My journey to being nomad

PRELUDE :

nomad :

  • a member of a people or tribe who move from place to place to find pasture and food
  • a person who continually moves from place to place; wanderer

nomads

 

My thoughts about journey during summer break has begun at the early October when I decided that it will be fun and great experience to work abroad during my summer break, in the meantime I was participant at DevDay and I have met Martin Mazur from Tretton37 (I have already know tretton37 and how fantastic they are, I always wondering about getting there). Also I got somehow influenced by Rob Ashton and his talk

ACT ONE – Tretton37

(During DevDay) At two minutes talk I asked him about t-shirt of tretton37 and then I decided to ask him about internship, he answered me that unfortunately they don’t have such thing like internship but “drop me a email” and we will try figure out something.

After few days ago, I did this! I have written email and Martin answered me : “Please write down you plans for this internship and how it should looks like, and why are you doing this and why tretton37?”, so many whys and hows but finally answer was simple, “You are the best and I want to learn from the best, you know I wanna be a ninja”

Then after several email we agreed together that I should contact with them at the beginning of next year (2014) because we were talking about summer internship so it’s a while till summer.

New year has come and end of the January seems to be perfect to contact with tretton37 and refresh them about myself (*ping* email). Then the reply arrived, “Can we have skype call to sum up all of those earlier words”, I was happy as hell it supposed to be my first English interview, but I had knowledge after earlier interviews and I said that I need more time to prepare myself. Finally I have done those steps during my preparations.

  • Short review of gramma – it’s optimal, but not necessarily to speak fluent. 
  • Review of vocabulary, in my opinion to master fluent speaking you have to have large knowledge of vocabulary. (not only at technical field)
  • A lot of talking and listening, try to talk in English every day till interview, let your ears and brain to get used to it.
  • If it’s technical interview make preparation on that field too.

Finally friday has come (21.02.2014), Martin had called to me, and…mostly everything went well, yes of course…I got few stuck, mainly due to lacking vocabulary (damn it!), but it wasn’t something serious I was able to explain in other words, so it’s OK. We agree almost everything about my needs and expectations, so now I had to wait till technical interview.

Bad news arrived, unfortunately Martin said that they couldn’t manage with right projects for me and time for me (it’s logic because Martin has taken this internship very seriously as me, we came up with idea that I will get some kind of “mentor” through my whole internship, you know code review that kind of stuff).

If you think that my relationship with tretton37 has ended you are wrong! I offered myself for being a volunteer at leetspeak so see ya soon guys!

ACT TWO – JustGiving

Everything was happening so quickly that I almost didn’t notice that I have signed off contract, but let’s back at the beginning of  this story.

It was sunny morning when Michal sent me a offer from JustGiving, they were looking for Junior ASP.NET & API Product Developer, main responsibilities are : maintenance existing API and develop new features. Moreover I supposed to represent a JG at meetups and conferences, you know – fancy word “Evangelist”. When I saw this offer, I thought that it’s a great opportunity for my summer break plans.

Preparation started imminently, at the first fire went my  curriculum vitae, there wasn’t so much thing to correct, mostly some quick fixes. The hardest part was a cover of letter, so many iterations…it took me a lot of time to make it perfect ;). Additionally for my application process I had to create something that is using JustGiving API, I made quick decision and I started creating Windows Phone 8 application (repository).

When everything was finished, I sent my candidate for this application, one day later Jamie replied, and we made a appointment at skype with informal interview at the next week (I had my university and work, so there was highly probability that without time I may not prepare myself).

dayofjugmentDay of judgment has come, due to my shity internet connection at home I had to visit my friend and make skype call at her home. This talk lasted about 40 minutes and I had great chat with Jamie. After that talk I feel that it went well.

At the beginning of the second week of June, it was in the middle of my classes, Michal send me a message at skype “congratz” and then I received an email from Jamie and he congratulated for getting this job.

Ending

Those two stories gave me a lot of experience in field of English interviews, making a proper preparations, and I would like to thank all of you that were involved at my recruitment process. My journey with JG will begin at 30.06 so please keep finger crossed because I would like to give them a lot of ideas, and my skills! What’s is important to mention here, that people who surround us, are amazing just keep eye open and create a opportunity for them and yourself

Resources :

http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/nomad