A city full of technological marvels

Hong Kong local time Sunday 12:39pm

 

One of the many things I am really going to miss about Hong Kong is its array of technological marvels. Over the past three weeks I have seen technologies here that are almost unheard of in the States.

 

The one technology that I use most often is the Octopus card. This is a debit card system that is accepted as the payment method by all public transportation systems (except taxis) and many major shops (such as 7-Eleven). One supermarket chain even uses it to keep track of its customers’ loyalty rewards status. One of my relatives said that the Octopus card has eliminated the need to carry around any spare coins. The closest thing we have in the States to this is Revolution Money being launched by former AOL executive Ted Leonsis. Hong Kong’s law require its residents to carry the Hong Kong Identity Card when out in public. This is a “smart card” with a computer chip that also serves as (I think) a driver’s license and the chip stores information about its owner that is used by providers of government services such as public libraries and government hospitals. In addition to being readily available, much of the technology here is also relatively cheap. I have GSM world phone that uses a prepaid SIM card from PCCW. The card has $98 of value on it and each minute (send or receive to almost anywhere in the world) is only 25 cents a minute. This is equal to approximately 3 cents USD.

 

But the most amazing technological innovation I have seen here is the new ten dollar bill. It is not printed on paper but on a piece plastic elastic that is almost impossible to rip. The material is very similar to the parking tickets issued by the UNC Department of Public Safety. Someone told me this technology was developed by a bank from Australia.

(insert the picture here later on next week.)

China’s “Las Vegas”

Hong Kong local time Thursday 10:28pm

Me and my parents were in Macau today. Macau is a former Portuguese colony that became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China in 1999. Historically Macau has not been a center of business or commerce but that has changed radically in the past ten years with the development of major casino hotels and resorts.

We arrived at Macau after a one hour boat ride from Hong Kong. There are several things I noticed right away upon arrival. One is that there are a ton of visitors arriving. At the ferry terminal I spent at least 20 minutes getting through customs while standing in line among people holding passports from places such as Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. The second thing I find very peculiar is the currency. Even though Macao uses the pataca (MOP) as its own currency, Hong Kong’s HKD is just as widely accepted. Merchants actually prefer to be paid in HKD because the relative value of the HKD is a small bit higher. Visitors, on the other hand, often get shortchanged when they pay in HKD and receive their change in MOP.

I guess all that stuff I learned during first year in business school about foreign currencies weren’t completely useless after all.

Last stop in China

Nanjing local time Friday 10:52pm

We arrived in Nanjing this afternoon and had the tour of the Nanjing city wall. This wall was built around 800 years ago and surrounds the city to protect against invaders. Many of its bricks are inscribed with the name and address of its craftsman and in the event the brick failed to hold up, the builder would face execution for his incompetence.

As I listened to the tour guide talk about this city’s history and its people, I couldn’t help noticing the one very tragic irony about this city, which ranks as one of the four great ancient capitals of China. That irony is that Nanjing is famous for two things which completely contradict one another. The first is the Nanjing city wall, which completely surrounds the city. The second is that during World War II, the Japanese successfully penetrated the city wall and proceeded to massacre hundreds of thousands of civilians. The slaughter still has a large impact on Nanjing. Every year on its December 17 anniversary, the city sounds its air defense alarms at 10am for half an hour. Many locals still hold an enormous amount of animosity toward Japanese people.

We are “wheels up” for Hong Kong tomorrow.

Capitalism in China

Changzhou local time Thursday 10:34pm

As I make my way across various parts of Eastern China, I have made some observations of the business climate in this still-communist country. While I have seen signs that capitalism is alive and well and that China is definitely on its way to becoming a major financial superpower, I have also seen signs that certain remnants of communism still remain.

Before we left Shanghai yesterday we visited the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and had an amazing view of this city from its observation deck. One of the things I noticed as I looked out at the downtown financial district with buildings decorated with names of major financial firms was how much construction was going on in that area. But along with signs of capitalism, I have also witnessed some of the negative externalities associated with it. On our way out of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, I passed by a bunch of gift shops on the bottom floor and one of them was selling chilled cans of Cola-Cola for 18 Yuan. This equals approximately $2.50 USD and has to be the most expensive can of soda I have ever seen for sale in my entire life.

Earlier today as we made our way to Changzhou, we passed by a gas station with a significant number of vehicles waiting on line. The tour guide explained that there was a gas shortage caused by the government setting a price ceiling for which gas stations owners could not surpass in selling their product and that the night before, our bus driver spent two hours waiting on line for gasoline. I was quite shocked to hear that China still has such price control over a product as crucial gasoline. Then again I thought about how some Americans have reacted to the recent high gas prices and I realize maybe the Chinese aren’t that much different than we are after all.

“The city of the future”

Shanghai local time Tuesday 11:47pm

I post this blog from Shanghai. We arrived here at around 3 this afternoon. Our tour bus took us to various parts of town. We saw the neighborhood where Jiang Zemin lives. We also saw Xintiandi, an area with many bars that is frequented by visitors. This evening we went on a boat ride of the river and checked out a town square-like area featured in the photo above.

