Behavioral Interview Assignment Essays (1357 words) - Marketing

Rusy Riggs BUS 271 Dr. Julia Welch 6/10/201 8 Behavioral Interview Assignment Job Title /Field : Integrated Marketing Communication s Brief Description : IMC is the use of marketing strategies to optimize the communication of a consistent message of the company's brands to stakeholders. The Interviewee : My interview subject was Ms. Ann Becker , who works at Entergy and as adjunct IMC faculty at Ole Miss. I met Ms. Becker as a neighbor here in the Oxford area. As someone currently both working and teaching within the IMC arena, Ms. Becker is well qualified to give insight into my future career. F ollowing are my questions and Ms. Becker's responses. How did you get interested in a career in IMC and tell me a little about what you do today? Mrs. Becker started out in publishing, she stated she was the editor of Mississippi Magazine for a number of years. She moved from working within primarily a printed platform to public relations, media relations and promotions for a variety of companies. For the past 12 years she has worked for Entergy, a Fortune 500 company. In this capacity her primary focuses are corporate social responsibility and environmental improvements and sustainability. These are all important positive messages for Entergy to communicate to its stakeholders. She creates an integrated strategy whereby they promote their key messages across numerous platforms. This could occur via a video, via social media messaging, an employee news story or a newsletter. Her job, basically, is to create this content and manage the distribution of the content across a wide variety of platforms. She moved into IMC as a career using a solid base of experience in writing, editing and storyt elling as a springboard. What degrees do you have and where are they from? Also, what year did you graduate? Ms. Becker stated she has a BS degree in English Literature and an MBA, both from Millsaps College. She also has participated in a sustainability certification program at Yale University and will be doing further work at Columbia University later this year. She earned her undergraduate degree in 1984 and her MBA in 2015. Have you always worked in IMC, or did you work in other fields before? Even at the beginning of her career when she worked at Mississippi Magazine they had a very small staff, so though it was not her primary job she had responsibility for promotion and media management. In addition to creating the product they were also responsible for promoting it, so essentially , she was performing IMC responsibilities even back then. What do you like most about IMC as a career, and what do you like least? Ms. Becker stated she likes that it is constantly changing and evolving, so you have to continue to learn to be effective. She also said she likes that there are many different tools and approaches you can take to accomplish the objectives, so there isn't just one set way to get the job done. She sees IMC as a combination of art and science as there is a very important creative factor, but you must also be able to properly utilize technology to effectively distribute the messages across all the various platforms. The field has a broad scope. She further stated that anyone working in IMC has a broad view of the company, making them an excellent resource, both within and outside their department. As to what she liked least, she said there often aren't enough hours in the day to pursue all the ideas she has, and sometimes technology can be a limitation if the proper systems aren't in place. How strong do you consider job prospects for new IMC graduates right now? Job prospects are very strong, especially for those who are really good at creating content , those who have a good handle on search engine optimization, and those who are comfortable in the visual platforms. Also important is staying current to learn new technologies and tools. In your experience, are there particular cities or areas of the country that are strongest for IMC graduates to find jobs right now? Ms. Becker said she does not think there's really a geographic hub