Blog VI of Thirty Days – Thirty Blogs series
This blog is about my efforts for securing a naukri (Hindi for job) as a graduate student in TAMU. Hopefully it would help those who are still searching for jobs/internships back in TAMU or elsewhere. I am dividing this blog in two sections, first describes my own experience and second describes a list of resources that I found useful. So if you are in a hurry, jump straight ahead to second section or else you may continue reading.
the pursuit
On a sultry afternoon in Aug 2008, I found myself sitting along with about 100 odd students listening to our Director of Graduate Studies trying to impress upon us that the industry was concerned only with the M in our degree and not the second letter that follows it (i.e. S for MS and E for ME). Fast forward eight months, while searching for an internship I was not sure if our DGS remembered to inform the industry about this fact. Summer of 2009 was the height (or rather the depth) of recession and it appeared as if all the job postings had been sucked dry by Texas sun. Not so bad for me because I still had experience from India to rely upon but the graduates 2008 and graduates of 2009 with no industry experience had it very difficult because of this. Some of them went on to delay their graduation or seek higher studies just to avoid being unemployed.
By Fall 2009, it was time to seriously think about where I wanted to go. While my love towards technology and inclination towards semiconductor industry in general was quite clear, I was equally interested in position in web technologies that required fair bit of understanding of how computers work. Over next few months I was interviewed for Microsoft and Intrinsity (now part of Apple) but nothing clicked. By this time, I was shooting for full time positions only. The rationale behind this being that the industry would recover (it already was showing signs) and applying straight for a fulltime might make things proceed faster considering my research was already near completion.
Spring 2010 was the final countdown, roughly one third of my semester was spent preparing for my defense and rest of it on preparing and applying for jobs. I interviewed left right and centre but in some cases the profile was not right (Intel), in other cases compensation (Garmin, Mathworks) and in some cases my preparation (Cirrus Logic). One good thing about these interviews was that they helped me in strengthening my weaknesses and further leveraging my strengths. The next round of interviews showed some great promises and although Texas Instruments had a hiring freeze, I received offers from Marvell Semiconductors and Cisco Systems. Ironically though, when I had almost decided, I was further interviewed by Freescale, AMD and Qualcomm although I had to end those discussions after I accepted Cisco’s offer. Phew ! Looking back, I never thought I would be interviewed in so many places, job yes but multiple interviews, no.
what helped
This may not be an exhaustive list but definitely covers most of the resources and tips that were instrumental in my preparation and search for naukri.
- Network Network Network: you cannot be over-networked, it is surprising how subtly networks can help and how their importance is often underrated. Some great ways to build networks are using LinkedIn, attending career fairs, talking to professors, senior students, ex-colleagues & anybody anywhere who can hook you to the job. Ok, let me repeat, you can never be over-networked, and it helps much more than you think. Looking back at my calls, exactly half of them were initiated by my network than me for ex. I received a call from TI out of nowhere only to realise that I was recommended by a consultant who knew me on LinkedIn.
- Spread your DIRECTED resume: hold it before you spam your resume to hundreds of employers. Different companies have different ways of accepting resumes and unfortunately that means that you do need to painstakingly enter all your information into various company and resume portals. If you have a network (read above), you can spread your resume there also. However, it is VERY important to customize your resume for each company/post. An Intel manager once told me “…in our job description, we already have given the things we are looking for, make sure that you include those in your resume…”. Often this implies re-wording your resume to reflect different ways of saying the same thing while laying more emphasis on sections of your resume relevant to job requirement. For ex. I had three flavours of my resume and dozens (yes, dozens) of cover letters fitting different needs.
- UPDATE your resume: During my job search I read up so much on creating a good resume that now I wonder how did I ever decide on creating my first resume template. So much has been said about writing resumes that I would not attempt touching it here. Only two advices, your resume is a living document, update it frequently and do catch hold of some resources or get your resume reviewed to make sure it is your best foot forward in job search.
- Prepare: yes, if it was not obvious, you do need to prepare for interviews. If you have got an interview call, it is already too late to start preparing for it, ideally you should be preparing while applying so that when the call comes, you are ready for it. I would often alternate between ‘prep’ and ‘app’ which helped me in handling back-to-back interviews each of which had their own areas of interest.
- Brush up: another thing that people forget is that interview is not an exam, it is a conversation made out of an exam and you need to excel in it to be able to get a job. That includes preparing ‘about me’ sections, hooks that allow you to plug yourself and 'sketching out' things to talk about. Our counsellor from undergrad once said that “you need to sell yourself” to the employer. I could not agree more. I know people who are technically strong but miss out on chances because of their soft skills. TAMU Career Center was an excellent resource in this.
- Be enterprising: I was not proactive initially during my job search which I am sure had its repercussions. Job search can be months long at the least and you should be geared up to stay focussed over the whole duration. This means you need to periodically apply to new openings on various portals, follow up on various contacts and keep revising your preparation.
- Brute force: extreme situations require extreme measures. Yet there needs to be a method to your madness. Some of the things that I did as ‘last mile’ effort were :
- contact employees/consultants of interesting companies directly through LinkedIn.
- frequently discuss my job search with my professors.
- include your recommendation letters (say) from LinkedIn in the list of attachments that you send to employers. If it applies to your field, include prior work samples.
- focus more on recent openings as often month old openings are already taken.
- find out hiring trends and shoot resume to recent hirers. Temporal locality is true in these cases.
- corollary to above principle, relay your job search status to trusted people only till things get finalised to avoid creating competition. It is a sad but true part of job search that it is a race in which your fellow colleagues are also running. Collaborate but not at personal expense.
