As the semester and my project come to a close, I would like to reflect on how far this Scope of Work and program have brought me. My initial goals and expectations in my first two blog entries have changed, and I realized how much I have changed since the start of the semester. From Blog 1 and 2, here’s what I learned:
Blog 1: What changed, what I learned, and classwork guidance
I noticed that my writing style and the phrases I once used have altered throughout this course. In blog 1, I said that my goal was to “further develop soft skills” while developing my devliberables. In our discussion in the classroom, I learned that referring to essential skills such as communication, leadership, and problem-solving as “soft skills” might actually downplay the importance in relation to “hard skills” such as coding languages or language proficiency. This classroom taught me that both are important for any job that you take on. However, referring to them as “transferable skills” and “non-transferable skills” may better articulate the fluidity and importance of foundational skills such as communication. It is these transferable skills that help professionals to develop the non-transferable skills in new roles that they have less experience in.
I learned that many of my original goals are continuous, in a way. They will never be fully realized. For example, forming connections and maintaining an open mind is something that I plan to take with me for all of my future endeavors. I also realize that some goals are less easily realized than others. In blog 1, I address that I would like to practice speaking Spanish while in Puerto Rico. And while I attempted to speak Spanish while in the country, I think this development of my Spanish language schema presented itself in the form of listening. I spent most of my spring break listening to others speak in Spanish to each other and to me in order to further develop an understanding of the language. I hope one day that I will be able to apply this knowledge more in conversational situations.
Blog 2: What changed, what I learned, and classwork guidance
In my second blog entry, I was shown how much our Scope of Work has evolved over the course. We had gone to Puerto Rico believing that our target persona was Generation Z. We had left Puerto Rico with a new plan to target 30-60-year-olds as well as additional deliverables for Caras in regards to paid social media, partnerships, and beyond. From meeting in person, I was able to learn so much more about what the client truly saw this plan going for, targeting individual donors in the United States.
In class, we recently discussed the article “Conflict Management in Teams” published by the University of Virginia. This article discussed four types of teams, the ideal team being a high satisfaction and high performance team. While reading my second blog post, I have come to realize that my team evolved over time into the ideal team as we got to know each other. Though it wasn’t a huge or drastic switch as our team was mostly on the same page from the start, I believe we started the semester at a high satisfaction (highly motivated by excitement and intrinsic motivations), but with slightly low performance. This was because we may have assigned work equally while envisioning differing takes on how this project was to be performed. However, as the semester progressed, we got to know each other’s personalities as well as the organization with which we worked. This helped us to shift into an equity mindset, where we tailored our workload based on differing schedules, skills, and interests combined. As this article from the University of Virginia emphasizes, it is important to reflect on where your team is currently, why, and acknowledge that teams go through cycles of all of the four types of teams. This is ultimately how a team grows closer together and performs to a higher degree.
A goal I would like to acknowledge from my second blog post is my goal to stay up to date on Puerto Rico’s politics. At the start of the semester, I wasn’t too aware of the ripple effects that Hurricane Maria had on Puerto Rico’s economy and infrastructure. I also did not comprehend the different perspectives on statehood, sovereignty, and other political views on
Puerto Rico’s independence. While I do believe it is important to to read the news, especially as the political climate is shaped from day to day, I want to reflect on how important hearing from Michael, from Adriana, and from others at Caras about their personal stories with Hurricane Maria and the political climate between the Mainland USA and Puerto Rico was to developing my understanding of Puerto Rico’s political climate. I hope that I will continue to develop an understanding of politics not only in Puerto Rico but also in other parts of the world.
A Transferable Skill
One of the most transferable skills that I developed was maintaining curiosity to ask intentional questions. This transferable skill was transferred, if you will, to me after experiencing the curiosity of the people I encountered at Caras. Adriana, the social worker who showed us around Caras and guided us day by day, had a habit of always being the first to start the conversation. Whenever we woke up early in the morning, she was filled with positive energy and inquired about how the rest of our day went. I believe this established an energized tone to start the workday and helped us to connect on a deeper level. While I was at Caras’ and in Puerto Rico, I then made it a personal goal to do the same to others – be proactive in asking intentional questions to connect.
During our meetings with Michael, as well as our impromptu meetings with the social media team and a data analyst, this proved to be helpful. During our two meetings with Michael, we were able to get detailed feedback on our completed research because we were constantly asking his opinion on where this project was going in the long term. This connected our short-term deliverables with the bigger picture of Caras. We were also able to learn about his journey to starting up Caras and his personal beliefs.
In my professional life, this will likely serve as a foundation for receiving new opportunities. Whether it be the chance to learn more about a company during an interview, or connecting with a co-worker about possible projects I could take on. A question seems at first like a one-way interaction to receive a piece of information. However, I realized that a question itself communicates a few messages in the context of consulting. The first message is that you communicate the direction of your own line of thinking to the client, where you see the project going based on your research. The second message is that you value that person’s opinion. This establishes mutual respect and a good rapport with your client. The third message is acknowledging that you don’t have all the answers, but that you are open to discussing a topic further. A simple question prevents conversation from closing off and catalyzes problem-solving. In the professional world, questions will be essential to propel you from one idea to the next.
Relationships
Relationships are the foundation for carrying out this project. First, being mentored and attending structured learning about service learning in the classroom was essential for interacting with the client and the intermediary, All People Be Happy. Our preexisting connections and those recommended to us by Pitt faculty also allowed us to gather insight into how social media platforms work and what our target personas’ habits may look like. By establishing relationships with Pitt faculty and learning from their expertise, we were able also to have the ability to meet with All People Be Happy and Caras Con Causa over Zoom before departure. This allowed us to sharpen the goals for this project and learn more about the organization we were partnered with. The relationship with Caras Con Causa offered the opportunity to meet students at the La Rosalina charter school, the ecology team, and others in the community. I am grateful for these connections and all they have taught me. In this respect, my existing relationships helped me to branch out to even more people I probably would not have been able to talk to otherwise.
