Wasted
First the good news — some very good friends of mine threw me a cool early birthday party at Golden Gardens park. Alice and Sabrina — Thanks!
Now, the less happy things. My first technical interview ever went poorly. That is was with Google, a company I may actually want to work for, adds to the pain a little. I don’t expect much after my performance, but I’ve been surprised by events before, so I won’t give up hope either.
Life has also been a bit stressful recently, and I responded badly this weekend, getting nothing done. At a critical juncture in the quarter, a whole weekend wasted!
Between me and surgery on Friday, I have quite the line-up: I’m interviewing with Microsoft on Thursday, four or five Biochem lectures to watch before a test Friday in the early morning, a CSE project milestone, a BioE project and two labs, significant work on my BioE capstone project, and probably a few other things to finish before I get older.
Just got to keep my eye on the prize.
November 5th, 2007 at 09:25:54 am
Sorry to hear the Google interview didn’t go as well as hoped. Interviewing is definitely a skill you acquire after going through multiple interviews. Practice, even mock practice with a friend or parent asking common interview questions is often very helpful. Almost all companies these days use “Behavior Based” interview techniques, which means they ask you a time when you demonstrated some quality and you have to give them a concrete situation which fits. They won’t tell you but they expect the form of the answer to be:
1. Describe the situation
2. Describe the actions you took
3. Describe the outcome (you want this outcome to reflect positively on yourself)
I would also expect some none behavior based techniques, but these you simply have to think on the fly. Often for the behavioral based questions you can give “canned” answers that you practiced well ahead of the interview.
Common questions are:
“Describe a situation in which you…”
1. showed leadership
2. showed initiative
3. demonstrated quality control (ability to cut down likelihood of human error)
4. showed your ability to cope under stressful circumstances
5. dealt with conflict
6. had to conform to a policy you didn’t agree with
you can look up more if you Google “behavior based interview questions”
Good luck with everything on you plate.
November 5th, 2007 at 05:00:58 pm
Good luck with the interviews! Kaylee and I wish you also the best with the upcoming surgery. As far as school, keep persevering…it eventually comes to an end!