Hi, This Is Mia, How May I Help You?

A quick mention that today is Kick Butts Day, “a national day of activism that empowers youth to stand out, speak up, and seize control against Big Tobacco”!

Aside from that, I’m back to work, and I’m continuing my search for website designers this week.

While in the midst of constant back-and-forth, question-answer conversations with designers on Fiverr, I decided to post a design request on Upwork to see if there were any candidates there. Like Fiverr, Upwork allows clients to message freelancers individually or make postings public to open up the job to anyone who applies. I thought the latter would be very beneficial for us to make the best hire, so I put my web design request on a public setting.

I didn’t realize the effect this would have until I began receiving multiple notifications from Upwork and separate individual emails from applicants asking me to consider them as possible contenders. And the calls started to come soon after.

Though I’ve previously blogged about acting the secretary, I’ve only accomplished the written part—pen-to-paper notes. I’ve rarely answered the phone during my time at Marvin Medisoft, and when I did I only took brief messages for Ms. Vaidya. Now I found myself in the interview process, inquiring about web design proposals, searching through my notes for answers to their own questions, flustering around for words.

I’m not very good at talking to people on the phone, and this interview process confirmed it—at least in the beginning.

During the first call, I forgot to introduce myself, and when we finished talking the designer had to ask who was speaking. To me, “Mia Carlson” seems like an ordinary name to spell, but I guess the translation got fuzzy on the other end, because when he emailed me afterwards, he wrote, “Hi Miaca Erlsom”, which I really had to laugh at. After that little mix-up, Ms. Vaidya advised me to answer all future calls with “Hi, this is Mia, how may I help you?”, which definitely lessens the awkward confusion if interviewees ask for my name.

The second call went a bit better (he definitely knew my first name was not Miaca), but when I was asked to spell my name, I think I blurted out, “‘M’ as in ‘Mia’”, which I’m guessing isn’t very helpful.

Third time’s the charm? Not for me, apparently. “I” sounds like “Y” (go figure!), so this particular designer wrote back, “Hello Mya”.

In the fourth call, I finally figured out how to spell my own name, ask the right questions, and jot down notes at the same time, but I was still nervous on the phone.

Throughout this process, I learned the ways around a phone interview, the value of customer service from a business perspective, and the tricks to sounding out my name and its letters very clearly.

I am currently in contact with six candidates, mostly by email (where I am much better with my words), and I hope to decide on one by the end of the week.

Crossing my fingers that I’ll find the best person to hire!

Mia Lu / Miaca Erlsom / Mya