Accidentally in Code

Tag: job hunting

  • Cate’s Career Coaching Process (AKA A Process for Finding Your Next Job)

    Cate’s Career Coaching Process (AKA A Process for Finding Your Next Job)

    A young woman sits accross from an older woman who has a notebook. Both are wearing old fashioned dress. It looks like a job interview.
    Credit: Flickr / Ethan

    I know a number of people who have been laid off recently – the market is on a downturn and this is more common than seems to be being talked about. I’ve spent time helping a few people try and find their next thing lately, and after some iterations I now have a process.

    1. What are you going towards?

    Whether someone is leaving their job voluntarily or not, there’s a good chance it hasn’t been great for a while. This makes it easy to focus on what you don’t want rather than what you’re going towards. But you make better decisions when you focus on what you want rather than what you’re trying to avoid.

    Be brutally honest – what do you really want to be doing? What do you want your life to look like? How do you want your job to fit into you life?

    Only once you’ve done this, consider what tradeoffs you are prepared to make.

    For me: I loved managing a distributed team, and I wanted to keep doing that if possible. But I knew there weren’t many of those kind of jobs, so I was realistic that I might have to compromise. There were two dimensions of compromise: on-site management, or remote IC (individual contributor) work. On-site IC wasn’t something I was going to consider until those options were ruled out.

    If you’re helping someone else: It’s easy to think you know what someone wants (if you think you know them well), but don’t assume. Ask questions, make observations about what they seemed to enjoy and what their strengths are, but let them figure out what they are going towards. It’s great if you are surprised! This sometimes takes people a while (and multiple conversations), but it’s really worth the time because it’s the foundation of everything else. Once they’ve figured it out, don’t help them be “realistic” even if you think that it’s going to be hard to find what they want. It’s unlikely to be helpful. Most people who you actually want to help have no trouble being realistic.

    2. Resume.

    Honestly, I hate resumes. Even as a hiring manager, I take very little interest in them (I think resumes are mainly a bias vector). I don’t have one, I got my last 4 job offers without one, and when I did have one it was one I paid someone else to create for me. If that’s an option for you, I really recommend it and I’m happy to connect you to the person who did mine (tweet me – @catehstn).

    Unfortunately most people still need resumes.

    The main points with resumes:

    • Focus on what you achieved, not what you did.
    • Keep it short.
    • Make it readable. Use clear and concise language.
      • Prefer short paragraphs to long bullet points.
      • Use a service to check the reading age.

    Once you’ve written up your experience, write your summary. The summary is two to three sentences that position you as a good person for the job you want, and should be backed up by the experience you have.

    When you think you’re done, send it to three friends whose opinion on this is worth having. Ideally they review or at least see resumes for the kind of job you want. They might point out stuff you’ve missed. Try and find at least one native speaker of the language your resume is in.

    If you’re helping someone else: This really depends on how much time you have. I don’t believe resume writing is a useful skill, so I’m happy to rewrite sections for someone. The process I followed was: I rewrite (or write) the section from their last job in discussion with them, they rewrite other jobs, and then I go through and edit those. Then, we write the summary together. If you’re just reviewing someone’s resume, focus on how they are coming across, or any information that appears to be missing, rather than how you personally would write a resume.

    3. “Soft” interview questions.

    Resources:

    The purpose of these interviews is normally to get a sense of your experience, personality, and ways of working. When you wrote the summary for your resume, you made a conscious effort to think about how you want to present yourself. You want this to come out in your answers. This means not just answering the question, but deciding what you want the takeaway from your answer to be – something that supports your summary – and then telling a story that showcases that. This means that the same story can be an appropriate answer to multiple questions, depending on what you highlight.

    The more open ended the question, the more scope you have for this. For example the question “tell me a bit about your background?” You can answer this question directly and chronologically (“I went to university at XXX and then I worked at YYY and did ZZZ and then…”) or you can frame the interview with your answer.

    When I get asked this question, I say something like: “I’ve spent my whole career working on mobile, including writing a J2ME app a long time ago! At Google, I built most of the first generations presentations experience on iOS and ran a team building a location-based B2B app, and also worked on that app on Android. Most recently, I ran the mobile team at Ride.”