One of my business school classmates was here last year and described this as the “city of the future” because of how modern it feels and Western it feels. Walking around certain parts of the city certainly makes you feel as though you are in a modern Western city instead of one in a still developing country. There are a lot of very modern looking skyscrapers. Shanghai is also the richest city in China. Not surprisingly, on the way to the hotel just now, I spotted a couple of shopping malls that resemble the ones in America.

Prior to my arrival in Shanghai this afternoon, China Mobile sent a textmessage to my GSM phone welcoming me to Shanghai and inviting me to use its services to access a wide array of information from traffic to hotel locations. Too bad I could only make out a few of the words because it was in Chinese.

May you live in interesting times

Wuzhen local time Monday 8:58pm

Greetings from the People’s Republic of China where my parents and I doing a seven day tour. We took off from Hong Kong Sunday morning, flew to Hangzhou and spent the night at the city that was once the capital of China 800 years ago. This morning we left Hangzhou for Wuzhen. The following is some video footage of the countryside on part of the drive to Wuzhen, where I am writing this blog post from tonight.

I once heard that an ancient Chinese expression is “may you live in interesting times.” And this is interesting times indeed for China. There are certain things I see here that remind me of America in the 1920s. The country is in the midst of a major economic boom. Hangzhou is a city that has only become a big city in the past ten years or so. Yet there are other things that make me wonder if maybe China is still in the stone ages. I bought a China Mobile pre-paid SIM card for my GSM phone. China Mobile was the subject of an article in Fortune Magazine recently. It is the largest mobile phone company in China, with a larger cellular customer base than AT&T, and is owned partly by the communist government. When I bought the SIM card, the woman I bought it from did not speak a word of English and I had to use my tour guide as a translator. She told me the card cost $100 (RMB) and came with $50 of pre-paid call time. The packaging had a holographic seal of authenticity and the name China Mobile. But there was no other information as to how many minutes it had, what the rates were, or even if $100 was the correct price for the product. The woman had a chart that explained the product’s rate structure but it was completely in Chinese. At the hotel, I brought it to the front desk and asked the people there to call China Mobile. After at least 10 minutes of calling multiple numbers, the hotel clerk told me I would receive $100 of value but it would take about 24 hours for my account to be credited. Over the next 12 hours, I received multiple SMS text messages, all in Chinese, from China Mobile - one suggesting that I recharge my card because it had less than $10 of value and another telling me $50 had been added onto my card. At this point I am pretty sure I have at least $50 of phone interview time on my card but I don’t know what numbers I have to dial to access the IDD service to call the United States. I contrast this to how easy it was for me to purchase and set up a pre-paid SIM card from PCCW when I was in Hong Kong last week, which I will hopefully blog about later when I do a post about the everyday technologies in Hong Kong.

In addition to the technological inconveniences youwould expect from a developing country, there are other inconveniences that are symptomatic of a government that purposely chooses to restrict the people’s access to information. Certain web sites such as Wikipedia are blocked. When I type in CNN.com on my web browser, I am redirected to its international edition. But many of these frustrations were melted away when I went to WABC’s web site and heard part of Don Imus’ first radio show since being fired. Anytime someone equates Hillary Clinton to Satan on a major media outlet and gets away with it is a victory for freedom for everyone.

Hong Kong sights

Hong Kong Local time Thursday 4:12pm

I wish to share a couple of things I have seen so far on my trip in Hong Kong and China.

Whenever I ride the subways, I always get a kick out of the automated announcement whenever a train approaches a station asking riders to “mind the gap.”

This was taken on Hong Kong Island when me and my parents were walking around looking for good deals. The Wall Street Journal had an article in August about Hong Kong’s industry of “tutor gods.” These are the Hong Kong equivalent to the Princeton Review and Stanley Kaplan, except that their brands revolve not around the company but the personality of the head tutor. "Ken Sir" at far left is an English tutor who was mentioned in the article.

“Hong Kong stands out, though, for instructors who boldly tout their success rate -- and their own images. They pay to have their faces plastered throughout the city on 40-foot-high billboards and the sides of double-decker buses. They're also known for buying ads that take up the entire front page of newspapers -- spacemore commonly filled by banks and property developers. One local television station is even preparing to launch a fictional drama series based on the lives of the tutor gods.”

I saw this earlier today in Tsim Sha Tsui. I was very surprised to see a billboard for the recent election in Australia. The only rationale that I can think of is since so many Hong Kongers have emigrated to Australia, this advertising may be targeted toward the ones who have since returned or are on vacation. Kevin Rudd won Saturday’s election and will take office on Monday as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister.

Evangelist Franklin Graham from North Carolina is having a in Hong Kong starting tonight.

I saved the best for last. This is a sticker on window of the tour bus we used over the weekend for our tour of Guangdong. I believe the translation is as follows:

“If you cannot see the scenery because your glasses are outdated, you may break window with hammer.”

