What goes around comes around
It’s been we another week of firsts as I had my first 2 interviews the last couple days. Not me being interviewed (I’ve done my fair share of that already), but me interviewing others. Kim Labs is looking to pick up another person in my area (to replace me as I scale back my time to work on my thesis).
Kinda weird being on the other side of the table. I guess my biggest difficulty is that you have reject a lot of people, which I’ve never liked doing. I always empathize with their situation. The process is definitely helping me refine my own job application/interviewing skills, however. Honestly, the most important thing to have in an interview is personal confidence, while at the same time avoiding an attitude of arrogance.
After reviewing 50 to 100 resumes, I’m also getting a much better feel for what makes you look good on paper. I’ll grant you that how I evaluate resumes has a great deal to do with what I think a resume should have (what my resume has), but the first thing I look for is work experience. If everything on the resume is purely academic or not related to your field (class projects, lab sitter jobs, etc), the game is pretty much over from the get-go. What’s really been surprising me is how many people this includes.
In my opinion, the usefulness of experience goes as follows (when applying for an industry position after graduation):
- Internships in your field
- Research group experience
- Class projects
- Everything else (I worked at XYZ as a burger-flipper)
Of course, the norm for other areas of of study is probably different in terms of experience that most people have upon graduation, but in the computer related industries, I think this is pretty standard.