SCAN highlights School of Communications alums who have recently landed jobs in their field. We kick off the series with Kara Beightel, staff writer with the West End Word, Sandip Sankar, team member at The Vandiver Group, a public relations and communications firm in St. Louis, and Peter Schmalfeldt, the owner and founder of Manifest Interactive, an interactive media company based in Webster Groves.



SCAN: How did you land your job?
Peter Schmalfeldt: After working freelance out of my house for a few years, I teamed up with my business partner, John Kramlich, and landed a location here in Webster Groves. Since we had worked together on prior projects, and had a relatively decent client list, we decided to incorporate. I came up with the name Manifest Interactive and went through the process of making us a legit business here in Webster Groves.

SCAN: How many hours a week do you work?
PS: Oh man… that's a hard question. My friends would say that I am always working. Even if I am not in the office, I am most likely thinking about something I need to do here. I really need a vacation.

SCAN: Favorite fringe benefit of your job?
PS: Being able to sleep until noon if I want to.

SCAN: Is your current salary more or less than you expected to be making at this point?
PS: Ha, salary. That would be nice. No, it’s more like, “did everyone pay the bills I sent them?” If so, then yes, everything is great. If not, then I am broke.



SCAN: Best way to fuel your creativity?
PS: Lots and lots of coffee is the way to go.

SCAN: Company you’d kill to work for?
PS: I think Google would be a great company to work for. How great would it be to work on the one thing that is used more than almost anything else on earth?

SCAN: Any advice for those looking for a job?
PS: 1. NEVER take credit for something you did not do. Honesty will get you a job, even if that means stating you did part of the work on something and not all. Just know that if you can recognize something being done by a certain program or company, so can your interviewers.

2. Always explain what exactly your part was of creating every piece of your work. If you have a project you are showing that you only did a part of, state what part you did and what part others did and how you worked together to complete the project. This will show that you can work with a team. This is EXTREMELY powerful in an interview, though making your part sound the coolest and hardest does not hurt either. *wink*

3. Always use program names when describing your work. Interviewers are usually looking for you to know certain programs. Every time you show a project say stuff like, “I designed the front-end interface using Adobe Photoshop CS and created the buttons in Illustrator CS then programmed the backend using Director MX in the Lingo programming language” etc…



SCAN: Which Web site is your home away from “Home”?
PS: Since our Web site is the one I have spent the most time on, it would have to be manifestinteractive.com

SCAN: Any bumper stickers on your car?
PS: I have only two stickers on my car that are not required by the state of Missouri. One is a PHP sticker, which quietly proclaims my love for that programming language. The other sticker is my Webster University sticker. Don’t know how that ended up on there. *wink*

SCAN: Best on-the-job experience so far?
PS: This would have been just the other day. We are working with a client who has a pretty specific need to create an e-commerce store for her company. She has some very unique needs that no other company has given her solutions to. She came to us because she had heard from one of our other clients that we specialize in creating custom Web-based applications for companies. We released a prototype for her to view, and she called us immediately. I could barely make out anything other than “thank you” and “this is great.” I just was glad she was so pleased with it. After all the work we did to automate her normal business routine, it was great to hear that we nailed it.



SCAN: Worst?
PS: We once had a lady bring in a Polaroid picture of her recently deceased husband. The picture she brought us was a headshot focusing on the front of his face. She requested that we “bring it in the computer and make it show the side of his head.” I explained to her that she was asking us to turn a two-dimensional image 90 degrees in our computer. She said that was what she wanted. So I took the Polaroid that was in my hand, turned it 90 degrees so she could only see the thin side of it, and said that, if we turned it as she requested in the computer, this is what it would look like. I explained that we could not do what she requested. She got upset and said, “I see this done on TV all the time.” What do you say to that? I only wish everything could be done as easily as it is on TV.

SCAN: Person you most admire in your field?
PS: I have a friend named Steve Williams who I look up to. He programs in Director and is a genius at its native Lingo programming language. One could only aspire to be like him someday.

SCAN: What's on your iPod?
PS: One could dream about such luxuries.



SCAN: Any funny job interview stories to share?
PS: I had spent so much time prepping for one interview that I failed to look at the weather report for that day. About five minutes before I got to the office, it began raining so hard that I couldn’t even see to drive. I got to the location and found that the only parking was about 100 feet from the front door. I reached for my umbrella, but it wasn’t there, so I had to walk the 100 feet, with my portfolio, in the pouring rain.

When I finally got into their office, I was soaked. A man walked by and he was soaked, too. We laughed about our misfortune until my interviewer appeared. As the interview progressed, the man I met in the hallway peeked his head in to talk to the person I was with. It turned out he was the president of the company. He recognized me from our earlier encounter, and we compared who had dried the fastest. A few days later, I learned that the company they were going to place me with turned out to be over-budget for full-time staff and it lead to them offering me more freelance jobs instead.

SCAN: Last movie you saw?
PS: House of Flying Daggers. GREAT!!!

SCAN: Thing you miss most about Webster?
PS: Being able to bombard Jill Silverstein with all sorts of questions.

Did you just land a job in your field? E-mail scan@webster.edu and tell us about it.

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• Words from the Dean

• Bruce Buechner ’98
  Audio Production

• Happy Hour Attendees Make Connections, Share Challenges
• Lights, Camera, Action! New TV Studio Takes the Spotlight

• Kara Beightel ’04
  Journalism
• Sandip Sankar ’04
  Media Communications
• Peter Schmalfeldt ’04
  Interactive Media

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