Michele Armstrong

Michele Armstrong’s presentation was one of the best this quarter.
I guess it’s because I’m looking for a job and her presentation regarding HR and recruiting really pertained to me.

She is a senior manager of Corporate Recruiting at Vulcan Inc which is Paul Allen’s company and has been there for about 8 years now.
She was very engaging and while I was thinking of questions to ask, she answered them right away. It was as if she read my mind.

One thing which I was very surprised by was that now most recruiting companies post their jobs on Craigslist and twitter. When I think of Craigslist; creepy, scary and phony comes to mind. I also just signed up to Linked In.
Her idea about approaching HR managers for coffee intimidates me. However, I think its not bad idea as it will help me network and land a job through referrals.
When she started talking about phone interviews, I knew exactly what she was saying because I had one the same morning. They asked me to walk them through my resume, asked me examples of prior work experience, salary expectation, a timeframe for when I’m available and lastly motivation for applying to position. One thing I learned is to research about salary and ask what they would like to offer before stating your range.

Lastly, for the closer, I liked how she gave ideas about what types of questions to ask “You have been working here for some time now, what do you like best about working in this environment.” It’s always important to ask questions as the end of an interview. Also, I think I asked one question to the guest speaker.