Al Gore's been here

Hong Kong Local time Tuesday 11:00pm

That's the view I took from our hotel room last week. Last Tuesday I was at a convenient store paying for a soda when the clerk said she wasn’t going to give me a paper bag. I took it to mean that she must have ran out. Then she explained that her store was part of a chain of stores that agreed to not give out plastic bags on Tuesdays to help protect the environment. If I really wanted a plastic bag, I could get one in return for donating 20 cents (2.5 pennies USD) to an environmental fund.

After I returned to the hotel room, I saw on the news that one of the larger supermarket chains in Hong Kong announced it was going to stop giving out plastic bags altogether, unless the customer was willing to cough up the 2.5 pennies per bag. The announcement didn’t prove too popular with customers and the chain announced today that it would go back to giving customers plastic bags for free.

Giving thanks

Shenzhen local time Friday 11:52pm

 

Greetings from China. My parents and I spent the past three days in Hong Kong and today we met up with some of my mom’s friends for a three day tour of Shenzhen, China. Even though I am in a communist country halfway around the world, I have not forgotten that it is Thanksgiving time in the United States and, in accordance to this blog’s tradition, I am going to share with you some of the things I am grateful for as we get ready to close 2007.

 

The foremost thing that I am grateful for is how my religious faith has sustained me throughout this job search. If someone had told me prior to business school that I’d be without a job six months after graduation, I would have thought twice about going. The past six months have been disappointing. Yet I am surprisingly hopeful about this job search and I credit this to God having prepared me for this. Over the past two years, I would spend my prayer time not so much presenting to God a list of things I wanted. Instead I would ask Him to give me spiritual preparation for whatever plans He has for my life.

 

One of the things I have noticed since arriving in Hong Kong and China is that this is an extremely secular place. Christianity has a very underground presence here, especially in comparison to aspects of Buddhism which is everywhere. Yet Christianity is slowly winning the hearts and minds of the people here. When I was taking the underground train this morning (I purposely did not say subway because in Hong Kong a subway is an underground pedestrian tunnel you use to cross the street) I saw a sign advertising a Franklin Graham event in the next couple of weeks. I know a UNC alum who is a missionary in China working with Chinese students. He gave me two interesting pieces of factoids. The first is that in the last 50 years, the number of believers in China has increased from less than 20 to about 110 million. The second is that approximately one out of every four students who hears the gospel eventually becomes a believer. If this trend continues, I will live to see the day when there will be more Christians in China than in the United States.

 

In a little more than a week, Imus returns to morning radio – right in time for next year’s election. Now if only he could get a local station in North Carolina.

35,000 feet over the North Pole

Hong Kong Local time Tuesday 9:53pm

Greetings from Hong Kong. On Sunday me and my parents got onto Continental Flight CO99 at Newark and landed 15 hours later in this former British colony. The flight we took was an interesting one. I once heard a piece of trivia on the radio that CO99 was (this was around 2000) the longest daily scheduled flight in the world and when the Boeing 777 flies directly over the North Pole, the automatic pilot has to be disabled to avoid interference from the Pole’s magnetic core. While the flight may no longer be the current owner of this title, it is still one of the longest flights in the world.

Right after we took off at Newark, the plane took a northeastern course, flew over the Davis Strait, crossed over Greenland, and with the help of the 100 mph tailwind, crossed over the North Pole and plotted a southern course to cut through Russia and China. This flight sometimes takes a northwestern course to the North Pole, depending on the time of year and/or the prevailing wind conditions.

We have been in Hong Kong for a little more than 24 hours now. As usual, I have much more to write than I have time (or energy) to do so. I will do my best in the following couple of weeks to keep all of you informed on what I am seeing, hearing, and feeling in this part of the world.

11:10am update: OK this is not the great video I have ever posted but I filmed this out the plane window during the aproach last night to Hong Kong International. The plane was flying over Hong Kong island in the northeastern direction and you see Hong Kong island at the bottom of the video, Kowloon at the top, both portions separated by the bay. The tall buildings you see on Hong Kong island make up Hong Kong's Central district.

I am using free WiFi at a place where the AOL blog site is blocked, I am sending this via AIM and dunno if (or how) it will be posted. Will try again at another location 7-8 hours later. In the meantime, am going to have lunch in the nice warm (mid 70s F) weather.

Keeping my emotions in check

This past Tuesday was the six month anniversary of my MBA graduation. It has been more than six months since I received my MBA and I have still not managed to find a job. Tomorrow I am leaving for a trip with my parents and in all likelihood, I will not return to North Carolina until January.

