1. 12 Questions
1. What in the past helped contribute the most towards your career today?
2. What keeps you focused day in and day out?
3. What is the most rewarding part of your job?
4. What is your favorite part of the job?
5. How demanding is your job?
6. If you could make one change in your past, what would it be?
7. What is the worst thing about your job?
8. How do you relax from your job on your days off?
9. If you could chooseanother career would you chooseto do that instead?
10. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

2. 11.What is your definition of a great employee?
12.If someone wanted to do the same career as you, what would you tell them to
do?
Interview E-mail
Dear Danny,
My name is Jordan Lee and I go to Texas Tech University. I am taking a
Career Development courseand was needing to interview someone that had the same
career choice as the one I am pursuing. I would be honored to be able to interview
you for this class. All I would need is about thirty minutes of your time. This could
greatly help my choice if I want to pursue this career, and help me have more of an
insight to the job. Please let me know if you are able to allow me to have this
interview. You can reach my cell phone at (806) 576-6044 and I am available
everyday till about 4 pm. Thank you for your time.

3. Sincerely,
Jordan Lee
Thank You E-mail
Dear Danny,
I would like to thank you for meeting up with me for the 30-minute interview.
You have greatly contributed to my knowledge of the career path and what I will
have to undertake. I really enjoyed talking with you and cannot express the
excitement I had from learning more about the job. Thank you for the experience.
Sincerely,
Jordan Lee

4. Reflection Paper
The career that I choseto interview about is a Business Owner. I would
someday like to own my own restaurant and serve the bestfood in town. I have
worked in a restaurant for most of my life and cannot see myself doing anything else.
When researching my career choice online I learned that most of restaurants
fail within the first couple years of owning them. Even if they have a great theme
and food, it can all come down to just good advertisement. If no one knows where
your place is at, or what you serve, then how will they know that place even exists? I
also learned that there is a lot of pressure that the owners go through. From having to
deal with incompetent employees, to having to be hands on the job, there is a lot of
stress that the owner goes through. Being a good owner is not all about being able to
tell someone what to do but it is more about being able to do it with them. There is a
difference between managing and leading. There is a higher percentage of business
being able to become something if the owner is apart of the process instead of just
watching what happens. Some of the necessary skills include: being able to take
risks, self confident, good at speaking, a leader, being able to budget and knowing
personal finance, and hard working.
The name of the personI interviewed is Danny Lee. He is the co-owner of the
Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. The business has been around for over
60 years and continues to grow every year. I thought this would be a great personto

5. really help me understand my career. He has been doing his job for over 20 years
and sees himself continuing to do so for another 20. His interview has helped me
understand what it is going to take in order for me to become successfuland make
something of myself.
I learned that owning a business is like taking care of a child. Even though you
are doing everything right, there is always someone who wants to be above the rules
or do something different. The job can be rewarding, but sometimes you just have to
motivate yourself to wake up in the morning and make the business better and better
everyday. I also learned that you cannot stand still in this kind of career because the
industry is always changing and you need to keep up with the times. Everyday
Danny is trying something new or trying to think of how something could be
different and more efficient. He said that the main importance of the business is
making the customer happy, and trying to find a new customer base is really
expensive so to focus on trying to get the same customers to come back. He said that
one of the main problems he faces is when one of his servers has had a bad day so
they do not wait on the customer professionally. This causes the customer to not
want to come back even when the food is good and the atmosphere is so enjoyable.
He deals with that kind of stuff on a daily basis. He doesn’treally want to change
anything in his pastbecause it has led him to where he is today and having the same
mindset as he does now.

6. What really surprised me is how involved you have to be in order to keep the
business running smoothly. Even though you can take off as much time as you want,
you really do need to be there six days of the week to make sure everything is
running right. One thing that I noticed that I did not like about the career choice is
that if anything happens to someone on your property that you would have to pay for
their bills. It just seems like someone could take advantage of that and “accidently”
fall or something similar. I know there is insurance for these kind of things but
having to deal with that could really wear on you. One thing that working in a
restaurant for most of my life has shown me is my assests align with what a
restaurant needs. I am self-confident and can motivate myself. I love working with
people and I like relying on myself to get a job done. I also work well in groups and
love working with customers. Their priority is my priority and there is just
something about that that I cannot find somewhere else. From my online research
and my interview, I have learned more about the job. This is definitely still a career
choice and has only made me more confident in deciding if this job is for me. I
cannot see myself doing anything else and cannot wait till I fulfill my long-term goal
of becoming one. I now that there are some negative aspects aboutthe job, but right
now I can work at them in order to become better at dealing with these things. I need
to learn more about budgeting and investing. I also need to learn more about
business law. I can learn most of these things through getting my Bachelor’s Degree.

7. For the things that I do not fully learn, I can read books and continue to learn outside
of my college career. I also need to learn more about how to cookfood differently
with more unique tastes. I can learn this in culinary classes or find someone through
a professional job website, and team up with them. This could help take off some of
the stress that I could feel and just focus on employees and customers.

8. Informational
Interview Assignment
Grading Rubric Criteria
Points Possible Points Earned
General
Paper adheres to APA formatting (title page,
citations, references page, etc.). Headings are
appropriately labeled. Filename is correct.
This rubric pasted at the end of the
assignment.
10
Writing is clear with appropriate grammar,
spelling, and punctuation.
10
Interview information and reflection
Student clearly identifies an occupation 4
Student provides foundational knowledge
about the occupation
16
Student provides a copy of an effective e-mail
request
4
Student provides a copy of an effective thank
you note
4
Student discusses what was learned through
the interview (5A-D)
16
Student reflects on interview and responds to
evaluation prompts effectively.
30
Student provides a copy of their 12
informational interview questions.
6
Total 100