To prepare them for possible job interviews in the future, Employability Skills students are creating resumes and interviewing each other for a job position of interest.
“Eventually the students will get a job, whether they want one as a teenager or after college,” Engineering teacher Rizalito Nicolas said. “Everyone will eventually go through an interview and this assignment can give them some real-life experience. When writing the resume, it helps them reflect their qualities and strong points and even some weak points. It helps them with self-evaluation and encourages them to work on their weaknesses.”
Students were in groups of six, with three interviewers and three applicants. Each group was tasked with finding a job that they wanted to be hired at, while the interviewers came up with questions for the specific occupation.
“It was a little bit difficult at first because my group and I didn’t really know much about resumes, but learning about it gives us a background about what to do when we want to get a job in the next couple of years,” freshman Maliq Wyatt said. “I think my group and I did pretty well on our skit and working with them definitely helped give me a lot of guidance into what I’ll need to do in the future. In a couple of years, this assignment will become a reality for not only me, but for the majority of my group too, and together we learned the importance of teamwork.”
As for presentations, Nicolas is looking for students’ professionalism and preparedness when presenting their skit interviews.
“I was impressed with all of the groups who have presented so far,” Nicolas said. “They were very professional and displayed a lot of workplace readiness skills. There were a few mistakes made, but I believe that mistakes are important to help them grow.”
Going through the process of creating a resume and cover letter for the interviews helped students grasp what it would actually be like.
“Especially since most of us are at the age where we are applying for jobs and creating resumes, I think this assignment really prepares us,” sophomore Marielle Aguila said. “It gives us a good idea of what companies expect from us and it helps us in making ourselves stand out as an applicant. From this, I learn how to be more professional and responsible when it comes to job interviews.”
Some students who already have a job helped their peers without a job prepare for the mock interview as if it were real.
“It’s close to what we’re doing in real life and it can be really beneficial for students, especially the freshmen and sophomores who are looking to find a job,” senior Karina Rus said. “In order to get the internship I have right now, I had to talk to the dentist who owns the office and tell him about my strengths, my weaknesses, basically just a little bit about myself. The mock interview we did portrays real-life interviews pretty well, and it felt very real.”
