Advice in your job search

Now, don't let me fool you into thinking that I am a professional; because I am not.  My only qualification for thinking that I have anything to share regarding the subject of job hunting is that I have always managed to find a job when I needed one.  So with that begin said let you give you a little background that will double as a disclaimer:  I am soon going to be graduating with a degree in a science field, I have a wife with a baby on the way.  I have lived in both urban cities and rural towns, and I am not the top of my class. I have interests in many areas, and consider myself handsome while not overly so.  Most of these things matter in a job search, if not to your employer they will to you.  Now...

1.  Be a charitable and giving person.  I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon.  A cute nickname coined for the scripture that we hold as canon:  The Book of Mormon, you can find more here.  We also believe in a little thing called tithing, which is a voluntary charitable donation to our church of one-tenth of my income.  I've always paid it and I always will because I know that I, nor my family will go hungry when I do.  It's not a matter of math though, it is a matter of faith.  As for those who belong to a faith of any kind, you may or may not agree with me but the scriptures are clear on this.  As for you that don't believe in this, then believe that by sharing what you have be it little or great, it will pay in dividends to do so.  Call it karma, the universe, or whatever:  By giving you will receive more in return.  I always intend to live this way and this is my first point of advice, is to be a charitable and giving person.

2.  Apply Everywhere.  Depending on your qualifications this may not be reasonable, but apply everywhere that you have even an inkling of qualifying.  Prioritize:  Apply to the places that interest you first, and then those places that sound like they could be something that you will enjoy, and then apply to those places that you are just qualified for (if you qualify, you at some point enjoyed doing what makes you so).  This is important as often it was the last place that I applied for that I got the job at.  Case in point:  When I got an internship at a local software company, it was in fact the last place that I qualified for that I was accepted at.

3.  Follow Up.  Call them, email them, thank them, sincerely.  Keep in contact with those people that you network with, check up on them, chat about whatever, talk about the jobs you applied for, let them know you are interested.  Another job I held for some time I was able to get because I called them every day or every other day asking them about how the interview and the hiring process was going.  Sometimes they may ask you not to call them, and generally it is a good idea to honor that:  irritating the HR people is akin to irritating the guards to the front door of the castle.  But by doing this (sincerely) you will indicate how interested you are in the job and your own confidence as a potential hire.

4.  Social Media.  Love it or hate it, it is here to stay.  Social media is an amazing medium to network and connect with people all over the world instantaneously.  It's amazingly powerful as both a tool and a means of destroying your future in any company.  Thankfully the world is still large, even if it is becoming more flat.  Get connected on every medium that you can reasonably keep up with:  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Deviant Art, Flickr, Tumblr, Foursquare, etc, etc.  Depending on your skill set and your audience, one may be more suited for you than another.  The key is to be involved in a positive way.  I am currently interviewing for a job after college because I kept my LinkedIn resume up-to-date and professional, the recruiters in fact found me.  The bottom line is that these are networking tools, a means of connecting you with people online and promoting relationships in real life.  They are not an end in themselves.  So if you suck at relationships in real life, chances are these tools will not help you in the same way that they help others with those skills.  Just something to keep in mind.

This post will be continued in a few days, just something to chew on for now.  

Applying for Jobs

Right now I have been applying to Grad School and to looking around for jobs as well.  I am of the belief that it's all about quantity when I go to apply for the next great step in life.  When I got my internship at AMX last year, it was the last of about 30-some odd applications that I made.  In my photography business, we talk to as many people as we can about our business and what is going on. I have applied to three grad schools and considering a fourth.  Etc.

This isn't to say one should settle for a job they hate, but that you should look for many jobs that you could enjoy or may even learn to enjoy.  Applying to a lot of places is time well spent, and they shouldn't cost you any money anyways.  This is a different story for grad schools, but I feel just as strongly about it, albeit I apply to fewer.

Here are a few websites that I find helpful!

LDS Jobs - This is the LDS Church's website for members looking for jobs.  My dad is a regional representative in Florida for Church employment services, and always recommends signing up here.

