Son about to graduate, no job offer yet.

Parents Forum
421

<br>

<br>

<p>I don’t think that this is necessarily unusual. I think that there are
lots of college grads out there sending out resume after resume after
resume. I have read of people sending out hundreds. I imagine that there
are many graduates going to lots of interviews too.</p>

<p>He hasn’t had an offer yet but I definitely have my preferences for him.
I don’t know whether he will jump on the first or wait if a company says
that they have a high probablity of hiring him.</p>

<p>This afternoon, he received an email with a recruiter from a very cool
company that I’m sure everyone on this thread (and maybe on the forum)
has heard of and it would make perfect use of some of his skills. Lots
of math and science involved. Basically they had a bunch of emails
back in early May and then nothing. Then she sent him an email and
called him to set up a phone interview. It may or may not come to
anything but it’s interesting work and he has a shot. I’ve seen all
kinds of recruiter (company and headhunter) and it’s been an
educational experience for me.</p>

<br>

<br>

<p>I echo your sentiments. It’s nothing personal with the businesses -
they’re just trying to do what they think is best in the current
environment. I’ve been on the other side of the hiring process and
it really makes you think about it when it’s your kid looking for
work. I have never had difficulty finding work though the last time
I looked was in 1994. I suspect that it would be very tough if I
went looking.</p>

<p>For grads and students - don’t give up; looking is a full-time job.</p>

422

<p>BCEagle, any updates? I don’t mean to be intrusive, but I know I’m not the only one who is truly interested.</p>

423

<p>LOL hayden! I was wondering the same thing!</p>

424

<p>I have an interview on Wednesday. I already had a phone interview with this company and they seemed interested, but I looked up the person who interviewed me on linkedin and they were an intern so, aside from putting forth my best interview when I talked to them, I am not taking that terribly seriously.</p>

<p>I am not sure what to make of this opportunity. In terms of the actual skills used it sounds like something I would enjoy doing, it’s something I’m good at and have done before in a variety of different capacities. But it’s in an industry I have no interest in and I /need/ a job with advancement opportunity if I am ever going to move out, so I am not sure if this is something I should even take if I get an offer.</p>

425

<p>Son had three interviews last week. One was in-person and ran for two
hours. It was at the company that I wasn’t too keen on but may change
my mind after he described the interview process.</p>

<p>They grilled him on a variety of areas, including theory, which was
surprising to me as an employer typcially wouldn’t do that for a pure
IT project so I’m thinking that they actually want someone that has
a decent background in theory and practice.</p>

<p>Son said that the interview went well and that the most popular
question was on a video game that he works on in his spare time. It
appears that the interviewers either play the game or wanted him to
demonstrate his understanding of the development life cycle.</p>

<p>The administrative assistant said that a person would get back to him.
I hadn’t seen the name before (not the hiring manager nor any of the
interviewers) but looked the person up and it’s a senior HR person so
we hope to hear soon.</p>

<p>The second interview (not necessarily chronological) was with a
company doing things that he would love to do and it was a phone
screening. He said that he didn’t have any problems with the
questions. So we’re waiting on that one.</p>

<p>The third interview was for a job that I was a little puzzled about.
The recruiter cold-called our son and it was for a position that our
son didn’t have any background in. He asked the usual CS questions
that weren’t a problem but then he started asking specialist questions
which my son couldn’t answer because he didn’t take a particular
course. Son’s CS courses are all listed on his resume. I suggested
that he take the course as the knowledge in it is commonly seen in job
postings. I looked around and found that Boston University and Harvard
University Extension both offer it. He asked me if there was a more
convenient way to take it and I just suggested that he self-study the
material. There are lots of university course websites around with
lecture notes, homework assignments, project assignments and assigned
readings - he could just do the readings, homeworks and projects and
he would have the knowledge and experience for this area.</p>

<p>He wasn’t that excited by the area but he’s enjoying going through the
book. I probably should have covered this area with him when he was a
teenager as the material isn’t particularly difficult but it is quite
useful to know how a broad area of computing works at a non -theoretical
level. A lot of the stuff that he just took for granted as “magic” is
now understood. He’s about halfway through the book after a few days
and talks about things as new revelations - I took the course ages ago
and a lot of the base stuff is still the same. What’s different about
the course today are the projects. The projects that he will be doing
are: 1) building a back-end webserver, 2) building an email client with
a gui, and I don’t remember the third. I don’t think that these things
are particularly difficult but the practice involved in building them
will be good experience.</p>

