Learning the Ropes with My Moms Digital Media Business
Author: D. Schroder Date: 1/31/24
As part of my senior project, we needed to learn a few things to get us ready for the real world after high school. But, to do 4 experiences.
- Mock Interview
- On the Job Training
- Job Shadow
- Interview with the business owner
The 2nd one was not on the list of experiences but I did it anyways as it helped my mom out as she is who I did all 4 experiences with.
The “Mock” Interview
This MOCK Interview was awkward because it was with my mom. But she made it professional as always because that is what she has experience with. She has been a business owner for most of my life and when she didn’t own her own business she was a manager at other companies.
We went through the main questions:
- Where do I see myself in 5 years?
- What skills do I have?
- Why do I want to work for this company?
- What do I have to offer this company? (My mom says this is one that you really shouldn’t answer, but I did anyway – more about this in the interview with the Owner)
- What sets you apart from others apply to this company? (This is the one she told me I should answer)
On The Job Training
This is something that I have been doing for pretty much all my life since my mom works from home and has for most of my life. But we got into some fun training with this.
The first thing I was trained on was going into her customers’ websites going to the back office and sorting through the different comments. Which 99.5% of them are spam comments and deleting them. This was one of the most mundane parts of the job training. But she said it is something that must be done because it can put the site at risk for hackers if you don’t keep up with it.
This brought up the question: Why can’t that be done with automation? Her answer was it could be, but many of her clients don’t want to purchase the software to do it because of the cost and would rather pay her to remove them.
This brought up another question: Does it cost less for you to do it? Her response was “No, it isn’t, she charges $150 an hour to do it and that is what it costs for a yearly subscription to the software.”Then why do they opt not to get the software? “Because they don’t think they will get comments on there websites or blogs. After the first year they usually get the software.”
The second thing I trained on was updating all the plugins on their websites and that is one of the simplest things to do once you learn how to do it. But my mom has got a program that is one button and it does it safely so that there are no problems and if there is it rolls it back to the previous backup and she can go in and figure out what plugin is causing the issue.
Job Shadowing
With this experience, I watched as my mom built a website from beginning to end. It is really interesting all that goes into building a website, how much time it takes, and how much relies on getting information and images from clients promptly. I found out that what holds up a website is not the building of it as much as waiting for the customer to get things to her, respond to emails, or even approve of certain design aspects of it.
But all in all it was interesting to see what goes into the design aspect of it and how it all comes together to create a complete site from nothing to being live on the internet.
The Interview with the Owner
With this final experience, I interviewed my mom.
Q. Why did you start doing web design?
A. I went back to school to get my degree in business and I took an elective for web design thinking it would help me with my business. I Fell in love with it and it became my business.
Q. Why did you say not to answer the question “What can you offer the company”?
A. I feel that companies should not ask that question for the mere fact is your skills on the resume or application are what you are offering and you are offering to fill the position. The company should be telling you what they can offer you as an employee. You are trading your skills for what they can offer not the other way around.
Q. What most do you like about your business?
A. I like that it gives me the opportunity to be creative and also work from home.
Q. What else do you do in your business besides web design?
A. I do content creation, and digital marketing for brands and businesses.
So I Learned the Ropes with My Mom
Over all these experiences helped me learn more about what my mom does all day when she sits at her computer. I also now know that it takes a lot of work at what she does but it is something she loves to do. It is a field of interest that I am looking forward to exploring further as I want to get into web design and cyber security so know some of what goes on the backend of a website will further my goals of learning what I can do to secure them more.
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