Job Search 2.0 Is Over

After 7-8 weeks of job searching, 2 rejections, numerous design, management and programming tests, I declare Job Search 2.0 is officially over. I got two job offers. Between Yahoo and Quantcast, I had to turn down a great opportunity at Yahoo and join the people at Quantcast. I love both companies and the offers, but the potential in Quantcast's web analytic for advertising is just too huge for me to walk away from. I will be writing a lot code and dealing with tera tera terabytes of web analytic data on a huge 1000-node cloud, which is something I never had a chance to deal with.

Seriously, I am going to miss all those job interviews because I'm good at them. I'm also gonna miss this blogging outlet for me to talk about my search.

Ciao and sign off.

Round #2

Round #2 of interviews are coming up. I had lined up 3 onsite interviews with 3 startups. Two of them had to deal with online advertising. That's a proven space on the web. The other one has to deal with editorial and user contributed contents focuses on women.

To get to Round #2, I had gone through pretty long and technical phone screenings with the vp's of engineering and was asked to write a spreadsheet. No kidding. A spreadsheet! Each cell needs to handle reverse postfix expression and reference to other cells in the sheet. Those sample test cases for the spreadsheet have nasty circular references which guarantee to give you an infinite loop? Hard enough? Fortunately, I got that done and gone through to Round #2.

I wonder what kind of torture and interrogation I will be getting.

The Brand Called You

The last few weeks I have been talking to recruiters, engineers, hiring managers, tech managers and VPs. One interesting norm I've seen was that people like to introduce themselves using their big companies and schools. Like Google, Oracle, Princeton, Stanford ... had all endorsed them to say I'm Google, I'm Stanford....

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respects for these organizations and people associated with them. But, have anyone thought more seriously about The Brand Called You.

I just think the 'You' brand is more important than any other brands. I'm the 'Super Code Monkey' who writes elegant and efficient code, challenges his team members to bring out the best of them, delivers software products that add values to the businesses and customers. I felt good as I was typing the last sentence. Period. Isn't that more powerful?

Rejection #2

It's been some time since I last wrote here. And, it's Rejection #2 already. I felt down a bit and got myself back up, and look forward to the next ones. In fact, I'm pretty excited about a couple of startups which I've been talking to.

My last interview with KANA was so embarrassing that I couldn't get the code right to reverse a linked list in Java. It could be done in a few lines of recursive code! It's ashamed for me who uses the language since day 1 when it was called Oak.

Well, I was quite happy with my performance with the VP's and managers, but just didn't connect with the engineers there. Let's hope the next time we all get connected!

Rejection #1

My interview with Picateers ended with a rejection! That was expected after meeting their VP of Sales. I felt that she had a concern over my dedication to be one of the hands-on developer. Well, I have to tone down my management skills in a startup next time around.

OK, it's back to the search again.

A 4-hour Interview

Yesterday, I had my first on-site job interview in 15 years. I felt exhausted after a long 4 hour meeting with two VPs and a chief architect. I believe I did pretty well in the technicals but not too impressive with my performance with the head of sales!

Well, hope I get pass this interview and finally meet the CEO.

Interviewing While On Vacation

While on vacation in Southern California, Jake, one of my recruiters, set up an interview for me. It was for a tech lead type of a position in an early stage startup called Picateers. The company provides a platform for schools to sell portraits to parents, friends and families.

I know I am the right person for the job, but I don't think I did extremely well with the VP of Engineering. I could have done better if I had prepared a little more on things mentioned in my resume, and presented my J2EE skills in reference to projects I was in charge of. Luckily, he said he would bring me in for a second interview. I need to do better and show a bit more technical depth in the 2nd.

Go nail the 2nd!!

Resume Upload Sucks!

After numerous tries uploading resume in Word format to Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, I had to give up. It just doesn't work. They got my experience and education all wrong! Not to mention Sample of Projects, they were totally out of place.

As a result, I re-format my resume in text format, cut and pasted them. It's finally in Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com.

I personally don't think it's worth marketing myself in these job marketplaces, but I have heard good results using it! Let's see.

Dice is it?!

Two days ago, I posted my resume on Dice and my phone didn't ring off the hook like I was told by friends who frequent the site. I got a lot of junk mails for things like job interview coaching to get rich quick working at home! I hope the tech job market isn't slowing like the overall US economy.

This morning I got a call from a recruiter at The Boylston Group and visited its office @ New Montgomery, San Francisco. That place was like a busy brokerage house in the 80's. If you know or remember what that was like. It's like the scene when Will Smith walks into the Dean Witter office in the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. Got the picture? You hear fairly loud phone conversations and those annoying old PC keyboard clicks. People are "trading" jobs!

I feel better after visiting the recruiter's office. It looks like tech jobs are in demand. Jeff, the guy I met, gave me a pretty good impression that he was going to line up a couple of interviews for me.

What's Job Search 2.0

It's been almost 20 years since I last looked for a job which I called my job search 1.0. Then, I was lucky enough to get recruited by HP before I even graduated. It was simple and easy for me.

After running C Station for 13 years, we had to close down in May 2008 when we got hit by a couple of major clients going bankrupt! It was hard to let go emotionally. After two whole months of break, I've decided to get into the job market after a long absence. It's a 2.0 which I never have thought coming.

Well, I'm ready for it and would write down pieces of this job search experience here. Hopefully, in 20 years, I'm retired and don't have to deal with a devastating 3.0!