HOW TO: UNC Career Fairs for Computer Science majors

UNC is mainly a liberal arts school, and typically, we don't get very many technology-oriented companies at our Career Fair (as to be expected). It is a little disjointing to go to one, (suits? consulting companies?) but there are always a few companies that go to recruit for tech.-minded folks, and I don't think it's bad practice to go meet a few recruiters, shake a few hands, and disseminate your resume like you're Genghis Khan.

This HOW TO is motivated by my friend Max's questions to me regarding the Career Fair. I've been to the annual one as a freshman and as a sophomore, and the Internship Fair as a freshman. FWIW, I haven't gotten a job directly from any of the fairs I've been to, but I have gotten a 90% covered weeklong vacation for two in Seattle (Microsoft interview) and created an important connection with a recruiter from IBM who eventually got me a job in Canada (the topic of finding a job in a country you're not living in is worth another post...)

The Career Fair is targeted towards graduating seniors who are looking for jobs. Many companies will accept your resume if you're looking for an internship, though, and I find that it's nice to get a headstart on these sorts of things, esp. for tech. internships. The general timeline for scoring a software-related internship seems to be now (September) until early February, but not much later.

All the obvious things should be done (i.e. print out a resume). Of course, listen to Career Services, as well!

I. BEFORE

As someone interested in software-related jobs, you don't have to wear a suit. In fact, I might go as far to suggest not wearing a suit. No one at your eventual job will, so why should you now? Do dress business casual, though. For men, this means dress shoes, not white socks, nice slacks, a collared shirt. For women, I'm not even going to try to cover that in this post.

There aren't that many companies looking for software folks (as stated before), so you only need to print ~10 resumes. Be prepared to acquire a lot of swag. I've seen women carry larger shoulder bags for them before. I'm not sure what you want to do as a man.

The tech. companies aren't all together, and aren't labeled in an obvious way (other than the obvious Microsoft and IBM), so it's good to check out which companies are coming in advance and research them a little.
II. WHILE

Once you're in the Smith Center, I advise doing a full circle of the possible recruiters before homing in on the ones you're actually interested in.

Smile, shake hands, introduce yourself, and ask the recruiter who they're looking for.

The recruiter will probably look over your resume, and they might circle some keywords ("Java", "Python", "C", "internship") and ask you a few questions about projects you have listed or the type of job you're looking for. This is not an interview, but this is a step to getting an interview! Treat it as such!
III. AFTER
When you leave, if you're at all interested in getting the job (and I always make sure to talk to a few recruiters who are recruiting for things I really don't care about, just to practice), make sure to get the name/email address of the recruiter to follow-up with them!



I hope this post is helpful to a few folks. I figured that if Max had questions then it's possible that others do as well.

(picture taken from UNC School of Public Health page w/o permission)

internet misconceptions

1. If you set your Gtalk status to "Busy" but you've spoken to me before while you were "Busy" i'm going to ignore that you're "Busy" and talk to you anyway.

2. Putting your phone # on Facebook isn't any more sketchy than telephone books. You know, those old white pages that used to list people's names associated with their phone #s and addresses? When did we all get so scared of stalkers?

summer to-do list

An attempt to merge self-discipline with communication. : ]

1) UNC Student Congress website

I inherited responsibility for this from Val when he finished his Ph.D. program in May. This summer, I look to implement:

• an attendance system. easy to update, easy to look at [so that students can see if their representative is on a term of leave, hasn't been to 3 meetings and should be impeached, etc.] Ideally this will be integrated with the 'current members' page.
  
• easier to find locations for current bills/ resolutions. Unfortunately, this will probably mean sacrifice of ease of upload. Currently, they're just dumped to one location.

2) Project UNC Student Code

I'm working on this with my friend Max . The use-case? The current Student Code is in latex, which makes it look beautiful, but also makes it non-trivial to update. The Student Body Secretary is responsible for updating this, but this past school year (Raynor administration) never did. Max and I, for differing reasons, would like to see the Student Code be updated more frequently, and thus, to this end, instead of just placing blanket demands (and impeachment threats), we're going to try to make it easier on the SBS.

Progress so far? We've barely agreed on the tools that we're going to use, but have one follower on our assembla account! Woah.

It's been pointed out to me by my good friend Mac, that since he was the last SBS who actually updated the damn thing, we should be talking to him more about our implementation. I'm a little nervous about working with Mac and Max on the same project, though, because despite the similarities in their names (or perhaps due to?), their ideas on UI/technology in general cannot be melded harmoniously. At the core, Max is a big Apple fan and Mac is a linux user. Everything else stems from that... I think I could work with either of them on a project, but working with both? Maybe a lesson in diplomacy, or maybe a lesson in just making decisions and running with them...

3) Eve Carson Scholarship website
In exchange for a nice seat on the Executive Board for the Eve Carson Scholarship, I have agreed to web-design/technology-implement for the Carson Scholarship for the next year.
Despite knowing next to nothing about web design (have you /seen/ my website? http://www.unc.edu/~zhoum), even less about graphic design (seriously), I am excited and thrilled about this project.
First, I've had at least 3 people ask me to design websites for them this past year (the perils of going to a large school with only 100 CS majors...), and been forced to refuse (although admittedly, I probably would've refused anyway). It will be nice knowing something (and having solid proof of knowing something!) about web design. Second, I am so so excited about this scholarship.

The Eve Carson Scholarship is a senior-year + one summer full merit-based scholarship that's intended to reward people who have blossomed at UNC. The idea behind it is that not everyone is a high-school hot shot who can get the Morehead or Robertson, but /so/ many people do great things at and for Carolina while here. The idea of a 'reward' for these students is simply amazing to me. What a great idea. On top of that, this gives money for an amazing, independetly-designed summer experience for the scholar(s) /plus/ the freedom to not worry about money their senior year! --allowing them to do even more amazing, wonderful things at Carolina and/or free them up for fully investigating jobs, fellowships, etc. : ]]] (I'm very fortunate to be living with the first Carson scholar next year... hah.)

