Founded nearly two years ago, the Office of Community Outreach and Hiring strives to work with local neighborhood residents to enhance their job interview and application skills.

This March, a new partner joined the project — students in the university’s Society for Human Resource Management.

As part of its mission, Community Outreach and Hiring — a division of Temple’s Department of Human Resources — hosts CommUniverCity Days in which neighborhood residents participate in workshops on resume writing, online job applications, interview skills and other job-related topics. This semester, SHRM students joined with Human Resources in a new venture to conduct mock job interviews with local residents.

On March 20, 30 members of Temple’s surrounding community gathered at the Entertainment and Community Education Center, where they met with HR professionals and 13 SHRM students. The participants split into groups, and the students observed and conducted mock interviews with them.

Associate Vice President of Human Resources Harry Young called the experience “win-win,” as it provided assistance to community residents while simultaneously giving students a firsthand opportunity to practice job-interviewing skills.

Gary Blau, chair of the Department of Human Resource Management in the Fox School of Business and co-faculty advisor to SHRM, called the mock-interview workshop a “great experience” for his students.

“By being ‘interviewers’ for the local interviewees, it gave the students a much stronger appreciation for the interviewing process,” Blau added.

“Plus, it helped with a positive community-service event.”

Jameel Rush, a senior human resource management major and president of SHRM, agreed, and said the mock-interview process was a “wonderful experience.”

“It was good to sit on the other end of the table for once,” said Rush, laughing. “This gave me hard-core experience to take with me on my own job interviews.

Now I can say, ‘I really have practical work experience, and I didn’t just read about it in some book.’”

Janel Bowles, a co-director of Community Outreach and Hiring, noted that she received an overwhelmingly positive response from community members.

“One respondent wrote that ‘I found the workshops to be very informative.’ Others found it helpful because the workshop pointed out weaknesses in interviewing and this person now felt better-prepared. Another wrote that they liked how everyone — students, interviewees and professionals — helped each other in the groups,” she said.

On May 23, Community Outreach and Hiring will host a neighbor’s job fair in which local businesses will gather at Temple to provide information for those seeking jobs at their institutions.

For more information on the Office of Community Outreach and Hiring, read “Temple reaches out to the community for some fresh faces”.