Interviewing Tips 2013

 

Here are some tips that will help make your interview a positive and fun experience.

 

• Research the company-know what you are interviewing for and exactly what the company does.
•  Be enthusiastic--show excitement, sit forward in your chair, smile, people hire people they like and trust.
•  Sell yourself---this is a time to brag about your skills and talk about your self. Think about what separates you from the other candidates they are interviewing. How do you add value to the company.
• Bring current / updated resume--it is your presentation ( Work History, Education, Other Skills, Personal info is the best format).
• Social Media: be aware of what your public image is online: If you are googled, your linked in profile, Facebook, blogs, pictures, etc.
•  References must be past supervisors and one character reference.(make sure references know they might called.)
•  Be yourself and be 100% honest.
•  Be prepared to fill out application, take personality test, interview with multiple people.
•  Arrive 15 minutes early.
•  Dress professionally--conservatively.
•  Have firm handshake and good eye contact.
•  Listen to the interviewer.
•  If you find yourself having a question during the interview, it is ok to ask, "may I ask a question?"
•  Sit up slightly forward in seat( to show interest).
•  Leave cell phone and purse in car-no exceptions!!!
•  Ask your recruiter, mentors, or friends who work at the place, for advice. Do not leave anythng to chance
•  Know where you stand at the end of the interview by asking one very important question:

 "Do you have any concerns at this point that would keep you from hiring me, because I want to work for you?"

 " I am really interested (or want to work for you) do you have any concerns that would keep you from hiring me?"

 This question allows you to ask for the job, the interviewer to tell you if there are any problems; you get the chance to overcome any objections/concerns, it is a compliment to the person doing the interviewing that you want to work for them, and you leave with the knowledge of where you stand and what the next step will be.

•  Call your recruiter right after the interview.
•  Send a hand written thank you note and even a quick email-Keep the note simple, no more than 3 sentences.
•  Your Recruiter will guide you through the process.

5 Points remember before going to job interview

Landing a job interview is incredibly exciting –- and often terrifying. But fear not. There are clever ways to transform your angst into nerves of steel. After all, a good interview should feel like a conversation, not an interrogation. Here are five essential key tips from the world of public speaking that’ll help you look just as awesome in person as you do on paper.

1. Know Yourself

Most people dread the moment when their interviewer utters the words - “So, tell me about yourself.” But it’s actually the simplest question to navigate once you get down to the root of what’s being asked. "Tell me about yourself" really translates to: “What can you tell me about how your personality, interests, work habits and background will help you rock this position?” 

Before you answer, rewind back to when you applied for the job -– the moment you decided that you and the position would be a solid match. Usually, the reasons that ran through your mind before you chose to apply are the answers the interviewer is looking for. Since you’re the most well-versed on the subject of you, this is your moment to paint the picture of what you bring to the table and why you’re the most dynamic and capable person for the job.

2. Bridge the Gap Between Confidence and Enthusiasm (Then Marry the Two)

How many times have you been confident in your ability to perform a task but not necessarily enthused about doing it (or vice versa)? Confidence speaks to the way you perceive you, while enthusiasm is more indicative of your feelings about something or someone other than yourself — in this case, the gig. 

To make sure there’s a healthy balance between the two, draft a list of reasons you’re confident about your ability to perform the job, and pair each one with a reason why you’re enthusiastic about showing up. You should be able to clearly communicate these reasons during your interview.

Example: "In over 15 years as a graphic designer, I’ve mastered a number of software programs and techniques. Those skills have helped me contribute to some great work, but the best part of the experience, for me, is collaborating with a team to build something that clients can fall in love with."

3. Use Your LinkedIn Profile to Practice

The last thing you want to do in an interview is regurgitate your resume or Linkedin profile. Instead, take a look at how you described your role at previous jobs and practice how you might integrate these into an actual conversation. In other words: if your resume bullet points were complete sentences describing how your experience is relevant to the new job, what would they sound like? 

To prepare like the pros, do a mock interview with a friend and video record your answers. Ask yourself, “Can I really see myself saying this?" to gauge the authenticity of your delivery.

4. Know When to Wrap It Up

Big audiences don’t like a Chatty Cathy -– and neither do busy interviewers. To avoid coming across as a rambler or bad listener, always be mindful of the length of your answers. Even if the interviewer doesn’t give you validation in the form of a nod, smile or laugh, don’t be afraid to simply stop talking once you’ve answered the question.

If you can effectively communicate a point in five words, don’t use 25. Trust that if they want to know more, they’ll ask. 