    When answering these questions, one thing to keep in mind is that stories about dysfunctional environments are not helpful. For example a question like, “tell me about something you worked on that failed?” The answer that most springs to mind might be the one where the business didn’t know what they wanted, asked for unreasonable things, didn’t listen to engineering, and of course it didn’t ship or what eventually shipped was something that people didn’t want. If you don’t have a better lesson from this than “don’t work in that kind of environment” (a very fair lesson to learn from that experience), it’s not a good story to share. A less epic failure with more concrete takeaways is a better option.

    If you’re helping someone else: Don’t just consider if the answer seems good, consider if it relates to their summary. If you’ve worked with them or know them well, point out other stories or achievements they might have missed – people are often a little blinded to their strengths, because they come more easily.

    3b. Recommendation.

    If I’m writing (or likely to write) someone a recommendation, I write it after we’ve done this together – it’s when their achievements are top of my mind, and I can write something that a) supports their summary and b) highlights some stories they might want to talk about in an interview.

    If you’re asking for a recommendation: Make it easier on your recommender, and highlight some bigger achievements that you think they can speak to. These should relate to your summary. E.g. if your summary highlights your love of experimenting with new technology, include that experimental project you did that influenced something in a useful way.

    4. Technical interview preparation.

    Resources:

    When I give someone a mock technical interview, I give them my standard technical interview but I am less nice. Mainly, I do less time management for them – allowing them to spend too much time in places that aren’t helpful, if that’s their inclination.

    I think Time Management is the easiest and most overlooked skill of technical interviewing. When people don’t know the answer they are very tempted to spend a bunch of time on peripheral things like validation, or writing a bunch of different function definitions, or setting up an elaborate test suite. Sometimes they start writing a brute-force solution with the goal of better understanding, but this takes up a more time than it provides utility. All of these might be good and useful things to spend time on in Real Life Programming, but can work against you when you are trying to show your capabilities in 45 minutes to an hour.

    Other common mistakes:

    • Not taking the time to think of more than one option for solving the problem.
    • Not communicating clearly, meaning the interviewer has to guess what you are doing.
      • It’s easier to give someone feedback and guidance when you understand how they are thinking, what they are doing, and why.

    5. Introductions.

    Some people spread a broad net, my preference is to speak to a few places that I have strong introductions into. It’s more likely to be a good fit, and I’m more likely to be successful in the process. When I was looking for a job in August / September, I spoke to four places with strong connections and ended up with two offers that I felt great about. This is my preference with introductions – to introduce people to places where I think they have a good chance of success, and where I think they would be happy. I use a customised version of the recommendation I wrote to introduce people.

    Time

    I estimate that taking people through this process took ~8 hours per person (and these were people I knew well). As a result it’s not something that I would make time for other than for close friends or people I have a professional commitment to. They probably spent at least that, more, working on parts of it by themselves – technical interviews especially are a lot of work to prepare for.

    TL;DR

    Job hunting is a PITA and a ton of work. It helps to think about how to be effective at it.

  • Round 2 @ Google

    Google LHC Logo
    Credit: flickr / mtlin

    If you follow my Twitter, I may have already given away the ending to this! But as a continuation from my first round, here is my experience for my second (final) on-site with Google two weeks ago.

    What Did I Do To Prep?

    Things were a little hectic with the end of Extreme Blue and our trip to New York, and my plan to read The Algorithm Design Manual (Amazon) on the bus fell apart somewhat after the bus broke down, I went 5 hours without water in the heat and had a small breakdown. There was (apparently) a hilarious ending that I don’t remember in it’s entirety, which I won’t be sharing on the internet…

    That said, I did make it through section 1 which was really helpful and the book actually contains suggested interview questions – great for preparation. I also read more of Java(TM) Puzzlers (Amazon) and started Making it Big in Software (Amazon – good read, mostly for once you’ve made it through the interview though I think).

    How Was It?

    It was fun. I got to hang out with smart people and code for four hours! My first interviewer was a woman, who was super nice and that really helped. My lunch-buddy was a woman too, so even though diversity at Waterloo is not great it didn’t seem that bad at the time! I don’t know if they do that deliberately or not. I didn’t find the questions too tricky and could answer them all, probably because I’d done enough preparation that I’d got into that way of thinking. I had 3 technical interviews, and one architectural one (designing an API).

