CWC Interview

I had my interview with Alejandro Mora from Equality Utah for the Community Writing Campaign on Friday, September 23. Overall I think the interview went very well and I left the interview even more excited to start the project than I was beforehand. I called on Thursday to set up a time to talk with him and he asked for me to come into the office the following day because he was excited and wanted to get to work on the project. To prepare for the interview, I read over my questions I created for the CWC brainstorming and fine-tuned them. I also read through their website another time to familiarize myself more with the content and see if there were any other questions I wasn’t sure about.

Most of the meeting went very well, and a few things stood out that went exceptionally. First, the timing of the CWC project seemed perfect because Alejandro expressed that they had been talking about the need for a communications campaign for several months but did not have the manpower to make it possible. They had a lot of ideas for specific projects I could work on and he was very receptive to my ideas as well. Overall I think I presented myself well and the questions I asked were well-received and was well-versed enough in their work that we were able to have a very effective meeting. One thing I think could have gone better is that he asked me what things could have been improved on their website, which wasn’t something I had been looking for when I surveyed it the first time. In addition, I had never been to their office before and as such didn’t know what their dress was. I wore a dress and blazer and was a bit overdressed compared to everyone else.

I think the best questions were “What are three main points you would like to see in this communications campaign?” and “What is the process for approving each communication?” They gave me a lot of good information that was probably the most useful for how I should structure the content I create and how I have to go about getting it produced and sent out to their community contacts. The two least useful questions were “How can we unite the organizations under the Equality Utah brand?” and “How would you like to see all the issues EU tackles united in a single campaign?” because it turned out they were both irrelevant. We aren’t able to market the three EU organizations in the same communication because they are required by law to stay separate, and we created a more specific communications campaign for me to work on than just promoting their issues to the greater community.

Overall, my interview went very well. At the end he invited me to an event they were hosting this past week, which I attended and was able to talk to them a bit more about the project and become more familiar with their work. I have another appointment to meet with him and the Executive Director this Friday and we are all excited to start working on the project.