 

This is certainly not the ideal situation to be in. About three weeks ago I had two interviews, one was a preliminary phone interview for a business intelligence position with a computer hardware company that I very much want to work for and the other was for a product manager position with a company many have never heard of. I sensed that the company that I did not want to work for as much was on a much quicker decision schedule than the one I had the phone interview with, which told me that it would require two weeks to decide which candidates to bring in for a company interview. Right after the two interviews, I remember thinking that both went well and worrying about getting the offer from the one I was not as interested in and having the offer force me to make a decision to possibly forego interviewing with the hardware company. I even wished that the manager would take his time in making the hiring decisions so I would have as much time and opportunities to interview at the other company as possible. In the weeks since I have heard feedback from both companies – the one that I wanted to work for has decided to not offer me an interview and the manager from the other company has decided to wait until he moves here from Utah before making his decisions. In a way I got exactly what I wanted – the company I did not want to work for as much has decided to take its time in making a hiring decision and yet I find myself wishing I had received an offer so I would at least know I would have a job comes 2008. This experience goes to illustrate just how emotional this job search process has been and how easy it is for my emotions to overwhelm my decision making process.

 

Last week, the same week I heard the decisions from the two companies, was a rough week. I looked at the calendar and really began to worry about this job search. I worried that when I come back from my trip, my credentials would “expire” when recruiters look at my resume and realize that I have not worked in six months. It was the type of week where I had doubts about myself, about my faith in God and about His faithfulness. I felt as though God was “playing chicken” with me – to drag out this job search as long as possible to see if I would swerve off the road. I remember praying for some kind of sign that He was still with me and got my answer on Sunday in church. The title of the sermon was “How much time do you have?” The speaker talked about how we should not view time as a threat but as … I actually don’t remember what the rest of this line was and will have to check the audio tapes for the actual quotes. But it made me realize that instead of questioning God’s faithfulness, perhaps I should be questioning my own.

 

On a programming note – I mentioned that I will be leaving the country for a trip with my parents. I am not going to reveal our destination just yet except to say that we are scheduled to land around 7am Monday (all times Eastern) and I will try to update this blog around Monday night or Tuesday morning.

Overheard at Panera

Usually these “overheard” blog posts are about things I have overheard people say that I find odd or unusual. This time I am writing about a situation where I said something that someone else overheard and found quite unusual.

 

I met up with a UVA classmate yesterday at Panera on Franklin Street. She was a year behind me and is now a news reporter for one of the local newspapers. We were recollecting and reminiscing stories about people we both knew during our years at UVA and the following exchange took place.

 

Me: Do you remember Sam H.? He wrote for the Cavalier Daily and lived on the Lawn.

Friend: Oh yea. Sam H. is now an actor out in L.A..

Me: Are you sure? Sam H. went to law school. The Sam you’re talking about is Sam S.

 

At this point a girl in the next table jumped up and excited proclaimed “I know Sam S.! He’s my cousin!” Apparently she overheard us talking about UVA and thought about her cousin and almost immediately I mentioned his name.

 

Small world.

Jack Bauer suspended indefinitely

Unfortunately what I am about to write is not about a storyline in the upcoming season of 24. According to reports, it looks like the January 13, 2008 two-hour premier may be delayed due to the writers strike.

“Most notably, the network is postponing the seventh season premiere of “24,” which was originally scheduled for January. The move will “ensure that ‘Day 7’ can air uninterrupted, in its entirety,” a Fox press release states.”

One writer who has no plans to go on strike is yours truly. In the weeks ahead, I will be filling you in on details on my recent experience on the job search front, a rather disturbing piece of mail that I got this week, and one particular trip that I will be embarking upon. Stay tuned!

On politicians and job seekers

Today is Election Day and this morning I visited my polling precinct to cast my vote for various candidates for Durham City Council and Mayor of Durham. (When I moved over the summer, I didn’t change my registration and my “voting address” remains the same from when I lived at Alta Springs. I could never figure out why Alta Springs uses a Chapel Hill mailing address even though it’s technically part of Durham County.)

 

I have not followed the local political scene much over the past two years and mostly relied on some rather superficial methods upon which to choose my preferences. For the Durham City Council race, I based my choices (these are at-large districts where the top three vote getters win) on a visit to someone’s house last week. I was in the kitchen and saw a newspaper clipping on the refrigerator with a list of candidates. Three names were circled and those were the three (I voted for only two because I forgot the last one) I voted for today.

 

 

The Durham Mayoral race pit incumbent Bill Bell against challenger Thomas Stith. I knew next to nothing about the differences between the candidates and the newspaper clipping did not indicate a preference for this race. I therefore relied on an even more unorthodox methodology upon which to base my vote. While watching a news story on NBC 17 last night, I noticed that one man came across as much more competent than the other. It had little to do with what they were saying and much more to do with the way they looked, the way they came across, and the way they projected their confidence. I therefore decided that one man was more capable than the other and voted for him.

 

This reminded me of something I heard in the news two weeks ago about a research experiment that took place at Princeton University.

 

“To find the extent to which a candidate’s face predicted a winner, researchers exposed subjects to a pair of faces—one recently elected governor and the runner-up—for one-fourth of a second or less. They were then asked to pick the most competent candidate of the two people shown. If someone recognized a candidate, their results were excluded from the study.”

 

The study concluded that in many cases, the more competent looking candidate was more likely to win.

