One last interesting aspect.

One topic in the book that I wanted to discuss further was the section about Interview Questions. I found this section to be particularly enlightening as it provided a different perspective on interviewing than I’ve had privy to in the past. The idea that the interview questions can be multi-faceted, where you’re discussing not only the organization, but additional items such as: the goals of the company, management style, or training programs. Upon reflection this, of course, makes sense because an interviews purpose is not only to allow the manager to become familiar with the applicant, but also allows the applicant to familiarize themselves with the inner workings of the company. There could be a very distinct management style at the company that the applicant is unfamiliar with, or perhaps the management style is more micro-managing than the applicant wants to deal with. The organizational culture should also greatly factor into an applicant, or managers perspective when conducting an interview. Will the individual mesh well with the other employees? Will there be conflicts? Understanding not only the applicant’s familiarity but also comfort ability will make for a much better working relationship for all parties involved.

Interesting Concepts

The concepts I found most interesting those concepts that I could apply directly to my personal life. This may seem somewhat self-centered, but I don’t have all that much reason or purpose to apply other concepts that the book discussed. The intercultural communication concepts were of great interest and I’m sure that I learned a lot, and will be better able to apply those concepts in a real-world scenario. I just don’t have a significant amount of friends from many distinct cultures. The concepts about communicating better with peers, or in a work environment were also very useful to me. I found that I was also able to apply these concepts to enhance my communication style at my workplace. The most interesting to me, by a far margin, are the interpersonal concepts. Especially the concepts relating to relationships and how to understand and improve communication between partners. I found that I’ve been able to communicate much more comprehensively and also understand when I’m not communicating very effectively.

Research Methodology

The method of most interest to me was the unobtrusive method. I found this method of research interesting because it initially struck me as a bit off from what I considered to be normal research. I normally consider research to be asking questions of people, looking through books or manuscripts. I guess the observation of the impact, measurements of erosion, or evaluating which communication methods are more popular would also fall into the category of a voiceless audience which this method of research seems to epitomize. Another aspect of this method of research that I found interesting is that it could also be a falsely built framework of understanding. If one considered the prevalence of a message to be popular, or more accurate, then the group with the largest printing press would always win. This seems a bit counter intuitive to me, as sometimes the more meaningful messages are those of the smaller variety. This can happen when the groups or individuals who have a large influence disagree or are attempting to suppress the message. There are a great many examples of this, the book burning done during the World Wars, or a political candidate who is unable to obtain airtime because he cannot afford the outrageous prices set by the news networks are a couple of these examples.