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Busy All the way - Part 2

Day 4 (Working Day 2) since I am free.

Had an exhausting, but productive day with 2 interviews and two meet ups. More questions and more evaluations.

One was with a new recruitment agency for a role that was not probably a good fit in terms of my expectations, but it was really just an opportunity to meet with a recruitment agency representative for them to get to know more about you and the kind of opportunities that you are looking for. This gave me a chance as well to get to know the agency and its operations.

I was doing some research on laws in Australia for independent contractors and understood that there is a fair bit of paperwork to be taken care of. I found out about payroll or contractor management company and met up with CXC Global in Brisbane. (www.cxcglobal.com.au) Understood their high level operating model and it was quite reasonable, hence I signed up so that I do not miss out on any short term contract opportunities. And I am happy to source that paper work to people who know it well so that I can concentrate on my career.

Then I had a proper interview for a Dot Net role. Was quite an interesting one as the questions were more at a code level and I could see where I have knowledge and where I could do with a bit more of research. I reckon it is an occupational hazard of working more in products that we have some hiccups in our relationship with the "language of code".  

Another takeaway was to try and reverse the use of "we" instead of "I". Working in operations and especially as a vendor imbibes that habit in us to use "We" instead of "I" to convey that we are nothing but a representation of a team. There moments where I was asked in the interview to clarify the use of we and I guess it is a difficult feat to suppress what you have been practicing for quite a while. With the focus currently being given in many organisations for collective intelligence and then a sudden change in situation is in one way a good eye opener for you to think about gathering your thoughts on the "I" bits and the "We" bits separately so that one can be ready to face specific questions on individual and team contributions.

Story boarding and situation mapping is another area which requires a lot of attention while preparing for an interview. Because especially when you are applying for senior roles, a few of the technical questions will be situation based and the only way in which you can answer that question is to do a storyboard for the situation mapping to plausible technical solution elements. I am big fan of this method while I am delivering sessions, however, it is one thing when we are providing training, but when at an interview it could be one of those freezing points that fills  your head with static.

Packing these gems of wisdom in the backpack of my mind and moving on to the rest of my organised job search.




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Location: Brisbane QLD, Australia

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