Nadav Har'El wrote:
On Thu, Mar 08, 2007, Tzahi Fadida wrote about "Big Off-Topic: Finding a linux
related job.":
Can someone throw some tips as to how i should proceed?
Let me give you my 2 cents. Since so many people have replied already, with
so many ideas, I'll try to go against the flow for a moment (only dead fish
go with the flow!) and tell you which ideas I think will *not* work.
the "not-s" are quite... interesting. let me develop some argument about
one of them:
First, people suggested to you various ways to "improve" your CV - from giving
less attention to your MSc area, to focusing your experience, and so on.
While it is always a good idea to have a well-organized, relevant and
impressive CV, from what you describe this was *not* your problem: you said
that you were called to interviews, and this means your CV passed the sieve.
Believe me (from a past life where I interviewed people), people with lousy
CVs do not get called for interviews at all. If you take in mind that
interviewing one person can take up anywhere between half a man-day to four
man-days of the company's employees time, companies don't tend to invite
dozens of people to interviews just to choose one. If you were called to an
interview, then your CV must have been impressive enough.
it's not as simple as that - the resume plays a role in the final
decision too - not just when deciding if to invite someone.
for example, when you invite someone with a lot of experience, you
expect more of them than when you invite someone with little or no
experience. this effects how the interview goes. this also sets which
type of job (if you have several openings) you interview them for.
a more specific example: if we interview someone who is young, we'll be
forgiving about various things that we think will come with experience.
the same result with someone with several years of experience will get
them disqualified.
another example: if someone writes about many things in their CV, and in
the interview fail to discuss them intelligently - they fail the
interview. if they would have NOT written those things in the first
place, we wouldn't have expected them to know them, and wouldn't ask
about them - and they might get hired.
and then there's prejudice. i've seen people get invited to an
interview, passing the first interview, and then being ruled out by the
second interview, because the interviewer has something against the kind
of degree they have, or where they learned, etc. obviously, this is not
something that can get fixed - but it should be enough to tell young
people that choosing where (which university, which faculty) to get
their degree from, could have a long-term effect on their ability to
find a job. remember that the person doing the resume filtering, is not
the only one doing the interviews. the resume is being checked again
before each interview (1st, 2nd, 3rd) by other people.
If you weren't
hired after the interview, it is possible that something in the interview -
not in the CV didn't work. So think back if you can think of anything that
went wrong during the interview. What did you say that the interviewer liked,
and what did you say that they did like? My little experience as an
interviewee, for example, showed me that interviewers like it when I
understand what they're talking about (this is where broad experience can
help, not damage you, as some people suggested), they like it when you seem
interested in what they do (ask questions, what to hear about their work),
here is another "no no" in this area - don't use the interview to
question how they do things - you'll create an "anti" in them. on the
other hand - don't suck up to them. you'll have plenty of time to do
both after you started working (and even then - wait a little before you
start with either of these activities ;)
and they like it when you tell them interesting things you did, especially
if they are relevant to what they do. Most interviewers don't really care
if your project was FOSS, commercial, academic or what, so don't start
discussing the GPL and Stallman's manifest with them, but rather discuss
the problem that you solved, how, and how useful (hopefully) what you did
is to many people.
not necessarily. for example, i often question the quality of university
projects - because i know how "well" they got tested. when you look for
programmers - you want to get those that can write stable code - not
just something that generaly does the thing it should.
this is precisely why there's an advantage to open-source projects -
unlike most university projects, there's a chance that they were
actually used by someone. i would put an emphasize not just about what
the project did, but also tell about bugs people found in it and how you
fixed them. _this_ will be interesting for any employer.
The second thing is that contrary to what some people told you, you should
get a PhD, but only because *you* want one, not to get hired. Most companies
I know of except a few, do not need anything beyond a BSc (and some don't
even need that). When they do look for PhDs, it's usually someone with
specific experience, and not just any-old PhD (for example, someone whose PhD
is in AI may be easily hired to an AI company). So, no, you don't need a PhD
to get hired, and getting one will not necessarily make you more easily
hireable.
indeed - a higher degree (in the field, not just anything) creates
higher expectations by the potential employer - so you'll be put to a
higher standard level in order to pass the interview.
Finally, don't give up. Even a "perfect" candidate will never pass all job
interviews. Sometimes the interviewer or HR person is stupid and doesn't
understand your merits. Sometimes *you* make stupid mistakes in the interview
that rule you out (e.g., if you interview for Microsoft, another good place
to work in Haifa, try not to speak half the interview on the merits of
Linux :)). Sometimes you have bad luck, sometimes the company had good luck
(they found an even better person for the job), sometimes the job simply isn't
right for you and the interviewer knows it, sometimes you were tired or
sick during the interview, sometimes... well, you get the idea. Try again,
try to learn from past mistakes, and don't give up until you have a job.
i guess everyone will set their own "giving up threshold". if someone
doesn't find a job in a given field for X amount of time (where 'X' is
quite subjective) - they might take it as a clue that perhaps they
better look for a job in another field. this X must not be too short -
but it cannot be infinite, either.
--guy
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