DQ 4-2

DQ4-2 Responses

1.

Orientation is an important part of the process for any new employee.  It lays the foundation of that employee’s career with the company. It creates a positive first impression for the employee, letting them know they made the right or wrong choice in switching jobs. Employees learn what their expectations are in the orientation process which sets the tone for their employment (Joseph, 2018).

At the company that I work for we have a formal 2 week training process that employees fly out to Phoenix.  The first day is mostly human resources training where we complete paperwork, hear from the company president and learn about employee benefits etc.  The rest of the two weeks is spent on getting our equipment phone, computer, printer, marketing supplies.  We learn policies and procedures and job knowledge.  These two weeks are spent learning our jobs.  Once that training is over we go into the field in our territories and shadow representatives in the field.  We work with our hiring manager to learn more about their expectations, do territory plans and we are set free to start working out territories.  Once we are in the field for about three weeks they send us back to the main campus for additional training now that we know a little of what we are doing.  The informal training is mostly done with our coworkers and manager in the field. Modeling, shadowing and learning from them. 

I really enjoyed our orientation process but there is always room for improvement.  When we were sent back after our initial training we had some training but they wanted us to sit and make calls to our data base.  The problem with this is, making calls is a very small part of our job.  The data base they give us is very old leads and a week is too much time to call through this list.  There isn’t enough to do.  They really need to change this week to be more advanced training regarding our exact position.  They need to have us territory planning and calling account and schools in the area and booking events. Another change I would like to see is that the trainers have more experience in this position.  The company has hired university counselors to train University Development counselors.  This is fine if they would send them out to shadow the actual UDC position or hire UDC’s as trainers.  Then they would have more knowledge of the position.  When questions arise they do not always know how to answer them.  The last change I would suggest would be to have an experienced counselor go to the new counselors territory to help them prospect and help them start building their own territory.  I would combine this with the shadowing piece.

 

Joseph, C. (2018, August). Why is Orientation Important to the Employee? Chron. Retrieved from: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/orientation-important-employees-11562.html