 

“Subjects picked the elected governor over the runner-up as the most competent one about 64 percent of the time, a result that significantly exceeded random chance of 50 percent. When the two candidates shown were of the same ethnicity and sex, the results were even more predictive of a winner.”

 

It goes to show that it when you are seeking a job, it pays to look confident. This applies to conventional job seekers on an interview as well as political job seekers appearing on television.

Here's something you don’t see everyday

It looks like one of the best college newspapers in the country forgot to renew its internet domain name. Hence, at this very moment, the Cavalier Daily is no longer available over the internets. This applies to all URLs hosted on the web page including old articles.

I am guessing that when the Cavalier Daily first appeared online, which was approximately ten years ago, it must have signed a ten year contract with its provider and the ten years have expired. A similar thing happened to the Washington Post in 2004 when it failed to renew the washpost.com domain it uses for its corporate email.

This is not only an example of something that internet businesses have to protect against but also of an opportunity for opportunistic operators. If I had know that the CavalierDaily.com URL was going to expire and the newspaper people had no clue what was about to hit them, I could have tried to register for the web site and ask the host service to reserve that site the moment it became available. I can then use it as the new site for my blog and the thousands of people who go to the site expecting to read the Cavalier Daily will instead get to read the saucy little things I write about my life.

“Pulled all the stops” for the “biggest season yet”

The trailer for Season 7 of 24 is now available. It comes with an on-screen announcement from Keifer Sutherland promising us the “biggest season yet.” Some of you may not want to watch the trailer because it reveals a surprise about the identity of the new bad guy.

Needless to say, I am going to block off two hours on my Outlook Calendar for Sunday, January 13, 2008.

From the most unlikely sources

One of the things that I noticed lately is that I have been getting leads about companies through some unconventional means. Almost a month ago, I interviewed at the internet division of a newspaper company. Before the interview, I was in the reception area waiting for the interviewer when a young woman walked in with another interview candidate. From the two minutes of small talk that ensued, I found out she’s a recruiter for a technical staffing firm and learned her first name and the name of her firm. I called her the following Monday, reminded her of our quick meeting the previous Friday, and offered to send her my resume. Last week she called to tell me about a product manager position at a local company that provides internet security products for large enterprises. I interviewed there on Wednesday.

 

Another lead that I got came from a student who was a year ahead of me in the MBA program (Class of 2006). We have never met but he emailed me out of the blue last week to tell me he has followed my blog with some regularity and to tell me about a local start up company that he has some connections with. I am going to spend some time next week looking over its website to see if this is something I’d be interested in.

 

Job leads are not the only things have resulted from unlikely sources. I was at a Chinese buffet restaurant on West Franklin Street for lunch today and the “fortune” in my fortune cookie read:

 

“You will besingled out for a promotion.”

Taking the search to Old Town, Alexandria

I arrived at the Embassy Suite hotel in Alexandria, Virginia this morning and attended the Executive Diversity Career Fair. The event was a bit disappointing. I decided to attend mainly because a management consulting firm with a large technology practice was listed in the list of companies that attended last year (the site did not list the companies that had committed to attend until almost the last minute). That company, however, was not at the event this year. I tried to spend most of the three hours there talking to as many companies as I could and the results were mostly disappointing. Many of the recruiters told me that the departments I wanted to work in were outside what the subset that they were recruiting for and referred me to the company web page. At one point I was talking to a very small consulting firm located in Arlington, Virginia (one whose name I am certain you have never heard of) and the recruiter said “I have been recruiting for more than 20 years and with your MBA, you really should look elsewhere such as (the firm that was a no show) or (another well known consulting firm).”

I did make two interesting connections. One is with a product manager who works in Raleigh for a telecom equipment company. He was at the event looking for a job. The other was with someone who graduated this May from another MBA program. We swapped stories about wanting a position that has exactly what we want and our experiences with not having a job five months after our business school graduations. He said “I am really glad I ran into you, I don’t feel so alone.”

Because I am a cheapskate and did not want to pay the eighteen dollar flat fee to park at the hotel, I found a metered spot three minutes away that cost one dollar per hour, with two hour limits. At the two hour mark, I went to feed the meter and on the way back to the hotel I saw what I immediately recognized from reading other blogs as one of the many cars that Google is using to record the streets of major cities for its Street View functionality. When I asked the driver of the California plated vehicle whether the car was equipped with a hard drive to store the information, his response was “I am sorry sir, I cannot tell you that.”

Carry me back to old Virginny

Greetings from Fairfax, Virginia. I arrived here on Saturday to attend a friend’s wedding and to attend a job fair tomorrow. This past weekend was filled with multiple reminders of both my life prior to business school and also my life at UVA.

