On Purposefulness and Goal Orientation
One day while being a student I came to a job interview at the company SWH-T. The position was called Lotus Notes developer which is a normal job at the beginning of the career (if you are an ambitious person you will run away from it after 1-2 years). I was already working, but SWH-T was a bigger company primarily focusing on software development which would be a nice experience for me. In addition, SWH-T was one of few big software companies in Latvia and it was collaborating with universities and having a number of students in its staff.
During the interview the main guy asked me how is my English, if I know anything about Lotus Notes, and what was my 3rd year project at the university. I answered that my English should be alright, I haven't seen Lotus Notes and my project was about approximation using cubic splines. The guy asked me why did I choose this topic and how it relates to what I'm going to do in life.
At that moment I understood that there are people that know what they want from life and they align all their activities according to their goals. I chose this topic for my project because I didn't understand it well during the course of numeric methods. I got 8 out of 10 for it, because I did it well, but nothing special from the mathematician's point of view (my supervisor was a cool mathematician). I was happy with it, because I was able to understand the topic.
I didn't get the job. I think they missed a good Lotus Notes developer, because I'm quite good at documents and scripting. Later on I was more prepared for job interviews and I got a job I was not really qualified to.
Labels: abstract
# posted by romka,
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
22:02
1) Purposefulness :)?
2) They want you to fall in love with the Notes before seeing them.
3) I got the job you applied for ~4 years later cos I was talking right? Likely. But more likely that they were more desperate.
4) You're right it's nothing like a dream job, and if you are looking forward to develop yourself 1 year is more than enough with that stuff :).
Do not fancy people who know what they want from their life too much. Statistically it is (I could bet on it): family,kids, car, house, vacations.
I would imagine it is more interesting to think of what knowledge one wants to achieve, how to improve one's character (or, as they say, soul).
Or, if I would choose to talk in a philosophical manner, life is a path. It has only one ending. There are many ways to reach the ending. You have to enjoy the path (or the process), because there is no big difference what you do.
No, no, I don't adore these people. They are blindly following a western pattern of life. It is an episode of my life which I find interesting enough to tell to others.
Well written article.