Need a little practice on this? Do a search for the “most asked interview questions” relevant to the position you’re applying for, jot down the ones you struggle with and practice answering them. Open-ended questions sometimes require lengthier responses, but typically, you should be able to provide a thoughtful answer to most interview questions in under 60 seconds.

5. Be a Team Player

The letter "I" stands alone. Unless you’re applying for a position that requires you to work independently, the reality is that stellar results (no matter the industry) require team effort. Be sure to incorporate "we" language to show your ability to work well with others. This doesn’t mean refrain from sharing your individual responsibilities and accomplishments, but be clear about how those things benefitted your team. 

When in doubt, stick to this equation: What my team does + How I do my part to make sure we get to the finish line = Victory

Of course, no two interviews are the same, but if you apply these tips, you’re guaranteed to boost your odds of getting a call back. Knock ‘em dead!

IDwhois – Free WhoIs client for Windows

Yesterday, I have come across this fast and free WhoIs checking software, IDwhois. Before findings this, I was using another free client, which checks only few TLDs like .com, .net, .org, and .info. I use this software to check domain availability across different extensions.

It is too fast and checks nealry 130 gTLDs and ccTLDs. It has checked 500 domains in less than a minute. You can prepare the domains list in text format and upload it when you are ready, and also you can save the results into XML format too.

IDwhois Features :
- More than 130 TLDs to lookup
- Stand alone whois client
- Integrated Parser
- Export results on .HTML, .CSV or .XML for fast reporting
- Import domain name list from a .TXT file
- XML Configuration files to add or modify TLD settings / interfaced
- Multi thread WHOIS lookup
- WHOIS Request timer to avoid registrars/NICs time out
- multi-IP bridge lookup environment (avoid NIC black list)
- Rearrange the information in your whois results
- Tree view result
- Free online support by mail
- Proxy environment

Download it here.

What does “Who Is” mean?
WHOIS is a TCP-based query/response protocol which is widely used for querying a database in order to determine the owner of a domain name, an IP address, or an autonomous system number on the Internet. WHOIS lookups were traditionally made using a command line interface, but a number of simplified web-based tools now exist for looking up domain ownership details from different databases. Web-based WHOIS clients still rely on the WHOIS protocol to connect to a WHOIS server and do lookups, and command-line WHOIS clients are still quite widely used by system administrators. – Wikipedia

Free and reliable PHP and MySQL web hosting

 

 

I have tried a lot of free web hosts when I was learning WordPress and other open source CMS applications.  From year 2005 to till date I have tested more than 15 free web hosts.  Free web hosts normally put their advertisements on top of the site to cover the costs they incur on free web hosting, which makes the site appear somewhat ugly.  The ads occupy the large space.  Another disadvantage using free hosts is that we cannot question them if it goes down.  Some free hosts go down even for weeks.

 

After testing these free hosts for more than six months, I chose FreeHostia as the best free web host.  I have been using it for more than three years without a problem.  I have been building mini websites and blogs for my customers using FreeHostia.  FreeHostia offers an ad-free Linux hosting for free.  It has the following features:

• Apache, PHP, MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, and Perl
• Hosting for 2 domain and 10 subdomains
• Data storage of 250 MB
• Monthly bandwidth of 5 GB
• 1 MySQL database (10 MB DB space)
• 1 FTP account & web-based file manager
• 3 POP3 accounts with SpamAssassin protection & Webmail
• FrontPage Extensions
• Free 24/7 technical support and ticketing system

Review and sign up for the free hosting here.

The downside of FreeHostia is 10 MB limit of MySQL DB.  When you reach that limit, you can either move to their paid hosting plan, which costs $1.95 per month and upgrades your MySQL database size to 25 MB or to a better and cheap paid web hosting like DraemHost, which removes all limits.  If you are planning to install WordPress on it, don’t forget to install the plug-in Revision Control, else your database will be filled up too fast because of the new feature called “Post Revisions.”

CutePDF – Add a PDF printer

CutePDF is a free software to create PDFs from any Windows application. It installs a printer driver and shows up as a virtual printer when you print from any application. While giving the Print command (Ctrl+P), select the “CreatePDF Writer” as printer and it will create a professional quality PDF. I have been using it for years and helps me a lot.  It has endless possibilities.   I downloaded a free invoice template from Microsoft Office Templates.  I use it to prepare invoices entering all the details of customer, particulars, and bill amount and export it as PDF just clicking the “Print” button and selecting the “CutePDF Writer” as printer.  I can export the Wikipedia pages from browser as PDF files for storing.  I can print PDF from any application let it be Excel, Power Point, Firefox, medical dictionary, etc. etc. and it goes on.

