selena sprout

I applied for New Zealand Government Scholarship in March 2020, and I fail. Today I decided to repost and public a part my answers of the application form. Because I think that I shared two memorable events/stories on my own Host journey in this form.

Two stories appeared at that time of last year, 11-12/2019 when I was so tired, stress, shear pressure and don’t know what I was doing. Everything is fine now… Such a long journey and a long year, 2020.

I love my job and what I am doing. Because I think that my job give me a big chance to learn deeply about myself, how to be a good person day by day.

Creative, leadership, meaning, calm, team-spirit are what I found.

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SITUATION QUESTIONS:

1- Describe a situation that demonstrates your ability to develop new relationships that have been important for your work or study.

* Describe the situation (character limit 500)

The company I work for decided to stop managing the building I was working at, so I was reallocated to work at another property. In the new building, we had three cleaning ladies, one maintenance staff and one co-host. I needed to develop new relationships with all of them. Not only did I successfully develop these new relationships, I also became their trusted team leader.

* What actions did you take to develop the relationship? (character limit 750)

I held a meeting to inform them that I would work with them as the new manager. In that meeting, I listened and tried to answer any questions about their benefits related to work. I used to eat with them during lunchtime which helped me in knowing about their work and family. I also observed and supported them to clean rooms. At the end of month, I have been sent a message to everyone asking for private calls to understand their expectations in work and how they thought when working with me.

The reason I did these was that I would like to spend daily interactions and create conversations with others which helped everyone to understand their colleagues more.

* What was the outcome? (character limit 500)

Teammates were willing to send me messages and called me anytime when they had questions. We could sit down and discuss if we had any internal problems. We also had a lot of fun and happy memories together via team activities. Some people shared that they love to go to work when we had monthly sharing activities. 

I learn that showing appreciation and paying attention to people is essential ways in developing new relationships. Spending good quality time together will bring people closer.

2- Describe a situation when you had to motivate yourself to achieve, without any prompting from family, friends, or others.

* Describe the situation (character limit 500)

The company I work decided that they would no longer be managing the building I was working at because the building owner had a different working culture. One of the main hand-over tasks was solving cancellation, following full-refund for upcoming reservations. However, one week later, the main host and co-host all resigned and there was only me left. At that time I just started working as a full-timer for around 4 months. I never experienced this situation before.

* What actions did you take to motivate yourself? (character limit 750)

Regarding upcoming bookings, I followed and solve 14 reservations/guests including inform and make sure that they had agreed on cancelling the old reservation.  I left my worry and tried about my choice of words in written messages as well as speech when answering guest’s message. I also did following 10 cases related to full-refund money on Online Travel Agent channels and Accounting Team. Lastly, I organized and arranged documents to hand-over 24 apartments, equipment that our team was managing to the building management within two weeks later.

I did not back down but instead challenged myself to stay with the company that gave me a good working environment and many chances to learn how to be a good person through hosting job.

* What was the outcome? (character limit 500)

I finished all the hand-over tasks in around 3 months. This situation did take me out of my comfort zone which guided me to explore my ability which I never thought I could do. This one is fundamental experience supports my duty now as a property manager.