LinkedIn - If you don't already have an account here, get one.  Even if you have a job, this is a great place to maintain a network of professionals and participate in a community of like-minded individuals.

Facebook - Love it or hate it, you cannot deny the networking power of friends.  Here is an article arguing on favor of Social networking and gives some tips on effectively doing it.  The best advice I have received here is this:  When letting people know that you are looking for a job, don't approach it as you would laying out a blanket on the park lawn:  Wide and shallow.  Rather do it with a focus on a single company or a single job, the more focused the better.  This may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but if you have a large network of friends, chances are someone will know someone who has a job there.  Especially if you have kept in contact with college buddies or high school buddies from a few years ago:  The reason being they have probably moved away and within one or two friends you can arrive at any state and several countries.  Try it!

These are the websites that I am working with right now.  I hope this can benefit someone out there!

C++ Practice

After searching for a while, I found that this is the best place for information on converting an int to a string in C.

Practice Problems

I am always looking for fun and interesting problems to practice my programming and/or math.  The problem is they are hard to find on the internet in my opinion.  Here is a list that will continue to grow as I find more. 

1.  Project Euler - I love this page!  The problems scale, so as you learn about and solve the problems, they tend to get harder as you go.  A great way to practice any programming language and learn a little math in the process. 

2.  Coding Bat - Actually written for Java or Python.  Geared towards beginners, if you are interested in learning either of those languages. 

3.  Six Revisions - Their own comprehensive list of links to problems.

4.  TopCoder - These problems are more geared towards intermediate and advanced level programmers.  A very active community and tons of practice problems here for C++, C#, Python, and Java mostly. 

5.  Ruby Quiz - Another large list of problems, but without much activity in their community.  Still a great resource for problems to be solved. 

Ruby Tutorials

Over the last few weeks I have found quite a few places that have been helpful in learning about Ruby, I wanted to make a comprehensive list here for any that come after.  Digging through Google can be tedious sometimes. 

Ruby Essentials

Mr. Neighborly's Humble Little Ruby book

Tutorials Point

Watir Tutorial: Logging into EnterpriseOne

Here is a great little example to do so that we can log into EnterpriseOne and thereafter get our testing groove on.  Here's the code, and thereafter I will explain what is going on. 

1. require 'rubygems'
2. require 'watir'
3. b = Watir::Browser.new
4. b.goto("http://my.e1env.org")
5. b.text_field(:name => "User").set "myUserID"
6. b.text_field(:name => "Password").set "myPassword"
7. b.button(:type => "submit").click
8. b.wait_until {b.form(:action => "/jde/E1Menu_FastPath.mafService?e1.state=maximized&e1.mode=view&e1.namespace=&e1.service=E1Menu_FastPath&RENDER_MAFLET=E1Menu").exist?}

Lines 1 through 3 are described elsewhere. 


4.  Tell the browser object to go to your EnterpriseOne login page. 

5.  Set the 'UserID' field to your user name.

6.  Set the 'Password' field to your password.

7.  Click the submit button.

8.  This will wait until the Fastpath button is visible to Watir, it is great for ensuring that enough has loaded for your script to continue and execute the next operation successfully. 

Ruby Tutorial: IDEs

Personally I am a fan of NetBeans.  It was the easiest to get working with Ruby and Watir for myself.  It will run on Eclipse, and even Visual Studio, among other programs I am sure.  The most basic way to write scripts is to do so in the console, but that is tedious. 

As for NetBeans, the newest version 7.0.something will not work with Ruby, so be warned!  You have to go download version 6.9.1.  From there go to the Tools menu bar and then to plug-ins, from there you can find Ruby and install it.  Any extra gems that you are interested in using, you will have to install either manually or through the console using the "gem install xxx" and then 'require' it from within your script. 

As for Visual Studio, there is a flavor of the language called 'IronRuby' that is being developed to play nicely with C# and thereby Visual Studio.  I tinkered with it a little bit trying to see if I could get decent database connectivity but was unable to.  I'm not an expert, so I wouldn't call it an impossibility but IronRuby is certainly something to look at if you are interested in that sort of thing.