Job search

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the job search phase was quite stressful. I had to learn a lot of things - basic interview skills, stress management techniques, a lot of technical concepts and good presentation skills.

Each interview routinely is a full day affair. Most of the interviews began at 9:30 with a presentation which was followed up by many one on one interviews, including a lunch interview. Clearly, this required stamina and a keen presence of mind. These are possible only if one is rested the previous day and had a good night's sleep.

I learnt most of my basic interview skills from this excellent resource. There is one additional tip I would like to share. I made it a point to never allow silence to creep in during a conversation with the interviewer. Many a times, the interviewer would ask me to take my time to think about a problem. On every such occasion, I offered to think out loud and involved the interviewer in the conversation.

Stress management is very essential. Usually after an interview, the company would take at least a week to get back. In the meantime you might have to focus on other upcoming interviews. (In my case, I had 3 interviews over a span of 10 days, allowing for the cross-country travel I had to undertake. A bad idea!) My brother and a few friends were very helpful in this regard. It is usually good to have a few people you can trust and people you can rant to. It is best to acknowledge the stress one is going through and to ask for help.

Technical skills are very specific to the type of jobs I was interviewing for and it would not be of much help to list the books I read, I guess.

The upshot of the entire interview process is that I landed up with a job in addition to the experience.