Well, I am back! Over the past two months, I have spoken to several CEOs, CTOs, HR managers, and the only question I asked them is, "how can I get hired with no experience?". Their answers varied from one to another due to the nature of the company, but there were two overarching themes. Here they are.- Passion. Think about it, what is passion to you? To me, passion is a self-driving force that pushes me out of my bed at 6:30am to do my work. It is the ultimate tool that helps me achieve above and beyond. As one of my senior-level manager friends told me, “from the first interview, I could tell from his glittering eyes, his engaging questions, and his relentless follow-up emails that he was passionate about my company and that he was the one I was looking for.” Now, that is the interviewee you want to be. Don’t interview for a Risk Analyst position at J.P. Morgan if your true passion is designing the next rocket engine that sends astronauts to Mars. You know why? Because you will be bored at work, and “we could always tell, and we would never give you the job.”
- Motivation/willingness to learn. This is the single most important factor that all of the executives agree on. For example, a friend of mine, CTO of a small company, hired a software engineer, say Adam, which did not know how to program in PHP, which was strictly required by the position. You know why Adam still got the job? Well, here is why. Immediately after the interview, Adam hired a personal tutor and started to learn about PHP. Two weeks after, he sent a follow-up email to the CTO stating that he was familiar with PHP and that he was also willing to work for free in order to learn more about PHP. One more week later, Adam was hired. Would you hire Adam? Yes, you would. It does not matter if Adam knows a lot, but you know that Adam has the potential to grow, and you know that will happen. Willingness to learn is an incredible power that you should develop and express during your next interview!
Best of luck to your upcoming interviews! Have fun and go get them!
If you would like to discuss about the list, feel free to contact me via my personal email wewa@umich.edu or connect with me on LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com/in/weiwang800.
I totally agree that the biggest factor that determines your success is your willingness to learn. Having an open mind only makes you and the people around you stronger and more efficient.
ReplyDeleteThanks Matt. I completely agree with you. I am pretty much irrelevant in the technology sectors that Oasis500 invests in. However, I realized as long as I spend time to understand the sector, get rid of my biased mentality, and think of the bigger picture, I was able to become somewhat relevant (more like 1%). =] Regardless, I am glad that you liked the article. =]
DeleteThese are accurate characteristics that I agree with a that could help a person who has no experience to get hired. My internship employer emphasized the willingness to learn shown by my resume was one of the main reasons why I was hired.
ReplyDeleteI really like this post, Wei! I think something a ton of graduates get nervous about (and that I'm nervous about now) is that he/she doesn't have enough real world experience to attract an employer. You make good points about what attributes really matter to get and be successful at a job.
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