 

On Saturday night, I drove to the Ballston section of Arlington to go to my favorite bar. After failing to find street side parking, I parked at the garage at Ballston Commons two blocks away. While heading toward the shopping mall exit, I passed by a bar with an orange sign announcing that the local UVA Alumni club was meeting to watch the football game against Maryland and decided to watch the remainder of the game. At the bar, I ran into three UVA alums I know – each I have known from a different part of my life, one from school, one from work, and one from somewhere else. The game ended in a photo finish. Words cannot describe the excitement in the room when Virginia’s #5 Mikell Simpson scored a touch town in the last 20 seconds, winning the game for Virginia (by one point) and breaking the record for the longest winning streak in the history of the UVA football program. I left the bar as a group of younger, more rowdy alums had just finished joining hands to sing the Good Old Song.

 

The wedding yesterday was beautiful. I got to spend some quality time with many people from UVA whom I have not seen in a long while. One good friend of mine and I swapped stories about our mutual friends and experiences from college. Many of  our sentences began with “whatever happened to” or  “did I ever tell you about that time when.” There was one girl whom I had not since graduation nine years ago. She looks so different that it wasn’t until she told me she is the correspondent fora major news organization that I recognized who I was talking to.

 

This weekend is making me begin to look forward to the 2008 Reunion Weekend.

Climbing back onto the saddle

I did not blog last week was because I was in a foul mood. Much of it had to do with the feedback from my interview. This was the product manager job at the internet division of a newspaper company where the manager said I was “too eager” and was not a good cultural fit with the team. It knocked me off my horse because it reinforced a general feeling I have about my job search – that this particular job (or any other jobs that I am interested in) does not call for anything that I cannot do. Yet because of subjective standards such as “personality” or “cultural” fit, I spend my weekdays looking for a job while 96% of my classmates are actually working at one.

 

While I am on the topic of my classmates, I have done quite a deal of soul searching as to just what it is that separates them from me that they have been more successful at finding a job. They certainly are not any smarter than I am. I was reassured of this last week when I was putting together a cover letter for a non product management position at a computer hardware company. I started thinking about a classmate who works there. One day in our Data, Tools, and Decision class the professor said that while X percentage of women voted for Bill Clinton, only Y percentage of the votes Clinton received came from women. This classmate proceeded to raise his hand and ask “I don’t understand why there is a difference. Shouldn’t the two numbers be the same?”

 

This is both reassuring and upsetting. It’s good to know that my employed classmates are not any smarter than I am. Yet it’s disturbing that this classmate has a job and I don’t. If it’s not a matter of intelligence, then what is it then? I think a lot of it has to do with the relevancy of my experience. A plurality, if not majority, of my classmates have worked in either consulting, finance, or marketing. A classmate once called this the “MBA median” because this is the mainstream which MBA recruiters consider most relevant and most transferable to the positions they are hiring for. And because I worked as a software engineer and my duties was not related to either consulting, finance, or marketing, I need to significantly spin my experience to make them relevant to recruiters.

 

And spinning is where the rest of my problem resides. Selling myself is something that I am hesitant to do and on many interviews, I find myself psychologically scaling a wall that I cannot get over. After I started working at AOL, I began noticing that I regularly found myself in situations where someone would ask the obligatory “where do you work” question and when I gave the name of my employer, the person’s facial expression would change. It’s almost as though I became more valuable because I worked at AOL. This made me uncomfortable and eventually I began telling people that I worked “at a software company.” I compare this to other MBAs who always manage to talk about themselves in most glowing way possible. And sometimes they do not allow the truth to stand in their way. A 2003 Kenan-Flagler alum once told me about the bad job market during his second year. His classmates tried to sell themselves to recruiters by lying that they had received other job offers. In contrast I have a problem hearing people say that they live in “DC” when their homes are in Arlington, Virginia.

 

The small bit of good news (in a secular sense) is that hitting the bottom often gives me the chance to bounce back. I scheduled a meeting with someone at Kenan-Flagler later this week who provides career counseling for MBA alums and made arrangements to go to a job fair in DC … oh wait - it’s actually in Alexandria, Virginia - next week. Two weeks ago someone commented that she was surprised I didn’t have a job. She said I should have no trouble getting a job because I am outgoing and have a great personality. So in some ways I am hoping that this “personality” thing is not so subjectiveafter all.

Receiving more honest feedback

When I was writing my blog posting at this time on Monday, I originally wanted to write about something that happened that morning that really upset me. But other things intervened and I ended up writing about something else instead.

 

About three weeks ago I got a call from a headhunter about a position that sounded almost too good to be true. A Raleigh newspaper has an interactive division that manages the internet tools used by the more than 30 newspapers owned by its parent company. The product manager position is local and involves working with newspaper editors and others in the newsroom. I had the interview on Friday where I met with the manager, a director, and another product manager. I thought the interview went really well. The research I had done on product management really paid off. I asked questions to show that I had done thinking into some of the duties and challenges that this particular position entails.  At the end of the interview, the manager gave me her office number, which is always a good sign, and asked me to call with any questions.

 

I got the call on Monday. The headhunter said the manager felt I am not a good personality fit because I came across as “too eager.” He went on to say that my “energy level may rub some people the wrong way.” The rest of the phone call consisted with him telling me of ways I can utilize that information to make me a better interviewer. He suggested that I should speak to every interviewer in his own “language” by first assessing the individual’s personality and speaking to him at his own level. He said I don’t want to come across as “too aggressive” or “hard to manage.”