CutePDF supports Microsoft Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7 (x86/x64). It requires PS2PDF converter such as Ghostscript.

Read more about it: http://cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/Writer.asp and get it at: http://download.cutepdf.com/download/CuteWriter.zip

Online Free SMS Applications – With Address Book & Reminders

I used to use Krify SMS for all my free SMS needs, but as the time is passing on, new SMS sites have been coming up with lot of features. So, here is the review of two best applications I have been using for sometime. They also offer address book facility, so that you can store all your friends and family’s mobile numbers and just by typing few words, you can retrieve just like what you do while sending SMS on your mobile.

1. 160by2.com

This is really a nice fast-loading site with Ajax touch. It offers address book as well as reminder facility. It also comes with predefined quick SMS templates. It sends the message within few seconds. It allows the users to send message up to 80 characters and they append an ad to the message sent using the rest of 80 characters. That is why, they chose 160by2 as their site’s name. 160 characters shared by user and the site.

They also offer features like address book and alerts. By using alerts, you can set reminders to be sent to your mobile. You can separate the alerts into three different predefined sections Birthday Alerts, Reminders, and Anniversary Alerts. This is my favorite option is 160by2. You can also create groups and send message at one click via web access or by sending from your mobile to a designated 160by2 member, which is available in the section >Contacts>My Groups

2. SMS Me – Orkut Application

 

SMS Me is also a free SMS application which is available as an application in Orkut. To start sending free SMS using this application, first you need to add this application in your profile. Click on the “Add Apps” on the left side right below your avatar. It will show a number of applications available to add. If your browsing Orkut in India, then the application will be in the second place right below the Slapster.

It also has address book facility and if your friend is also using this application in Orkut, then you can send SMS at one click without needing to remember his/her number.

How to filter adult content at home/office – An easy way

My friend called me asking a solution for the above question. He runs a small medical transcription company. When transcriptionists are busy with searching medical terminology, there is a chance for accidentally going to the sites with adult content. He also wants to restrict the net use for the night shift people. He don’t want to spend money buying the content filtering software and it must be easy to setup because they don’t have system administrators to do that. Everything related to systems is taken care of by themselves.

So, I have started searching the net and found these easy steps to stop the adult content showing up in browsers. It is basically about changing the DNS servers in your system.

What is DNS?
DNS (Domain Name System) is a process that translates easy to remember addresses (like www.scrubit.com) to a numerical IP address used by computers (67.138.54.99) Everyone uses DNS. Most DNS is provided to the user by your internet service provider, or a recursive DNS service like ScrubIT. More info you can read on Wikipedia here.

Here I explain about two services OpenDNS and ScrubIt.

OpenDNS: It offers more free services than ScrubIt and more it is faster than ScrubIt. But, adult content filtering is not turned on by default. You have to create a free account on OpenDNS to turn it on. It will give you access to a number of interesting features like Adult Site Blocking, Phishing Site Blocking, Phishing Site Blocking, Stats and Logs, Typo Corrections, etc. Change your DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 & 208.67.220.220, create a free account on OpenDNS, add your IP address, and turn the adult site blocking on. Now you are free from adult sites.

Note that this works only with static IPs as your free account is linked to the IP to gain the control. Lot of broadband accounts comes with static IP and if your internet provider does not support static IP, you can download the Dynamic DNS client to update your IP address automatically. More information is here: http://www.opendns.com/support/dynamic_ip/

Below are some screenshots. It is totally free, so give it a try to learn more about OpenDNS.

ScrubIt: Just change the DNS servers to 67.138.54.100 & 207.225.209.66, and it starts working. Though it is somewhat slow compared to OpenDNS, there is no hassle of setting up anything. Takes few seconds and efficiently starts blocking adult content.

Go to the ScrubIt’s website to know more.

Screenshot:

Finally, how to change the DNS servers in your system? Do the following:

Right click on the network connection icon displayed in the notification area on the taskbar. A menu will appear and select “Status” from the list

Click the “Properties” button and a properties window will open.

Then click “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) ” and it will open up a window with DNS servers list.

You can also locate the local area connection from control panel

Sharing internet connection between two computers – a step-by-step guide

A week ago, I have purchased another system as we got a small project to work on. It is an online project and both systems need to have Internet. We have Sify connection at home and now we have to share it in both systems. I never tried before connecting two systems or sharing an internet connection. I have digged the net and found that we can share the internet using router. Router is a bit expensive one, so further digged the net for a simple workaround to connect both computers and share a single internet connection.

