12 Questions

1. What in the past helped contribute the most towards your career today?

2. What keeps you focused day in and day out?

3. What is the most rewarding part of your job?

4. What is your favorite part of the job?

5. How demanding is your job?

6. If you could make one change in your past, what would it be?

7. What is the worst thing about your job?

8. How do you relax from your job on your days off?

9. If you could choose another career would you choose to do that instead?

10. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

11.What is your definition of a great employee?

12.If someone wanted to do the same career as you, what would you tell them to

do?

Interview E-mail

Dear Danny,

My name is Jordan Lee and I go to Texas Tech University. I am taking a

Career Development course and was needing to interview someone that had the same

career choice as the one I am pursuing. I would be honored to be able to interview

you for this class. All I would need is about thirty minutes of your time. This could

greatly help my choice if I want to pursue this career, and help me have more of an

insight to the job. Please let me know if you are able to allow me to have this

interview. You can reach my cell phone at (806) 576-6044 and I am available

everyday till about 4 pm. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Jordan Lee

Thank You E-mail

Dear Danny,

I would like to thank you for meeting up with me for the 30-minute interview.

You have greatly contributed to my knowledge of the career path and what I will

have to undertake. I really enjoyed talking with you and cannot express the

excitement I had from learning more about the job. Thank you for the experience.

Sincerely,

Jordan Lee

Reflection Paper

The career that I chose to interview about is a Business Owner. I would

someday like to own my own restaurant and serve the best food in town. I have

worked in a restaurant for most of my life and cannot see myself doing anything else.

When researching my career choice online I learned that most of restaurants

fail within the first couple years of owning them. Even if they have a great theme

and food, it can all come down to just good advertisement. If no one knows where

your place is at, or what you serve, then how will they know that place even exists? I

also learned that there is a lot of pressure that the owners go through. From having to

deal with incompetent employees, to having to be hands on the job, there is a lot of

stress that the owner goes through. Being a good owner is not all about being able to

tell someone what to do but it is more about being able to do it with them. There is a

difference between managing and leading. There is a higher percentage of business

being able to become something if the owner is apart of the process instead of just

watching what happens. Some of the necessary skills include: being able to take

risks, self confident, good at speaking, a leader, being able to budget and knowing

personal finance, and hard working.

The name of the person I interviewed is Danny Lee. He is the co-owner of the

Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. The business has been around for over

60 years and continues to grow every year. I thought this would be a great person to

really help me understand my career. He has been doing his job for over 20 years

and sees himself continuing to do so for another 20. His interview has helped me

understand what it is going to take in order for me to become successful and make

something of myself.

I learned that owning a business is like taking care of a child. Even though you

are doing everything right, there is always someone who wants to be above the rules

or do something different. The job can be rewarding, but sometimes you just have to

motivate yourself to wake up in the morning and make the business better and better

everyday. I also learned that you cannot stand still in this kind of career because the

industry is always changing and you need to keep up with the times. Everyday

Danny is trying something new or trying to think of how something could be

different and more efficient. He said that the main importance of the business is

making the customer happy, and trying to find a new customer base is really

expensive so to focus on trying to get the same customers to come back. He said that

one of the main problems he faces is when one of his servers has had a bad day so

they do not wait on the customer professionally. This causes the customer to not

want to come back even when the food is good and the atmosphere is so enjoyable.

He deals with that kind of stuff on a daily basis. He doesn’t really want to change

anything in his past because it has led him to where he is today and having the same

mindset as he does now.

What really surprised me is how involved you have to be in order to keep the

business running smoothly. Even though you can take off as much time as you want,

you really do need to be there six days of the week to make sure everything is

running right. One thing that I noticed that I did not like about the career choice is

that if anything happens to someone on your property that you would have to pay for

their bills. It just seems like someone could take advantage of that and “accidently”

fall or something similar. I know there is insurance for these kind of things but

having to deal with that could really wear on you. One thing that working in a

restaurant for most of my life has shown me is my assests align with what a

restaurant needs. I am self-confident and can motivate myself. I love working with

people and I like relying on myself to get a job done. I also work well in groups and

love working with customers. Their priority is my priority and there is just

something about that that I cannot find somewhere else. From my online research

and my interview, I have learned more about the job. This is definitely still a career

choice and has only made me more confident in deciding if this job is for me. I

cannot see myself doing anything else and cannot wait till I fulfill my long-term goal

of becoming one. I now that there are some negative aspects about the job, but right

now I can work at them in order to become better at dealing with these things. I need

to learn more about budgeting and investing. I also need to learn more about

business law. I can learn most of these things through getting my Bachelor’s Degree.

For the things that I do not fully learn, I can read books and continue to learn outside

of my college career. I also need to learn more about how to cook food differently

with more unique tastes. I can learn this in culinary classes or find someone through

a professional job website, and team up with them. This could help take off some of

the stress that I could feel and just focus on employees and customers.

Informational Interview Assignment Grading Rubric Criteria

Points Possible Points Earned

GeneralPaper adheres to APA formatting (title page, citations, references page, etc.). Headings are appropriately labeled. Filename is correct. This rubric pasted at the end of the assignment.

10

Writing is clear with appropriate grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

10

Interview information and reflectionStudent clearly identifies an occupation 4Student provides foundational knowledge about the occupation

16

Student provides a copy of an effective e-mail request

4

Student provides a copy of an effective thank you note

4

Student discusses what was learned through the interview (5A-D)

16

Student reflects on interview and responds to evaluation prompts effectively.

30

Student provides a copy of their 12 informational interview questions.

6

Total 100