 

When the phone call ended, I was so shocked you could have knocked me over with a feather. As the next couple of minutes rolled by, the shock was replaced by anger. I did absolutely everything I have been told that I should do on interviews and at this company it was held against me. The job description asks for someone to “act as a leader within the company” and I tried to give the interviewers exactly what they wanted. The ultimate irony is that my former co-workers and classmates have never accused me of being “too aggressive” before. I guess maybe I was so excited about the position that I came across as intense and the interviewer had this image of  hiring the equivalent to a “bull with an MBA degree running around in a China shop.”

 

The only consolation I have is that God still remains faithful and if He didn’t want me to work at that newspaper company, there’s got to be another place He wants to work at right? Right?

Beginning to stink and becoming stale

Today’s the first day of October and more than one third of a calendar year has gone by since my graduation from business school. I am beginning to feel a bit frustrated that I still don’t have a job. On Wednesday I was having dinner at Chipotle’s and saw a second year (Class of 2008) MBA student. I called out his name and he came over. We talked about his second year and when we got to the part of the conversation where I said I still did not have a job yet, his entire demeanor changed. While I don’t want to go so far as to say that he was judging me for not having a job, I certainly felt that at the very least it made him uncomfortable. When the conversation ended I said something that I often say to people whom I run into, “hey if there is anything I can ever do for you, let me know.” He responded with hesitancy - as though he couldn’t believe that an unemployed alum could possibly help him with anything.

 

The encounter underscored something that I suspect is true about my job search - that it comes with an undefined expiration date, after which I begin to “stink” and become stale. Just two days prior to my encounter at Chipotle’s, a friend brought this to my attention when he suggested that at some point I will no longer be considered a “recent MBA graduate” and will have to explain to a recruiter what I have been doing in the time since graduation. I don’t know when that imaginary deadline is. More interestingly, I don’t know how to answer if a recruiter were to ask about my activities since graduation. I can tell the truth and say that I have been looking for jobs but have not received any offers or I can lie and talk about fictional trips to foreign destinations. One of these choices is more in accordance to my moral beliefs while the other is more likely to result in a job offer.

 

Such are the games that we play as MBA job seekers and the choices they present to us.

A reminder that greed is still good

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal had a full page ad on page D5 promoting the 20th anniversary DVD edition of the movie Wall Street. I first saw this movie in college but it didn’t have much of an impact on me. It wasn’t until after I graduated from UVA that I watched it on more occasions and it has since become one of my favorite movies. Although I disagree with producer Oliver Stone’s liberal portrayal of capitalism (ie Gordon Gecko telling Bud Fox that capitalismis a “zero sum game”), I love the movie for the lessons it teaches about life and often (here, here, and here) quote from it on this blog.

I went out to Best Buy earlier today and not only bought the DVD but also the special engraved business card holder ($15 and $5 respectively, the latter is free with the purchase of the former). Next week I will try to buy a couple more business card holders because they make great graduation gifts.

Earlier this year I heard that Michael Douglas is working on the script of a sequel. Twenty years later, it’s good to know that the profit motive still continues to motivate people to do good things – proofing once again that his character got it right when he said that "greed is good."

24 resurrects Tony Almeda

The New York Post reports that, as speculated earlier on this blog, the character Tony Almeda will be returning to Season 7 of 24 in January. It looks like the writers decided to scrap the storyline about Jack in Africa but instead will center the beginning of Season 7 around Jack Bauer being tried in a Washington DC court for his past actions.

"Despite being left for dead in the CTU infirmary, executive producer Howard Gordon pointed out "since there was no silent clock at the conclusion of his last appearance - the '24' tribute to major character's demise - we always kept this as a possibility.""

Hopefully bringing back Almeda will also resurrect the excitement of the TV series.

Don’t ticket me bro!

By now many of you have seen or heard about the video of the University of Florida student getting tasered by overly aggressive campus police officers while trying to shout asinine questions to Senator John Kerry. I had my own experience yesterday with the UNC Department of Public Safety.

 

I had a morning meeting with someone at Kenan-Flagler about revamping the school’s alumni web offerings. This person arranged for me to receive a one-day parking pass at the Kenan-McColl visitors lot and I made darn sure that the pass was properly displayed on the dashboard with the date visible before I left the vehicle. When I returned later, I was shocked to see a parking ticket attacked to my windshield wiper blade. The citation stated that I parked at a reserved spot (my spot was not different than any of the others) and the comments section reads “Student Display Vis Pmt.”

 

Perhaps the officer saw a student parking permit hanging from my mirror and concluded that I am a student and was therefore unqualified to park on the visitor’s lot. Now if Officer #210 had the IQ representative of a college graduate (notice I didn’t say “if the officer had gone to college”) and/or had bothered to put down his doughnut and look carefully, he would have realized it was an expired “BD” permit from the last school year.