    Takeaways

    Much the same as last time. Knowledge of APIs, particuarly String, Collections and arrays, but additionally:

    • If coding in Java, know 1.5 features. One of my interviewers was more C++ and hadn’t coded in Java 1.5, and so when I used a for-each they asked the question, and I could answer – for-each loop added as of 1.5. Generics, too. I coded one question using Generics. Some people can find the syntax tricky, so if you’re going to use it (and IMO you should for good design) – know it.
    • Immutability! In the API-design question immutability made the second part of the question (how would you change it so you can do X) immeasurably easier. Know when you want to have immutable classes, and use get/set and visibility accordingly.
    • Trade-off’s between space and time. For another question, before I started coding I could say, I can do it in this complexity with this space overhead, or this (higher) complexity with no space overhead. In the end, we coded both. But I started with the easier one!

    Overall

    Unusually for me, I was happy with how I did! Despite having less time to prepare for this round, I’d remembered the stuff I’d gone over for the last interview and left feeling that I’d done the best I could.

    Incredibly, I heard the following day (!) that I’d made it through regional review, my references were collected the day after and I received an offer a week after that. The HR guy in Waterloo was amazing in terms of keeping me in the loop and I got emails from two of my interviewers (one from each round) congratulating me. I’ve read (and heard) about people having a miserable experience interviewing at Google, but that was not at all my experience. The process took a couple of months, but that was because of my schedule and not them. I really liked everyone I interviewed with and everyone I encountered was super nice. I’m really excited about going to work there – and frankly still in shock that I made it!

    I start in January. I guess I’m leaving Ottawa and moving to Kitchener/Waterloo. Bring on the next adventure!

    Working For Google
    Credit: xkcd

  • Defining Dreams

    Fuzzy cute people riding bikes
    Credit: flickr / anabananasplit

    Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture was, and remains, the most moving video I have found on the internet. It’s about how to achieve your dreams, but more than that – how to live your life.

    The thing is, I don’t really seem to have the kind of dreams he had. So from time to time I think about that lecture and I wonder how to apply it when (as I wrote here):

    …my dreams are normally very achievable – and depend more on my motivation, ability and finances than something rather arbitrary, like impressing one person for 45 minutes one Friday afternoon.

    So lately I’ve been trying to find some things to dream of – these are so far somewhat nebulous – coding, creating, inspiring other woman to want to do the same.

    What’s good is that I’m not alone in this. My friend Maggie and I have been talking about it a lot – what do we want to do? What are we worried about? How can we track down the projects that we would find exciting to work on within IBM?

    We both want to be technical, at least initially, and we’re wary of being pushed down the manager track (or some other non-technical direction) – something that seems more likely if you’re a woman. Whilst we have really different interests and passions, we both want communication to be a key part of what we do. There are technical roles that require development and communication, but the thing is, where to find them?

    Increasingly, I’m asking myself the question, what does my ideal look like?

    I don’t have a clear idea yet – development, surely, and people – but can I get the people aspect in my downtime and through blogging? Ideally part of my job or some approved activity would be working to get more girls into computer science.

    Is this too fuzzy? Do I really have to decide right now?

    The thing that scares me about big dreams is you have to commit. You have to invest yourself in acheiving them. And what if you don’t?

    The answer is in the lecture – you will still die, and you will die without an awesome story to leave behind.

    A more terrifying prospect, perhaps.

  • Failure Is Not An Option

    Egg Drop Failure
    Credit: xkcd

    Having admitted that I seek out a high level of stress, it’s timely that I have, once again, gone way past the level of stress that I like to operate and hit the “woah this is damaging to my productivity” bit. I wrote before about How to be Crazy Busy Without Losing Your Mind and apparently I should be listening to my own advice.

    Or not, because flying right out of my comfort zone is one way to stretch it. Best not dwell on other likely outcomes though.

    Over the next two and a half weeks I will:

    • Pitch at the Canadian Expo for Extreme Blue
    • Pitch at the North American Expo for Extreme Blue
    • Spend half a day in Toronto finding out more about GBS (do I want to be a consultant? Answers on a postcard, please)
    • Head to Waterloo for my 2nd on-site at Google
    • Pitch to guy working on awesome project
    • Interest interview with another awesome project
    • Leave for a 3 week trip to the UK

    In order to get to New York, we’re taking the bus. What’s interesting is the thing I’m most freaking out about right now is not one of the Failure-Is-Not-An-Option items on the list. It’s the thought of 8-10 hours of enforced unproductivity each way. It occurred to me the bus might have power-outlets and wifi and I could use the time to Get Stuff Done. It doesn’t. (The distress this caused me was amusing to my teammates, and then worrying – their plan: get me drunk and/or medicate me. My plan: read The Algorithm Design Manual (Amazon)). The way back was going to be 15 hours on the bus, because we’re coming back via Toronto. I’ve ended up getting off in Toronto instead for this GBS thing, and, unable to bear the thought of 5 hours on the train will fly back to Ottawa after that.