<p>The recruiter said to contact him when he was done with his self-study
for consideration if the position is still open.</p>

<p>He sent out an email to a recruiter that contacted him a while ago on
a position and then disappeared. The recruiter asked him for
availability for in-person interviews.</p>

<p>So things are in the works and he’s busy with his self-studying. He is
also interested in studying agile developement which is a hot area for
CS majors. He’s already started to read up about it. I have to ask him
if he wants to find course materials to study it more formally.</p>

<p>I need a financial analyst/trader and I’m going to start bugging him to
do that work for me if he doesn’t find something soon. I need to order
some equipment for him so that he can set up operations.</p>

426

<p>I spent some time looking around at the financial markets this weekend
and I meant to include a few findings with the update post.</p>

<p>ZeroHedge has the article: The Economic Death Spiral Has Been
Triggered and it goes into the long-term causes of our current
problems. The desire to have a good economy in the short run has
resulted in many long-term problems and we’re near a point when the
methods that worked in the past may no longer work or work well.</p>

<p>[Guest</a> Post: The Economic Death Spiral Has Been Triggered | zero hedge](<a href=“404 | ZeroHedge”>Zerohedge)</p>

<p>It remains to be seen whether the financial engineering from the
world’s central bankers can piece things back together again.
I had a look at a bunch of charts and my feeling is that we are
in a trading range with a short-term to mid-term negative bias.
It suggests a lot of uncertainty about the rest of the year.</p>

<p>New first-time unemployment claims were above 400K for the entire
month of May and it’s hard to see how we’re going to have a strong
recovery in employment terms with numbers at that level. We need that
number well under 400K to get the ball rolling.</p>

<p>Corporations are flush with cash but are not spending it, giving it
back to shareholders or hiring for expansion. They are sitting on
cash hoards.</p>

<p>WSJ: What Will It Take for Companies to Unlock Their Cash Hoards?</p>

<p>[The</a> Intelligent Investor: Why Won’t Companies Unlock Their Cash Hoards? - WSJ.com](<a href=“The Intelligent Investor: Why Won't Companies Unlock Their Cash Hoards? - WSJ”>The Intelligent Investor: Why Won't Companies Unlock Their Cash Hoards? - WSJ)</p>

<p>“In the first quarter, the five companies with the greatest cash
hoards—Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Google, Apple and Johnson &
Johnson—added $15 billion in cash and marketable securities to their
balance sheets. Microsoft alone packed away roughly $9 billion, or
$100 million a day. All told, the companies in the Standard & Poor’s
500-stock index are sitting on more than $960 billion in cash, a
record.”</p>

<p>Commodity prices shot up recently before dropping back down. Oil went
up to the low teens but is recently trading around $100/barrel. I
think that that’s a level that we’re going to have to get comfortable
with. There’s a current floor on oil due to the unrest in the Middle
East. The unrest has resulted in a surge of government spending by
Saudi Arabia and they will need a decent amount of money from their
oil sales to pay for their spending.</p>

<p>[Arab</a> oil faces higher ?break-even? price - MarketWatch](<a href=“http://www.marketwatch.com/story/arab-oil-faces-higher-break-even-price-2011-05-29]Arab”>Arab oil faces higher ‘break-even’ price - MarketWatch)</p>

<p>The May employment report is this Friday and traders are bracing for
numbers that aren’t so good but one bright spot may come from
McDonalds. McDonalds had a huge hiring push recently that should
result in an estimated 25K to 30K gain. Flooding in the Southeast, of
course, probably dropped employment numbers. There should be job gains
from rebuilding efforts down the road for both areas affected by
flooding and tornadoes.</p>

<p>[May</a> payrolls report really about McJobs Economic Preview - MarketWatch](<a href=“http://www.marketwatch.com/story/may-payrolls-report-really-about-mcjobs-2011-05-29]May”>May payrolls report really about McJobs - MarketWatch)</p>

<p>Texas and some surrounding states may see better economic times from
shale oil. The projections on oil output are quite remarkable with the
potential to greatly increase US oil output within ten years. The catch
is that the method used to recover the oil is environmentally hazardous.
It’s called fracking and is being used to recover natural gas but has
left behind contaminated groundwater. It appears that there are many
companies and workers that are willing to take those risks.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/business/energy-environment/28shale.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/28/business/energy-environment/28shale.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Germany announced plans to shut down their nuclear plants over the
next decade. Germany relies on nuclear to provide 30% of their power
needs. Other countries are reviewing their use of nuclear power.
This may increase the demand for fossil fuels from these industrial
countries.</p>

