multicultural teams.