    Was the total of 25 hours or so on a bus distressing to me as a European, because my perception of distance is different? I think it’s just – what do you do on a bus? With no power or wifi, clearly not code.

    HR Guy: What were you planning on doing?

    Me: I was thinking about creating some wordles, but anyway it’s not relevant. The thing is I don’t cope well doing nothing.

    He suggested I watch movies and sleep. I think he and I see the world very differently.

    So, what is this other than another story as to how I’ve completely over-committed and over-scheduled myself, again?

    I have put this huge stress on myself because I really want to have a job lined up for January by the end of September, preferably by the end of August. And I don’t want it to be just any job, I want it to be a great job. And this is a problem because my ideas of what I want to do are somewhat vague – I want to make things! I want them to be pretty! I want to make the world a better place! Programmers can do that, I know it!

    IBM is not a place that deals in vague. I was speaking to this awesome woman the other week and she said, “I love PROCESS! That’s why I liked being a software engineer, because I liked the PROCESS!” Last week I saw her again at a lunch and learn – she was talking about how she found a great job at IBM and it was all about how she navigated the process.

    I do not deal with the process well. I find it intimidating and overwhelming and confusing. I’m trying to create this mapping between my ideals, goals, priorities and things that will fit into the process. I’m asking for things – which I hate, preferring to operate on the “be awesome and people will notice principle” that has so often failed me and others optimistic enough to use it.

    Our MBA is my career coach. He says things like, “When you’re in Toronto you should set up meetings with at least 6 people”, and I make a note that I must speak to multiple people, ask my Toronto-based mentor if she wants to have lunch, and ask more people if they are willing for me to email them my resume.

    It’s a start. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile… can I send you my resume?
    Cate Huston UK Resume Mod

  • Interviewing @ Google

    Google logo render - Mark Knol
    Credit: flickr / mark knol

    For those of you who didn’t know (or work it out), this is where I interviewed last week. It went well, I think – at least I feel like I did the best I could and whatever happens that will be helpful.

    I agreed to an NDA, so I can’t write about the questions that they asked me. However, I can write about how I found it and what I did to prepare.

    First, it’s Google – so I would never have applied had my friend who works there not talked me into it and referred me. I didn’t have a phone interview, since I was “local” I was invited on-site directly. I don’t really think Ottawa is local for Waterloo (maybe because I don’t have the Canadian perception of distance!), but definitely in-person interviews are better than phone interviews and I lucked out because it was Ignite Waterloo that night, which was awesome.

    First, I had a brief chat with a recruiter, who explained that I would be using a whiteboard and the process, and then two 45 minute interviews with two software engineers, one on one. I was amazed that I found the interviews fun! Normally I find interviewing really stressful, but what’s great is that it’s not so much like interviewing as jamming with another softie. That’s pretty cool! The questions in the first interview was fairly easy, the second one was a little harder but not too bad. The hardest thing was probably coding on the whiteboard (rather than a computer!) – hard to do TDD on a whiteboard! They tell you not to get dressed up, and definitely best not to – I spent a good portion of the time sat on the floor writing on the whiteboard and covered my hands in marker. Imagine doing that in a skirt!

    Helpfully, they sent me a list of things to prepare for the interview. I have a solid undergrad so I’d covered all of it at some point, but it was good to know what things to focus on revising. Note that this is in addition to what I do in general – remain current with industry news, use Google products extensively, blog, and think a lot about how technology is changing our lives (yes, these last two things helped). I also already have a good grasp and use the Java 5 additions like Generics, Enums, for-each etc.

