Personal Narrative: My Interview With General Mills

This past week, I conducted an informational interview with Aaron Riipa, a Sourcing Manager in Media for General Mills (at their headquarters). I first got into contact with this person by meeting another employee at the same company. The other worker was speaking to one of my student groups and after chatting once the meeting was over he thought it would be helpful for me to chat to another person. Aaron is head of supply chain recruiting at the U for General Mills and as he could be the one hiring me someday he was definitely someone I needed to speak with. He was perfect for me as he started out in buying and now is in sourcing, which are two paths I am considering taking. I learned a great deal from the conversation. For example, I found out that General

Everyone really strives to get to know one another even though there are many different employees, and the company in general is really motivated to launch learning. They do so by putting on trainings, leading conferences, and much more. These are to make sure employees can learn what they want/need and meet others too. Where we were sitting one such conference was taking place and was directed at their Asian workers. Overall, I learned that due to declining domestic sales, international divisions have really been taking off. For me, as I am majoring in International Business, this was a very good sign. Aaron even mentioned that he was interesting in becoming an ex-pat in Switzerland for the company, which I was interested in hearing about. This leads into the amount of movement, whether high or low, and employee can do depending on their preferences. Aaron really had many ideas of where he would live to grow into, like going into operations and being an executive. In my future job I would like options and not be sedentary for too long, and travel and job movement definitely are up my