Informational Interview

For this assignment I interviewed my ex-boss’s boss, Pete Belk who has been a mentor and a friend of mine during the year that I work has a student ambassador at JCCC. He is the director of admission for the community college. He is a natural leader who leads by example and works very hard. He got his Bachelor of Business Administration from the Missouri Southern State University and his MA in educational Administration from UMKC.

I found many things very interesting about his career path. One of those things is that he told me that he told me that he regrets going for his MA immediately after his bachelors. He explained to me that he couldn’t contribute to the discussions for a whole year. At the same time, he also told me that he would have started a PhD earlier. Even though he doesn’t need one he told me that it allows you to do even more things. An interesting advice that he gave me is that you don’t need to be afraid to be overeducated because if you apply for a job that doesn’t require a higher degree then just don’t add that to your resume.

I think that If I decide to pursue an MBA in the future, I will start it after gaining a few years of professional experience so that I have real life experience to write about and discuss during my classes. But I would like to have the successful career that he has at a very young age.

One of the things that he told me is that he regretted was that after his master he basically took the first offer, and it was a very bad decision. This job was for a tech company. So, know that I am about to start my career I will make sure that I take my time selecting the job that I want and not just accepting the first offer I receive.

I think that I need to develop my conflict management skills. Has a director he mentioned that he had to deal with difficult employees, and it was thanks to his calms personality that he was able to manage those employees without letting things escalate. I feel that I need to learn how to address different situations properly. When the employee is upset, using a calm voice to calm him out and knowing how to be more direct and use a more serious tone when I need to correct and employee.

I don’t know if it changes the way I perceive my immediate future, but it gave a lot of insight in what I should expect as well as things that I should avoid doing and how I should go about continuing my education if that were something that I would like to do in the future.