 

There is not a snowball’s chance in hades that I am going to pay the $50 fine. But if I were to make good on my promise to run for President of the United States, then all bets are off.

Getting linked in

Before I came to business school, I had a LinkedIn account but rarely used it. But over the past two years, I have grown to become quite a prodigious user of the professional networking site. Last night I attended a networking event called LinkedIn Live held at the office of a local public relations firm.

 

The evening was quite productive. I ran into a current second year at Kenan-Flagler, two Kenan-Flagler alums (one whom I have met before and the other who offered to help connect me to possible job contacts), a couple of recruiters, and someone from the company I interned at last summer. I was not surprised to run into so many people I already know because as one recruiter said last night, "Raleigh is the biggest small city."

 

Because the event was organized by the communications director of the email marketing firm that I have been interviewing with, there were many people there last night from that firm. This gave me the chance to meet more potential co-workers and one particular vice president whom I will almost definitely interview with on my next company visit. But it was not without a bit of awkwardness. At one point I spotted a guy hovering around and I decided to be jovial and bring him into the conversation. I quickly regretted it when he said "oh yea I see you work for (name of firm). I am interested in your product manager position."

 

That was one introduction I did not want to be a part of.

Doing my best

Greetings from Charlottesville, Virginia where tomorrow me and a couple of college buddies will do some tailgating before heading over to watch UVA (hopefully) defeat Duke in the first home football game of the season.

I had yet another phone interview yesterday with the email marketing company that I have been interviewing with. It went well. We talked about the projects I worked on during my professional experience. The only part that was uncomfortable was toward the end when he asked why I did not go back to the company where I did my summer internship. It was awkward because I didn’t want to say anything bad about another company in the same industry that was also located in the local area. Sensing my discomfort, my interviewer said that he only was asking to see how I function in different environments and not because he wanted to exchange gossip about different people in different companies. Later this month I will be interviewing with this company again, it will be my fourth interview with the company and my second interview at the company. My interviewer told me I can dress more casually this time.

When I checked in at my hotel earlier, I saw a lot of Duke paraphernalia in the lobby and realized that the Duke football team was staying here as well. I think it would be horrible if someone were to go out into the hallway tonight at around 3am, pull the fire alarm, and force everyone to vacate their rooms. Just horrible.

We’re still in business

My sincerest apology to my readers for having gone dark (Jack Bauer lingo) for nearly two weeks. The 12 day hiatus is probably the longest I have ever gone without checking in and I have no plans of repeating it.

 

A week ago this past Friday, I had a phone interview with a company in DC that runs a health care content website. The interview went well and toward the end I was asked to give a salary range. I have never been asked that question before and immediately gave the standard “I am more interested in finding the right match and the correct opportunity than looking for a particular salary range.”

 

I should have stopped right there.

 

But instead I went ahead and said “but for the class that graduated a year ahead of me (Class of 2006), the median salary was $91,000.” The rest of the phone conversation didn’t last very long. It sounded as though the interviewer couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. He ended by wishing me luck, the very same “good luck” that I had heard many times from my interviewers.

 

The next time I am asked a potentially “deal breaker” question, I need to be more tactful about my answer. That same week I had a second round office visit with an email marketing company in Durham. The week ended with the interviewer emailing me an official job application. Under the space for salary, I wrote “negotiable.” I have another phone interview with that company tomorrow.

“She told me her name was Billie Jean as she caused a scene”

I had an interesting evening just now. It started at a UNC alumni reception (I am on the mailing lists of both UVA and UNC alumni clubs and last night both clubs had conflicting events) at the Rams Room of the Kenan Stadium. I got the chance to hearbasketball coach Roy Williams talk about his hopes for the next season. Afterwards, I went home and was content with spending the rest of the night doing some extra curricular reading.

But that was not to be. I got a call from a classmate who was a year ahead of me at Kenan-Flagler announcing that several people were in town for a wedding and we all ended up meeting on Franklin Street for a mini-homecoming. We cruised through several bars from one end of Franklin Street to another before ending the night at Lucy’s. After paying the cover, I planned on getting a glass of water and staying long enough to sober up before driving home. But once again, that was not to be.

We all got onto the dance floor where it was 80s night and the place was packed with students, some of whom I recognize as current second years at Kenan-Flagler. For a moment, I felt like a first year all over again dancing and singing along to tunes such as Jesse’s Girl, Don’t Stop Believing, and Living On A Prayer (the latter two were played back to back). It made me realize just how much I miss the Thursday night Lucy’s scene and how much I would give to relive my experience, at least that part of the MBA experience, all over again.

Janeane Garofalo joins 24

The Hollywood Reporter reports the following:

“Actress-comedian Janeane Garofalo, an outspoken liberal, is set to co-star on the conservative-leaning real-time drama, whose co-creator/executive producer Joel Surnow jokingly describes himself as a "right-wing nut job."”

Someone should tell Joel Surnow that he should have Jack Bauer strangle Garofalo’s character. Not only would the ratings go through the roof, people like me would buy the DVD just to see it over and over again.