    Here’s what I prepped (all book links are Amazon links):

    • Read Effective Java (2nd Edition) – I credit this book with any pretense I have of being a competent Java programmer.
    • Read Programming Interviews Exposed and worked through all the exercises – really helpful overview and refreshers on basic data structures like lists and trees. The recursion section was not as strong as I’d have liked (given my functional background) and advocated writing iterative methods instead, but other than that, it was a really good and helpful book.
    • Read Coders at Work – there are an astonishing number of Googlers in this book, which gives an idea of the culture. But there’s also a ton of interesting programming history that I definitely had not been aware of, insight into how these people solve problems, and discussion of APIs, scalability etc.
    • Reviewed Knapsack and Traveling salesman and NP-completeness in Combinatorial Algorithms: Generation, Enumeration, and Search (I also read almost the entire book and took a course on Combinatorial Algorithms in the fall semester) – honestly, I’m not a big fan of this book. I think it’s written in a fairly math-sy way. If you’re a programmer rather than a mathematician, solving these kind of problems using actual code is probably more helpful, and Wikipedia is almost certainly more readable.
    • Worked through some of Java Puzzlers – helpful for getting you in the mentality of looking at bits of code and picking out issues in it. I wasn’t asked that kind of question, but I did need to look at my own code critically. IBM gave me a question like that in my phone screen for EB, and I understand that Google do use that kind of question too.
    • Reviewed concurrency issues – deadlock, livelock, mutexes, locks, semaphores etc. When would you use the synchronized keyword in Java? How do you avoid deadlock? How do you avoid livelock?
    • Reviewed tree traversal – in-order, post-order, pre-order. Depth-first search vs. breadth-first search. A*, Dijkstra etc.
    • Reviewed balanced binary trees – red-black trees, AVL-trees, splay-trees.
    • Reviewed graphs. Representation, minimum spanning trees, search etc.
    • Run-time analysis.
    • Coded 6 sorting algorithms – including the key O(n log n) ones – TDD-style (Test Driven Development – see this post for my test cases).
    • Coded a hash table, using only arrays. Included: generics, dynamic arrays, lazy initialization. Again, test-first.
    • Worked through all the practice questions that I could get my hands on – search for “Google interview questions” but don’t bother with the estimates or manhole covers, look for ones like these. Sometimes I coded in Eclipse, but sometimes in Google docs. I’d work with a friend who would review my code and ask questions.
    • Talked to my friend who worked there a lot. Asked a lot of questions. He was absolutely amazing, and really helped me a lot with my prep. Even more than that, understanding why he thinks I would be a good fit and why he believes I can do it was really helpful in understanding why I would want to work there (yes it’s a cliche, and yes it’s Google but as one of my mentors pointed out, it is about whether you want to work for them nearly as much as whether they want you).

    My Googler friend says I was “insanely well prepared”, and even I would say I was adequately prepared – but having gone through it, what would I do in addition to this stuff?

    • More run-time analysis – do as much of it as can find code to analyze.
    • Calculating sums. E.g. how can you sum the numbers 1-n? Work through the proof. Playing back the runtime analysis from my second interview, I have something that looks like: (n-1)(n-2) + (n-2)(n-3) + … + (3)(2) + (2)(1). Of course, I didn’t create it at the time so it became an upper bound of O(n³).
    • Review Java library data-structures. At one point, I was literally said, “I know there’s a data structure that doesn’t take duplicates, I just can’t remember the name of it right now”. Of course it’s anything implementing Set. And of course I remembered later than afternoon.
    • Review library methods for some key things – Arrays and Strings would have been helpful.
    • Practice coding on a whiteboard or just on paper. You take for granted being able to insert a line here or refactor and it’s much harder to do that on a whiteboard. Also, it’s easy to forget the return statement – Eclipse never lets me so I tend to write declarations and return statement first and put my code in the middle – can’t do that on a whiteboard!

    What next?

    • Waiting.
    • Waiting.
    • Waiting!
    • Whatever happens, hopefully I will be able to get some feedback.
    • Code the interview questions (with test cases!)
    • Finish Java Puzzlers.
    • Reclaim my life – you might have gathered, I’ve spent quite a lot of time preparing.
    • Investigate opportunities with other companies. In particular – meet with IBMers and see if I can find something that’s a great fit for me there.
    • Debrief with mentors.
  • Career Planning

    Career Planning

    Barney had the distinct feeling that his career as "the girl's best friend" was over before it had really begun. He sincerely hoped that the girl's mum would continue to look after him.
    Credit: flickr / David Blackwell

    The other week I had a phone interview for what I thought was my dream job. In the days before, I realized that was the kind of thing I’d been doing. And then, I waited.

    Meanwhile, work was going so-so. My computer broke – again – so I lost a day and a half on my Most Important Task (nothing remains of my original machine) plus the time it took me to reinstall everything I needed, and the MBA and I had an argument.