I found that using LAN card and crossover cable, we can setup a LAN connection and share the internet connection. Everything I did, but network icon in system tray was showing limited or no connection. For another one hour, I tried all sort of things, but failed. I put the same IPs in both systems, it did not connect. Then, I selected the option of obtaining IP automatically, again failed. Everyone one the net was describing about connecting it step-by-step, but no one explained about IPs. At last, I searched for it on Microsoft website and in an article, I found the IP numbers to put in, which are the default when you connect in LAN.

Following is a step-by-step instruction to connect two systems and share the internet connection.

Things you need: LAN Card and crossover cable.

Install LAN card in one of two systems, which will act as a Host. You need to connect to the internet through this computer. Connect one of two pins to the Host system and another pin to the second system. Once you connect both through cable, you can see the network icons glowing in your system tray. Sometimes, it may show the message that it is acquiring the IP address.

Click for bigger & clear image

Now, go to the Control Panel>Network and Internet Connection>Network Setup Wizard in Host system, in which you have installed an extra LAN card.  Look at the screenshot on the right side.

It will show a popup. Click two times and follow the below screenshots.  Click on the images for a bigger and clear images.

Select “Just finish the wizard” on the last window and we are done with the Host system.  I named it as “Home.”

In the Client system, run the same network setup wizard, but this time select the connection method as second one, look at the image below. Rest of the process is same.

Now, in the Host system, you will be entering the IP address provided by the Internet provider. In the Client system, enter the below IP details and click ok. Now, you will see a popup from the second connection telling that it is now connected at 10 mbps speed.

Now when you connect the Host system to internet, you can access it from the Client system too.

Pros:
1. Any type of Internet connection works.
2. Low cost of implementation (Rs.200-250)
3. Easy to install.

Cons:
1. You can only connect two systems.
2. Host always to be on to access net on the Client system.

If you still have problem, post in comments and I will try to answer.

Microsoft ICE - Free panoramic photo stitching software

I found this amazing software called Image Composite Editor (ICE) by Microsfot while searching for free software to stitch photos. I found few other free photo stitching softwares too, but they were difficult to install, took lot of time to stitch, and/or producing low-quality images.

 

Using photo stitching software, you can stitch a set of overlapping photos taken of a location into a single image. Assume that you want to shoot a wide-angled scene with your mobile camera, you can take photos of that scene into rectangular grid of rows and columns and then using photo stitching software, you can create a high-resolution single image.

Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) is available as a free software. It can stitch giga pixels of images into one single image. No other software can match its speed. It is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit windows and supported up to Windows 7.

Click the image for a bigger and clear image

Flickr has a group for the images stitched with Microsoft ICE, http://www.flickr.com/groups/922872@N23/.  Check the photos created with it and you will understand what you can do with this little free application.

For example purpose, I have captured the Microsft webpage into 4 different parts of unequal lengths and stitched into one. Click the below images to see, how good it stitched the images into one.

This is a photo taken from the ICE group on Flickr as an example for panoramic image created with stitching 14 photos into one:

Backup and sync Firefox environment with one click

My system has been giving problems lately with the hardware and at anytime, it can crash.  So, I have purchased a WD Elements Portable 160GB USB hard drive and uploaded all the data onto it. Whenever I download a software, I keep a copy on my hard disk, so now I am having all the software copies.  What I am missing is Firefox data.  

I use a number of extensions, tweaks, and themes and has huge number of usernames and passwords stored in it. So, this Sunday, I have searched and implemented few backup options and found FEBE as the best extension for it. Here is my review of this little useful extension that relieved my tension of being missing very important data:

 

FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) allows Firefox users to quickly and easily backup extensions, themes, bookmarks, preferences, search plugins, and browser history. Before backing up, it will rebuild all the extensions individually into installable .xpi files, so you can sync the Firefox browser in your office and home.  It also has option of scheduling the backups. Another useful feature in FEBE is backing up the data onto your Box.net’s free storage account, which makes this extension hot.  I used to export the username and passwords list using Password Exporter plugin and then uploading them into Box.net account.  Now, I don’t need to worry about manually uploading them. Just a click takes backup of all the data and stores a copy in your system as well as on Box account.

It also has quick backup option from which you can select few or only one item to be backed up saving your time.

FEBE Options Tab

Taking backup and uploading them into Box.net account

Showing progress of upload into Box.net account

Restoring the files is also easy.  By going through Tools>FEBE>Restore option, you can restore all the data one by one.

Restore options