Enthusiasm is Everything! Part 1

The end of the year is just around the corner. And with the end of the year comes the end of my time writing (occasionally) for OIT Career Services. Since I'm finishing up with school, it's only natural that I've been working on my own personal job search over the past year.

I've suffered quite a few defeats and celebrated some relative victories, and I would just like to share my story with the readers of this blog to support the sorts of things we read on career related websites. Some things may sound ridiculous and potentially risky for your job search, but the reality is that some things work, and can put you in position for some exciting opportunities.


Let me lead in by saying that I started my job hunt with very modest expectations. I didn't have any real career goals. I really didn't know what I wanted, and didn't care. I just wanted to make enough to pay off my student loans, and have a bit of expendable income left over after living expenses. What I didn't realize starting out is what type of environment I want - no, need - to work in. In a sense, this part of the blog is a sort of coming of age story.

Looking back now, I realize that my lack of energy and enthusiasm about my future was holding my down, and keeping me from really reaching the heights that I could potentially reach. Here's my story!


I had my first job interview with HP, who had come to OIT campus to recruit some of our grads. I was interviewing for a job that kind of skirted around all of the things I had experience with, and so I felt defeated from the start. I did, however, feel as though my personality could be a strong card to play during the interview. I think I accomplished what I set out to do there, but it was soon apparent that they were more interested in some of my classmates who have great personalities and a considerable amount more experience with the things they wanted experience with!

The important thing to remember after your first rejection (which is very likely to happen), is to not let it get you down too much. Yes, you can grieve for a bit, but it's important to jump right back on the horse and get back to it. I responded to my rejection my actively looking for internship and career opportunities on sites like Dice, Monster, OIT Career Services Online, and plenty of company-specific websites as well. I sent out only a few applications, however, because of the time commitment required to tailor a cover letter and resume was a little more than I felt could provide myself at the time. When I had no responses, I knew exactly why. I just didn't get my name out well enough.

So I went back and redesigned my resume and made myself a business card. I bought a domain for my website and put up some placeholders. I started writing for my personal blog, and such, and went back to my job search.

I stopped short when the Career Fair came around. I had talked to one of the recruiters from Mentor Graphics about some of the openings they had. This is when I realized the importance of networking. I had spoken with Eric Campbell basically every time he had come to OIT for a Career Fair since I can remember. I hadn't ever given him my resume, since I wasn't looking for work, but he knew my face, and he knew that I know people at Mentor Graphics also. We got to talking about some of my potential career interests, and somehow I ended up mentioning that I enjoy writing. He reached into his stack of papers and pulled out a Technical Writing job description.

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Technical Writing is sort of a secret interest that I have. Out of my five years here at OIT, I enjoyed my Junior and Senior project classes the most, and mainly when we were writing the documents for the project design!
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So I jumped right on this opportunity. I gave Eric my resume and my business card, which he passed onto a recruiter, who in turn passed it on to the group at Mentor Graphics who was hiring a Technical Writer. One thing I want to mention is that the job description once again skirted around my actual experience. But this time I felt like I had enough experience, and enough interest in the job description to really nail the interview that could potentially happen.

I was wrong. The phone interview came and went, and it turns out that I wasn't quite as sharp on the topics they wanted to hear about as I thought; even after studying for a few nights prior. This was my second outright rejection, and I was getting a tad impatient, especially since I wasn't getting responses from any of the other applications I had sent out.


How would I recover from this one? Well, it all came down to some sort of epiphany moment, which I will describe in my blog next week! Stay tuned!