    Aside from the awesome technical support, something that’s really amazing about Extreme Blue is how much support we get. So the organizers of the program sat us down for what became a 3-hour angsting session, explaining that our group had been put together knowing that we would end up in this place, and discussing personality quadrants.

    My dominant quadrant is definitely my logic quadrant, so that conversation formed into an equation that frankly made my head explode. However, I tend to communicate from my relational quadrant – and as our MBA is detail-process oriented, with nothing in the relational… this had been causing problems. I thought he was being really rude and disrespectful, and I guess I just didn’t make any sense at all to him.

    By Sunday, I had an equation that worked – our MBA is on the spectrum (you can take an online test to discover where you lie). And of course, as a compsci, I know and have known a lot of people who are. And so I know how to deal with it – in fact, I can’t believe I didn’t realize sooner but I guess I saw him as an MBA rather than a techie – so this week we’ve been getting on fine. I’m consciously communicating from my logic quadrant, and I’m now seeing that my input is considered, and also I’m getting the information I need out of him. He is also making a real effort to take constructive criticism.

    The point of this histoire, is over the last week I’ve been having more and more of a hankering to code. And my other takeaway from this conversation on Friday, was a worry that I wasn’t seen as technical.

    So when the results of the phone interview came back and I’m wasn’t through to the next round, I was disappointed. Especially because the woman who interviewed me had really strongly given the impression that she couldn’t be bothered with the whole thing. But I talked to my friend Dig, who was great, and I moved on to the next phase of what I’m doing at work – where I finally get to code – and ran into a roadblock so I got no further than a “hello world” test to verify my IDE was working.

    So frustrating. But – it has made me glad I didn’t go further with this non-technical role – in fact, almost grateful to this woman. This job was probably the only non-coding job I would have applied for, or taken. And I applied because I think it’s a route to where I will end up – but what I’m realizing is, I don’t have to go there now.

    In fact, I’m not ready to.

    I have an on-site interview for an awesome software engineer job in July. And when I spoke to the EB guy (in fact, the one from Friday’s meeting) about who I should list on my resume he started a conversation about whether I wanted to progress to a proper job with IBM. And so I told him I’d spoken with one of my personal mentors (Sacha is amazingly helpful and supportive) and she’d given me some resources, so I was working on that too, but that I wanted something more technical than what I was currently doing. And he committed to helping me find the kind of opportunity that I want.

    Wow. I don’t know what will happen next, but I have to tell you – right now I feel really lucky.

  • Dream Chasing and Prevarication

    Hire me
    Credit: flickr / SOCIALisBETTER

    Back in January, I hired someone to write my resume. It took a little longer than I thought – mostly because I took my time to make sure I was giving the responses considerable thought, and because part way though I had a bit of a crisis about accidentally mis-branding myself as an educator.

    However, I got the final version back months ago. It needed some tiny touches to finish it up – a phrase here and there, not much. But I prevaricated. Rationalized that I had a lot going on and couldn’t give it proper attention, it could wait.

    The reality is that I got myself into a cycle of thinking that next week, or next month, I would have a significant achievement to put on there. Something that would make me stand out. By the time they came, though, I was chasing my next dream.

    The thing is, a resume is not your life’s achievements – it’s a snapshot of where you are right now and the key things you did to get there. If I could get to a point where I didn’t have something I thought I could add in a month or so, I’d be cruising – and that’s not how you succeed – or I’d be dead.

    So, I sat down with my buddy and we took a snapshot. And he gave me some practice interview questions and told me – repeatedly – that I didn’t suck at answering them. We identified what might be my dream job and he has convinced me that he believes I can do it.

    Of course, I’m still wrecked with doubt. But then, when I submitted my work visa I worried I’d be deported (I wasn’t). When I got no marks back from the course I was taking, I worried I’d flunked (I got an A+). Despite the assurances I got when I was offered my internship and the fact that I’ve heard from someone pretty much every week since then, I still worry that it may all fall through before I start work on Monday. When I decided to try and get an Awesome Foundation going in Ottawa, I thought it would take months – but we’ll give out our first award next week. When I handed over from WISE I thought no-one had noticed what I’d done, and I was wrong there too. Despite my panic about TAing in French, I’ve had great reviews and the prof seemed pretty pleased with me. Although the organization for the talk I gave in French last week was something of a disaster, my talk itself wasn’t.

