Job hunting...any tips?

[Luke]

So, sorry for another bump, but I have a phone interview on friday morning....Is there any insight anyone has into nailing a phone interview? This isn't with anybody in my respective department, but an HR person who is maybe trying to make sure I'm not totally unqualified for the position.

Have your resume in front of you and have that sucker memorized. Don't be overly professional, but make sure you are in a quiet room. No one in hr is going to schedule an interview if they hear a television on in the background.

Stay confident, and be prepared as if it were a F2F interview. I have a problem of coming off flirty on phone interviews with women. Hopefully you won't have that same problem.

Answer the phone with, "Hello, this is *insert your name here*".

Be cautious of talking too much. Don't take up too much of their time.

Have questions for them prepared. If you schedule an interview, don't ask for directions. That's a big phone interview mistake.

Have a pencil and paper ready, take notes on the questions you are asked. Most likely they'll ask some of the same questions F2F.

Never mention interest in the company's product, just the company itself.

Be yourself, be prepared, and you should do fine.

Good luck!

[super_aggro_crag]

Have you tried farting during the interview (a la "Step Brothers") just to show that you are calm under pressure lol.

-Sorry i couldn't help myself.

[molotovwars]

You removed your name/contact info from the resume you posted for us so I can't see your email, but make sure your email is "professional" ie not soccerboy86 or something worse. For resumes and job correspondence I created a firstname.lastname gmail account.

[dlmvii]

Don't worry, I am not that foolish

I used to review applications (not resumes though) at gamestop, and it was always laughable when someone had something hilarious like [email protected] as an email. (Although not necessarily a disqualification, since this was for a lowly teenager position at gamestop)

[gtmtnbiker]

A guy who I bought a GBA SP from about a year ago had this email address:

Fisticles vonFistenburgenzorg <[email protected]>

[Luke]

Something tells me your post will be deleted.

[dlmvii]

3 week bump, but whatever.
It took me this long but I finally got an in person interview for next friday.
It's kind of frustrating not getting so much as a rejection letter from most places I've applied to. Maybe it's tough to find a job right now, or my resume is laughable. Who knows.

I think this place might be a little lower paying than I like, but it would be a huge load off my shoulders to just have a job when I get out of school.

[Luke]

Why not see if your school can assist you in obtaining an internship?

[gtmtnbiker]

It's kind of frustrating not getting so much as a rejection letter from most places I've applied to.

Unfortunately, that's just the way it is. People are too busy to be sending out canned rejection letters. Besides, you're never really truly rejected. They might have not the right position for you at this time but might at a later time. There's one guy who we liked, interviewed but didn't get hired. About 6 months later, we contacted him again and this time, he was hired.

[DerekG52]

My $0.02, I graduated in '07 with a degree in computer science (and a GPA of 3.15 also). In the winter / early spring I started looking at our school's internal job site. They have a lot of companies constantly coming in interviewing students for jobs out of school. See if your school has a similar program. Ultimately, that is how I landed mine. Your biggest competition is your peers, so you need to make sure you know your shit and can outshine other people. I interviewed with as many companies as I could and it still took a while to get some bites.

The guy who interviewed me (for my job today) eventually turned me down for the job, but I must have been his #1 that wasn't quite good enough because their HR staff started calling me offering me web design jobs (meh). I held out and eventually my current boss called me, telling me they had a full time developer job. I didn't have to interview again, and accepted it on the spot. About a year into the job, I started working side by side with the original interviewer to code a massive application (that ended up being shelved).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even if you don't get the job on the spot from the interview, don't lose hope because things may just work out. My 3 year anniversary is coming up in June

Edit: Also, focus on what you really want to do. My degree program at U of Delaware was very flexible, so I had a ton of courses in a variety of CS fields. Ultimately I decided on app development (I do primarily Java, C#) because that's where the majority of the jobs are.