<p>[Germany</a> to shut down nuclear plants - MarketWatch](<a href=“http://www.marketwatch.com/story/germany-to-shut-down-nuclear-plants-2011-05-30]Germany”>Germany to shut down nuclear plants - MarketWatch)</p>

<p>Tepco has indicated that it will take them at least nine months to
get the reactors at ***ushima under control (sorry I don’t have a link).
Japan probably doesn’t need the power as they struggle to rebuild right
now but they will at some point in the future and that could also mean
more demand for fossil fuels.</p>

<p>QE2:</p>

<p>QE2 is the Fed’s second Quantitative Easing - think of it as the Fed
pumping huge amounts of money into the economy (simplistic view). It
is coming to an end at the end of June. We had the end of the world
with Harold Camping that came and passed but will the world really end
on June 30? Bankers have lots of money; companies have lots of money
so what’s the problem? Jobs. Getting interest rates into the basement
isn’t going to get people buying houses unless they can afford to make
the mortgage payment and have the confidence that their economic
outlook is going to be stable in the five-to-ten year range. That’s
not happening right now (thus, this thread). QE2 has been a prop and a
help to robust corporate earnings. Corporate earnings should continue
to do well for a while, maybe even a long while, but traders like to
look out six months in advance and question if corporate profits can
continue in the face of a deteriorating jobs environment. So QE2 is
coming to an end and traders are wondering if it’s time to dump and go
short.</p>

<p>Of course, the Fed could simply announce QE3. I suspect that such an
announcement would create a huge Wall St party; one as big as the one
that QE2 generated. We don’t really know what the Fed will do but the
Fed does tend to err on the easy side which is why I’ve been in
precious metals, energy companies, precious metals miners and foreign
currencies for the last decade.</p>

<p>It looks to be a binary trade.</p>

<p>What would be the effect on the labor markets of QE3? I think that it
would result in a boost in hiring - we had several hiring boosts with
QE2. If we don’t get QE3? I don’t feel that the recovery in company
earnings will carry the economy unless there is robust hiring and I
don’t see robust hiring without QE3. Companies seem to feel a huge
amount of uncertainty (hard to blame them). I am happy that many
companies are hiring but it appears that those are for immediate needs
or needs where the profit potential is quite good or needs where
companies have to respond to competitive threats. If you can get into
those areas: good for you.</p>

<hr>

<p>Those are my weekend thoughts. We used to have nice conversations on
economics in the other forum but that’s gone so this is as good a place
as any to put this stuff. If you have other thoughts, I’m always open
to getting other opinions or ideas.</p>

<p>I have some more financial stuff to read and will hopefully get the kids
started on thinking about the financial stuff today.</p>

427

<br>

<br>

<p>I worked for a bunch of companies where I really didn’t know much
about what they did for quite some time. Most companies have a lot of
jobs where the needs are the same from company to company. Payroll,
accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, sales, marketing,
engineering, production, etc.</p>

<p>If your major is industry-specific, then that may be a problem but
getting a job can put you in the path of lots of unrelated
opportunities that can be hard to envision.</p>

428

<p>BCEagle - thanks for the update. I’m stunned by the depth of your son’s interviews and impressed by the self studying. As I read this I KNOW your son will get a job - a really good job - and succeed, but know you have your vibes coming from Colorado where I live. </p>

<p>As to the economic stuff. Yikes. I don’t pretend to understand a tenth of it, but you know things are bad when ‘death spiral’ appears in a headline. Thanks for the food for thought. I think ;)</p>

429

<p>“Those are my weekend thoughts. We used to have nice conversations on
economics in the other forum but that’s gone so this is as good a place
as any to put this stuff. If you have other thoughts, I’m always open
to getting other opinions or ideas.”</p>

<p>Well, ya know, you can always go over to the dark side and give it a try. There are still plenty of arguments to be had. Or if you started an economics post on the cafe, you’d probably get alot of interest.</p>

430

<p>I have been doing some interview question workshopping and wanted to throw one at the knowledgeable parents here who have more experience than I do! </p>

<p>What’s a good way to answer “Where else have you been applying?”</p>

<p>The TRUE story is that, as a poli sci BA, I have been looking for entry level openings in a wide array of industries that would be a good opportunity for me to learn a facet of the business and advance-- I don’t have enough experience to be much more specific than that and there aren’t enough openings in my region to be much more specific than that if I want to find a job at all. I know that is not the right answer because it makes me sound unfocused, but I don’t want to name names, either. Suggestions? The interview that I have coming up is the first one I’ve done in this particular industry.</p>

