Communication Skills

I think that I lack the ability to “toot my own tuba”, so to speak. I have just gotten back a feedback for my interview. I’m glad that they sent it to me as it highlights my primary weakness. Of the many things mentioned in the feedback, a couple of them were accurate, but mostly weren’t. It wasn’t that I lacked those skills but I didn’t present myself well enough, that’s all.

One of the things that they mentioned that I lacked was, no obvious knowledge of Linux. They didn’t even ask me anything about Linux during the interview. But maybe I should have rambled on and found some way to insert that tidbit into some other reply. You can say that I have little knowledge of Windows, since I’ve not touched it for almost a decade and will not touch it with a 10′ pole, but Linux?

No exposure to system level design? Again, I only have myself to blame there. I tried to play down my contribution in the different projects that I was involved in. So, instead of saying that I pretty much pulled the whole team through from start to finish, I made myself sound more like a team player. It’s only natural for me to switch on a modicum of modesty, when dealing with people superior to me. Maybe it’s an Asian mentality thing. I don’t know. This is probably a major mistake on my part.

No understanding of microprocessor architectures? Sigh. What can I say. Other people would not be using my microprocessor designs for commercial projects if I did not understand microprocessors. But I don’t blame them either here. There was one question that they did ask about microprocessors. However, I answered it quite badly as I did not order my answer properly and probably sounded like I was rambling away. I should really learn to just answer questions from the very beginning.

So, the good thing is that I am glad that I have finally received some feedback from an interview. And this feedback has taught me that my biggest problem is communication. I need to learn how to answer questions better. Otherwise, the interviewers would get a mistaken impression about me.