    My point is – I continually feel inadequate and worry about things that are, I realize, completely irrational. And it holds me back, because I prevaricate over submitting a CV for an amazing job that I might just be great at. I only have this internship because the woman in charge told me to apply – repeatedly – and let me hand in my CV late (it wasn’t done yet).

    Because I seek out people who believe in me, I’m doing OK. But I can’t always rely on other people to push me to go for opportunities that I should be seeking out myself.

    There’s this huge leap of faith. My friend tells me that I’m good enough but he is so smart, and I’ve encountered some of the people he works with… and it seems presumptuous, to put myself up there. To say that my resume is worth them spending the time reading, suggest that I’m worth the time to interview.

    Anyway, I sent it off. I guess now we wait, and see.

  • Dream Big or Go Home

    Milky Way
    Credit: flickr / Chaval Brasil

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about having dreams, in the context of graduating and finding a job. What is my dream job? What is the difference between a good job and a great job?

    What’s the chance that I’ll fail?

    Is that saying true, you know, the one that says “aim for the moon, even if you fail you’ll end up amongst the stars”?

    (Of course not, the stars are actually further away than the moon…)

    Teaching skiing last Sunday, I had a little girl who was desperate to go up the mountain. Once we got up there, it was much bigger and scarier than she thought it would be. She came down so close behind me, so that she could ski into me and stop if it got too scary. At the end, she was so tired and scared, she was in the back of my snowplough, holding my hands.

    Fear is exhausting. And haven’t we all been like that little girl, scared to look down the terrain we have to cross? Hiding behind someone. Not experiencing it.

    I’m trying to tell myself, that it’s okay to have big dreams. And it’s okay to miss the star and land on the moon, or even just back on earth. As long as I don’t stop dreaming.

  • Experimenting with Delegating

    Sacha wrote a lovely post recently about delegating. It’s been sitting open on my computer since, because I need to delegate more if I want to do more – because I’m hitting capacity. I do want to do more, so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what I can delegate and even toying with the thought of a virtual PA (this, of course, was before my scholarship go cut).

    First up, delegating more at WISE. Status: on-going, but making significant progress.

    Now I need a resume. This is an ideal thing for me to delegate, because it’s the kind of thing I hate doing and someone else will do it better. They can focus on the macro level, rather than the micro level where I live day to day.

    I started thinking about this when I read this post from Penelope Trunk.

    “Look, you have to hire someone to help you with your resume. This should not even be a conversation any more. Would you cut your own bangs? If you were in sixth grade, yes, because the only thing you know about bangs in sixth grade is that they hang on your forehead. Once you learn that bangs need to be even, you go to someone who cuts even bangs. When you get older, and you really understand the intricacies of hair, you realize that great bangs are uneven in a highly skilled way, and you don’t even have the right scissors. That’s when you pay a lot of money for someone to “do” your bangs.”

    Honestly, this is a very similar argument that I used to use to explain why I drive an automatic and not a manual (this is actually an argument in the UK, thankfully not in North America).

    Incidentally, I am aware that the university has a careers center where they can help with this kind of thing, but I asked around and they are apparently not that great. OK if you’ve got no clue, but not that helpful if you have a clue and you’re trying to take your CV to the next level.

    So I sat down and thought about what I’m trying to achieve here and I made a list of questions that I asked myself, and my responses to them.

    What do I want to delegate?

    • The resume writing process.
    • Also, feedback on my LinkedIn would be helpful.

    What do I want to achieve?

    • Better resume than I could create myself.
    • Ultimate goal – get a great job.

    What constitutes a good resume?

    • Send it to people I know and respect for feedback.

    What constitutes a great job?

    • Innovating, not reacting.
    • Speaking human and programmer
    • Making a difference, even if small. Don’t necessarily need to change the world (would be nice, though), but want to make applications that improve people’s lives (usability and utility very important).

    Why am I delegating?

    • Time, or lack thereof.
    • Resume writing does not work to my strengths – I prefer to be making stuff than selling myself.

    Finding a Professional Resume Writer

    This was really easy, I sent out a question on Twitter and @AskAroundOttawa sent me a really positive recommendation of Maureen McCann at MyPromotion. So I gave her a call and voila – she even has a student rate, so I’m happy! Now I have some homework, maybe you can help – if you have any insight into the following questions please leave it in the comments or email me, or tell me in person – whatever works for you:

    1. What do employers need to know about me?
    2. What value does my online presence bring?

    I also need to find job descriptions of the kind of jobs I’m looking for. I’ll keep you posted!