Prompt 3: Exploring Communication

By: Johnny 

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For the third prompted post I was asked to interview a professional in my groups chosen field. The professional that I have chosen to interview happens to be my sister. Her name is Maria and she currently works with the advertising team at Chevrolet. Considering her job includes working with the Chevy commercials, advertisements, and even the website, I'd say she makes a great interviewee for this assignment. I conducted this interview over the phone.

The first few questions that I asked my sister were, what do you do at your job? How often are you writing? And, how do you approach completing these tasks?

Her response: "I do a number of things at my job. I work with a team that reviews the frequent updates to the Chevrolet website. I help organize the placements of different Chevy advertisements in various promotional pieces. I help decide on the visuals for certain advertisements. That's a good general summary of what my job entails, always working on at least two projects with my team and the corresponding teams of employees. As for writing, what I write includes taking notes during my various meetings, taking notes when my team and I are reviewing the website, and just communicating with my boss, my team, and other employees, sometimes having to formally respond to a certain event or topic of discussion. I approach these assignments communicating and working with my team, making sure everyone's on the same page and that the assignments completed to our level of standard. It's a team effort and I really like my job for that reason. "

I then asked my sister, what are some common misconceptions you've heard in your job field and how have you used communication to dispel, address, or work around these misconceptions?

Her response: "Hmmm, I haven't really thought about this before. I would have to say the few that are sticking out to me right now are when people think that since I work in advertising, all I do is come up with catchy slogans for ads, which obviously isn't true, and then the other is when people think working in advertising is just like working in public relations. This really bothers me because yes the two industries go hand-in-hand with each other, but they're completely different. Advertising focuses on the product promotion where PR focuses on promotional events and the planning that comes with that. As for addressing these misconceptions with communication, my team and I wouldn't take anything too seriously and instead just stay focused on doing what we know and what we're suppose to do."

I learned a lot more than I had already known about my sisters job and I'm happy I got this opportunity to do so interviewing her. What I discovered is that communication seems to play a key role in my sisters profession. The team effort she described has a strong importance in almost all of her assignments. Communicating with her boss and her teams allows for all of them to take on these projects together, with the reassurance of each others dedication and involvement. Since her job works to complete assignments that are larger than a single-person assignment, communication is extremely important, as I'm sure it is in most other job fields.