I'm super excited about helping this Scholarship grow, and it's a tremendous opportunity to get to be on a Scholarship exec. board in college, especially in the initial stages of a scholarship like this, where I get to be part of defining what this is. : ]

Pumped.


On top of this, I'm working at IBM this summer in Toronto for the DB2 group doing tooling for their test division. (phew, quite a sentence). I'm creating the first resume I've had in 2 years, and making myself a better website as a primer for getting started on the Scholarship website.

Hah. Summer of tech...

youth for western civilization

This past week, there have been fliers across my campus promoting "YWC: Youth for Western Civilization": a group whose national mission statement aims to encourage "support of Western history, identity, high culture, and pride and opposition to radical multiculturalism, political correctness, racial preferences, mass immigration, and socialism. [www.westernyouth.com]." They also want to enable the conservative movement to act on a local, campus level instead of being focused on larger politics.

Cool. I'm pro-Western civilization. I think a Great Books curriculum should be taught at UNC, I like The Constitution and all that has come from it, ice cream, and technology. I really think that this one has the most potential to give the most people their freedoms (although, someone could argue otherwise with me on that one and I could be swayed).

However, I'm not about to join a white supremacist group (and honestly, I recognize that despite good public intentions, this could turn out to be an all-white-boys-club)--so, I was going to protest the protest of the YWC meeting.

However, I did a bit of googling first. Turns out that the Vanderbilt chapter of this organization (and yes, when you join a national group, you are responsible for what other chapters say) says the following about the subversion of Western values: "Mass immigration without regards to assimilation. Illegal immigration. Affirmative action. And multicultural ideology."

Okay, guys (yes guys), you have it wrong. Western civilization isn't about dressing the part, it isn't about speaking English or going to church. A good example of Western civilization is The Constitution--it's freedom, independence, and basic rights (in the life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness sense). Illegal immigration nor immigration erode at Western civilization--instead, they are the force behind Western civilization. I promise you man, your average immigrant has the ideas behind the Founding America far more squarely in his head than the smartest college student.

So, YWC. I believe in your right to assemble, to discuss without feeling threatened or endagered as a group (although I somehow suspect that many of you will feel validated at the turn-out in the protest). I was about to protest-your-protest. But you're threatening me and your existence as a group endagers my livelihood in this country. You are pointing a gun at my head on May 9th of my senior year of college telling me that I have to get out of this country, you are the reason why I cannot work here, why it is so hard to find a job and eke out a living in the country that was founded on the principles I most agree with.
You got it wrong, man. You're not preserving Western civilization and its valid cultural values, and the beautiful foundation of America. I doubt you'll succeed, honestly, but if you did, this is what you'll save: your pale white skin, your churches, and your bland boring food.

spring break to-do

the official:

-resNET project
-interace design w/ OGRE
-ACM ICPC problems
-ACM presentation
-ycombinator application

the unofficial:

-learn git
-work on mwik a bit
-vimpiphany
-reading list:

• the fountainhead
• portrait of an artist as a young man
• the dispossesed
• rainbows end
• the snow queen

tech. things i want to work on

I know this isn't any of the promised posts.
That being said:

1. google calendar --> google calendar syncing. This would allow for someone to add one calendar and be able to see all of my events. I use multiple Google calendars to organize my life and I'm not willing to give up the colors on my calendar so that other people can sync up with me more easily.
   
2. porting vimperator to Epiphany. I got hooked onto vimperator a few months ago. The key bindings make my life much easier, especially from a laptop where your hands are on your keyboard much more than your hands are on a mouse. Recently I discovered Epiphany (it came with the Gnome package that came with Debian Lenny) and oh my god, it's just so fast. Firefox is really getting bloated--and I realize that for some people that's desirable (where bloated = extensions), but I really don't utilize Firefox extensions and would just like for my tabs to load faster. : ] That being said, I don't know if I can live without vim-keybindings in my browser...and Epiphany add-ons are written in C/Python, which means that porting vimperator (or just the vim-bindings that I care about) might be a do-able task.
   
3. Writing laser music for Zac. My friend Zac has a neat laser set-up that "takes in" music input in the form of vibrations. I'd like to write some music to fully show off the laser's capabilities.
4. Work out a good framework for syncing up delicious links w/ mwik , incorporate tags into my structure of how I use mwik.
   

self blog challenge

Okay, ya'll, I know you liked hearing about my personal dilemmas & self-reflections, but I'm going to start blogging again and I'm going to challenge myself to the following:

I am going to blog on a theme and I'm going to do it once a week.

The theme is rather broad: UNC.

I'm nearly-definitely going to be blogging on the following:
(1) How the Honors Program failed me (or, what I would like to see in an Honors program)
(2) undergraduate women in Computer Science (or, why are there over 60% women in my 500-level Math classes?)
(3) the DTH (or, how journalists fail their classes but manage to put out a quality publication)
(4) Science majors vs. everyone else (or, where i prove that grade inflation isn't actually a problem)
(5) hipsters, wxyc, and the impenetrable nature of the flagpole smoking social scene
(6) why i'm more pissed off at women in my humanities classes than men (or how subjectivism, low self-esteem, and uncertainty of opinion has penetrated the classroom realm)

Anyway, these topics are very rough outlines, and I might end up going off on tangents or not blogging about any of these at all. If you read this and are interesting in hearing from me on any of these subjects in particular, please post and let me know.


(photo credit flickr user elander)