A strength that Pitt’s existing relationship with Caras Con Causa had was the length of time in which this relationship had before. For example, our advisor, Rick Molsen, had been to Puerto Rico many times before. He has met the CEO, Adriana, and other employees. This was advantageous to us as he helped outline Caras’ work culture and questions that might be beneficial to ask Michael before our departure.
A vulnerability of Pitt’s existing relationship was definitely the distance between us. Because we are hours away from each other, we had less time to meet in person with Michael (CEO) and other employees. I feel that this might have offered less opportunity to establish a relationship of trust and go in depth about the organization than we might have had if we were closer to the company’s operations. I am actually grateful for this as well, because our group learned to take advantage of the week that we did have in person with them. For example, we were sure to write an extensive list of prioritized questions for them, as well as plan an itinerary of what we planned to get done for spring break.
While this was a different project from last year’s, working on this specific project helped the relationship between Pitt and Caras to evolve. Being able to work on this new project means that this relationship is being maintained year after year, even as priorities for Caras change. The landscape for social media is ever-changing, so I anticipate that the scope of utilizing social media for individual donors will change significantly in the next few years. The importance of this project was to establish a baseline of insight for the opportunities that social media platforms offer to target individual donors so that Caras can make their own decision on what is best for their future.
From Experience to Interview
I would frame my pitch of this project differently depending on the context if I were in a professional interview. If I were interviewing for a more interpersonal role, such as consulting or sales, I would emphasize aspects of the project that highlighted my ability to take initiative to reach out to connections, maintain a two-way relationship with my client, and my flexibility to be able to meet their needs by tailoring the Scope of Work throughout the semester. If I were interviewing for a role that required more technical analytics, I would emphasize the parts of the project where I collected and analyzed large amounts of data to assist in my recommendations to the client. As discussed in class, transferable skills are difficult to teach, whereas nontransferable skills (such as mastery of Excel) may be acquired. And while a role may demand a nontransferable skill, I would have to be able to articulate my transferable skills of problem solving, learning quickly, and self-accountability that I held throughout this project to show that I am a strong candidate to learn as the job requires.
The bottom line is that I would explain this project (professionally) with how rewarding this project was intrinsically and tangibly for the client’s operations. This project was a transformative experience that provided me with the opportunity to pursue my interest in non-profit work, sustainability, and connecting with a client with specific and unique goals. Being able to contrast where I was when I first started this project: excited, eager to help, and gain insightful connections, to after the project: a strengthening of communication style in professional relationships, a deeper development of intercultural competence, and growth in broader analytical skills, will be key in explaining the importance of this project that I hope will set me apart from other candidates in an interview.
Dear Future Groups… and Some Reflection!
I have three important pieces of advice I want future groups to know:
- Take advantage of your connections. I think that in the past, I have been hesitant to reach out to people that I don’t really know to ask them for advice, their time, and their expertise. Something that Abha (another fellow GSL Puerto Rico member) took advantage of is using her connections as a springboard for our whole project. We met with multiple people, some including her professor, Mark Snow, and Alfredo Bird-Canals, a Puerto Rican Senior Manager at Johnson and Johnson. Mark Johnson ended up connecting us with even more connections for us to meet with about paid social media marketing and beyond. Alfredo Bird-Canals was so enthusiastic about meeting multiple times to ensure our success on the project and to further help with future GSL projects. I learned that if you just ask, so many doors and meaningful connections can be made.
- My second piece of advice is to stick to your Scope of Work, but be flexible and unafraid to venture out. Throughout our time in the country, Alex, Abha, and I realized that our client was interested in different aspects of our project that were outside of our Scope of Work (e.g., AI recommendations, partnership and micro influencer opportunities, paid and unpaid social media budgeting). Something that our group discussed afterward was how we could balance getting our main deliverables done and still help out the client in the way they realized along the way. Preparation is definitely key to being able to add additional deliverables – we had the capacity to add additional research onto our project because we had finished the majority of our Scope of Work pre-departure. So, the plan was clear: we needed to prioritize our main deliverables, but add additional supporting materials as our Scope of Work demands to provide possible pathways for our client to take in the long-term. After all, this is not only a project that spans this semester, but years to come. I realize that adding deliverables was an additional workload to our team, but so valuable for our experience in maintaining the true objective of our GSL project: tailoring and adjusting based on our capabilities and the client’s needs combined.
- Get to know the people you work with! This year’s Puerto Rico group was only three people, and I loved it. I believe that it was because we got to know each other that we were able to assign work and adjust based on our differing skills and interests with ease. For example, the impromptu meetings in Puerto Rico went very well as Alexa was able to contribute by guiding the conversation and tying it to the bigger picture. Abha offered insightful and detailed notes to build off of, and I asked questions based on gaps in information that came up. This dynamic was unspoken and worked well because we knew each other well by that point in the semester. And of course, getting to know who you work with makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable!
Overall, I hope that the future groups of GSL Puerto Rico will be able to make as many memories and new connections as I was able to experience. Words cannot express how excited I am to see where this project goes and the growth that future GSL groups will be able to undergo! I am forever grateful for this partnerships with Caras, for everyone I have worked with, and for everyone involved with implementing these important Global Service Learning projects at Pitt!