431

<p>Emaheevul - do they ask that in job interviews? It’s in college interviews, but I’ve never been asked that in a job interview. The short answer would be “none of your business” but of course you can’t say that… I guess I’d give something vague like, “A variety of companies in areas that interest me,” and then change the subject by asking a question about the company like, “Can you tell me about how XYZ became a leader in the <em>thing</em> industry?” or “XYZ looks like it has some interesting challenges. Can you tell me more about how it got started?” if it’s a small company.</p>

432

<p>When my S, who had one offer from the company of many people’s dreams, was interviewing for the company of HIS dreams, he made sure to let them know that Company A had made him an offer and they needed to make the lengthy interview process move expeditiously. :)</p>

<p>Barring that scenario, I would just make vague reference to “a variety of companies in this and related fields” if that is the case.</p>

433

<p>I’ve never been asked this question in an interview and I haven’t had an interview since the mid-1990s but I would just give them a few companies that I had applied to. It really isn’t their business but they might ask the questions to see how you respond or they might really want to know.</p>

434

<p>Emaheevul07, this is a similar question that my son was getting, “What type of job are you looking for?” Well, dah, this kid doesn’t know what he wants (other than something in the financial field) because he doesn’t have enough experience. </p>

<p>Even so, sounding too vague or evasive isn’t good either; that’s where researching the company and its competitors helps. I think it’s best to be truthful that you are “wide open” to consider a variety of possibilities. And, in answer to those pointed questions that recruiters ask like “what companies…?” or “what was your income?” turn it around and stay broad. Just because they ask very specific questions doesn’t mean you have to give them a very specific answer.</p>

<p>Thanks BC for your insights. We continue to cheer for your son.</p>

435

<p>Wow, BC, that’s awesome that your son is self studying. Will tuck this away for future reference, as my son just finished his first year of mechanical engineering. He’s learned a few languages, as he’s in a computer based honors program, but I have seen other languages listed as requirements for jobs. I will encourage him to do self studying, too, during his off time in the summers, so he can be conversant on a variety of topics during job interviews. Thanks so much for the tip, and good luck to your son. I know he’ll do great!</p>

436

<p>I was asked this question in my last interview, that’s why I was working on an answer for it this time-- it seriously threw me off last time. When I google searched it it looked like it was a fairly common question but none of the answers suggested made sense for an entry-level candidate. </p>

<p>I read online that it was commonly asked to judge how serious a candidate is about finding a job, but that seems like an odd thing to do to an unemployed entry-level.</p>

437

<p>I don’t think this is a very common question, but I think a short-and-sweet version of what you told us is the right answer

.</p>

<p>Most often for this type of question, it’s more important how you handle it - smoothly - than the actual substance of your answer. I’m guessing that most interviewers would move right on after your general answer. </p>

<p>However, if the interviewer asks for specifics, I would name one or two that are in the same industry or for the same function as the one for this particular interview.</p>

438

<p>Might be well to follow with an explanation of why this particular job was attractive to you.</p>

439

<p>BCEagle - I’ve worked on several Agile projects. You might suggest your son looks at Adrian Cockburn’s Use Case model. On the requirements side, but kind of key to the success of the method.</p>

440

<p>I added it to Growley Notes to look at later on. He’s busy with the self-learning stuff and he’s also playing around with OpenGL and writing some game frameworks. I had him execute a trade this morning (only five figures) and I asked him to install some trading tools on his computers so that he can watch the market during the day. I also ordered a second monitor for his desktop so that he can use it as a trading station.</p>

<p>I have to get him back up-to-speed on technical analysis. I went through this with him when he was 13 when he did some trading. He seems to pick up the fundamental analysis quite quickly (took economics courses and I talk about economics a lot at home). I’m going to ask him to research all of the companies in my current portfolios fundamentally and technically and ask him to produce a daily report of results and then discuss re-balancing the portfolios. He’s starting to read more on the markets daily and that will help.</p>

<p>The ADP private payrolls number this morning was dismal. That combined with the housing numbers from yesterday paints a pretty bad picture for the economy and there are already articles out on a QE3 - basically the Fed buying bonds to keep interest rates low and put more money out there that could be spent. That could generate another spurt of hiring for a while. The bond market apparently expects another easing as the economy faces multiple headwinds this summer.</p>