Rehabilitation and Punishment
There are various ways to discipline people, or person, and based on my experience, punishment was not the way that I experienced to discipline people for rehabilitation. I know I have talked a lot about RSO that I am involved in 'Kojobs', but I want to pull up as an example again because I think the incident we just confronted and is undergoing can be related to this week's prompt. Recently, there was intercollegiate KOJOBS meeting at Los Angeles, and 3 executives from Illini Kojobs went there. (I did not have a chance to go) Kojobs founder came all the way to Los Angeles from South Korea to have a meeting about holding the KOJOBS job conference, and KOJOBS executives from various universities, including UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCSD, gathered to discuss about how they will organize the conference. Also, they all discussed about how they are managing or running Kojobs at each university, and all UC Kojobs said they are holding several companies' presentations or meeting with consulate. However, Illini Kojobs could not say anything about external events and we were very ashamed that Kojobs is not doing what we should do. We conduct mock interview, study group, and resume critique session, but they are all internal events and because we do all these things internally, we were not able to make any improvements. Of course, we do have some limitations compared to other UC Kojobs, because UC Kojobs are close to each other and they could simply open any external event and gather all UC Kojobs together, but we only have us in the central area. But we should have conduct some external events and try to encourage others and make some improvements for members.
Kojobs founder came to Illini Kojobs executives and asked what is your purpose of doing Kojobs and what is the direction of Kojobs. He was mad and disappointed the situation that current Illini Kojobs is undergoing, and he tried to discipline by what he wants to see in the future and Kojobs' original direction that he set when he was creating Kojobs. He yelled out "Why are you uploading videos that are promoting friendship on Kojobs page? Why don't you create anything that is beneficial in job searching?" He did scold and yell at us but he did not punish us. He simply advised what we should do to make better Kojobs and he said he will support whatever you need to rehabilitate Kojobs. Also, he was willing to provide funds if we needed to restore Kojobs to a better way. I thought his way of discipline was very effective and good, because he alerted us about the problem and explained in detail what direction he wanted and how we should fix it. He also was ready to support financially and mentally. He even wanted to hold job conference at Chicago that he would give charge to Illini Kojobs.
After executive members came back from Los Angeles and discussed with Kojobs founder, they tried to explain what they heard about other Kojobs are doing to fulfill the purpose of Kojobs and what Kojobs founder advised to them. I realized that people are not willing to join Kojobs actively to do job searching and I can't tell that I had a strong will to restore Kojobs as before. Our executive members who came back from Los Angeles alerted us our problems and what we should do to make Kojobs great again. There were some members who didn't work actively and put much efforts but our executive members can't discipline them because even we(executive members) didn't know the direction of Kojobs and out motto. We were thinking about punishing other members by kicking out them or give warning that they might need to do interview again to be in Kojobs. However, we decided not to punish them, but decided to reorganize Kojobs and change its direction. In my opinion, punishment may be effective to discipline one but it may not be effective to change everyone's attitude and thoughts. When we talked about this problem to other members and let them know how serious this problem is, people consented to what we talked about and they were willing to change attitude and put effort into restore Kojobs. I believe the most effective way to rehabilitate one or people is communication, not punishing or rebuking. Through communication, people can deliver opinion without being offended.
Kojobs founder came to Illini Kojobs executives and asked what is your purpose of doing Kojobs and what is the direction of Kojobs. He was mad and disappointed the situation that current Illini Kojobs is undergoing, and he tried to discipline by what he wants to see in the future and Kojobs' original direction that he set when he was creating Kojobs. He yelled out "Why are you uploading videos that are promoting friendship on Kojobs page? Why don't you create anything that is beneficial in job searching?" He did scold and yell at us but he did not punish us. He simply advised what we should do to make better Kojobs and he said he will support whatever you need to rehabilitate Kojobs. Also, he was willing to provide funds if we needed to restore Kojobs to a better way. I thought his way of discipline was very effective and good, because he alerted us about the problem and explained in detail what direction he wanted and how we should fix it. He also was ready to support financially and mentally. He even wanted to hold job conference at Chicago that he would give charge to Illini Kojobs.
After executive members came back from Los Angeles and discussed with Kojobs founder, they tried to explain what they heard about other Kojobs are doing to fulfill the purpose of Kojobs and what Kojobs founder advised to them. I realized that people are not willing to join Kojobs actively to do job searching and I can't tell that I had a strong will to restore Kojobs as before. Our executive members who came back from Los Angeles alerted us our problems and what we should do to make Kojobs great again. There were some members who didn't work actively and put much efforts but our executive members can't discipline them because even we(executive members) didn't know the direction of Kojobs and out motto. We were thinking about punishing other members by kicking out them or give warning that they might need to do interview again to be in Kojobs. However, we decided not to punish them, but decided to reorganize Kojobs and change its direction. In my opinion, punishment may be effective to discipline one but it may not be effective to change everyone's attitude and thoughts. When we talked about this problem to other members and let them know how serious this problem is, people consented to what we talked about and they were willing to change attitude and put effort into restore Kojobs. I believe the most effective way to rehabilitate one or people is communication, not punishing or rebuking. Through communication, people can deliver opinion without being offended.
Wow! Somehow your blog got very wide for this post. I wonder if that can be adjusted some.
ReplyDeleteI didn't completely understand your story. So let me ask a few background questions that you might respond to which would offer clarification. When did Kojobs begin? And was Illinois one of the campuses at the beginning or did the Illinois branch start later? You said that the campuses that are part of the U California System are close together, but might it be more important that each campus is close to or even in a big city? Champaign-Urbana is a college town. It's a nice place, but most students who graduate aren't going to stay here. So would it matter to Kojobs if our university were much closer to Chicago, where there are lots of jobs to be found?
In other words, while the founder of Kojobs said the Illinois leadership team wasn't running the organization properly, might that be because of location rather than for some other reason? And if so, were the solutions he suggested likely to be effective?
Finally, it seems strange to me to talk about punishment within an RSO about performance, unless that is communicated on a regular basis, but you said your leadership didn't understand this until the meeting in California. That part needs more explanation. Why didn't they understand this ahead of time?
Kojobs began about 5~6 years ago, not sure exactly when. Illinois was the first campus at the beginning and it spread throughout California. I think we would have more opportunity for jobs if we were close to Chicago area. Champaign-Urbana is a college town and a lot of companies come to our campus for career fair. But it would be better if there are other universities to cooperate to open Kojobs career fair and more companies would easily contact or come to U of I.
DeleteI don't think the location is the only problem in Illini Kojobs. Because we were not running our organization externally and we did not do what we were supposed to do. There are no Korean RSO which main goal is job searching. So we should have been done opening career fair or company representation. I think his solution was very effective and helpful because we did not even know what is the goal and purpose of the Kojobs.
I think we didn't realize or understand ahead of time because we did not consider Kojobs seriously. We didn't have much passion and didn't put much effort into Kojobs. We just did what we have been doing (mock interview, study groups) and just went with the flow.