More on Interviews

Just because an imaginary reader might not have gotten sick of me blurbing about my interviews. And other random things.

Yesterday, one interview. Pharmaceutical/analytical. In-person. I liked this job, because, ooh, HPLC! But I don't think I stood out to the employer, so I doubt I'll be getting an offer.

As for today...

First interview: another nanotechnology-related position (Well. Vaguely nanotechnology-related). Unfortunately, it was a phone interview. The interviewer had something of an accent. I stopped paying attention. Oops. It goes without saying that well, that's not good. The remainder of the interview did not really go "downhill from there" per se, but it wasn't particularly good, either.

Second interview: straight up analytical chemistry, dealing with method development. In-person interview. I started talking when out-of-breath (running up a few floors to the interview room, in a skirt and heels, is never a good idea), but things settled down after a few minutes. The interviewers are very well-scripted. They asked all the standard questions (including those "psychological" ones); nothing surprised me. Which is nice, of course. There were also several chemistry questions, but those were a little shallow. They tend to be those sorts of questions where there are two answers: one is the expected, standard "high school" answer, the other is a more complex, "realistic, if you are really fussy" answer. For example, dilution problems: yes, add this volume of liquid - assuming volumes are additive and there are no temperature fluctuations that will change your volumes. Masses generally are more accurate than volumes, anyway. (Hmm, maybe I should've said these things *during* the interview.) And goodness, if I don't know what a MSDS* is by now, I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a lab.

One slightly amusing thing is that one of my peers are also being interviewed by this company, and we used the exact same example because that's the topic our analytical professor was discussing for the last few lectures. (Beer-Lambert law as an example of a calibration curve, in case you were wondering.) A little deja vu for the interviewers, I guess.

I am a little sad about this second interview because I lost the interviewers' business cards and now I can't send them a thank-you email.

Third interview: the position has to do with "applied research", if there's such a thing. A little more "chemical engineering" than "chemistry" per se, but a fairly, um, lucrative field. It's also a little far. Phone interview, two interviewers. Probably because it's my third interview and I am pretty much incoherent by this point, I started out terribly on this interview. Mind went blank and so I cobbled together some crap about my communication skills (oh, the irony).

There are several things of note during this interview.

1. Trivial chemistry questions. As in "how much of a 10 M solution would you add if you want to make 500 mL of a 5 M solution". See my previous note about "realistic" answers; I see a trend here.

2. Either the interviewers were testing me, or they didn't know how (in general) some very powerful and fundamental instruments work. Example: X-ray fluorescence. Or maybe I am just being biased because I like the XRF. Or maybe this is just because the interviewers spent too long outside of school. They also got curious and asked about a somewhat more unusual instrument**, which was fun.

3. One of the interviewers asked me about my "mechanical abilities". And by this I don't think they mean lab skills. Um. I can probably use a socket wrench. Probably. Dammit, I am not an engineer.

4. Apparently, the company was thinking of purchasing a set of equipment that I've worked with (same manufacturer and all - it seems to be the "canonical" brand to use), and the interviewers asked me about them! That, was really odd. I forgot to tell them that the instruments have very specific diagnostics programmed into them for troubleshooting purposes, kind of like a debugger that can run code line-by-line. Oh well.

You can tell that I had more fun at my third interview than the other ones, can't you?

Interviews aside, I also had differential equations midterm yesterday, and biochemistry midterm today. For the former, aside from "stupid curve sketching", there's nothing for me to say (the exam is aimed at a very "standard" level). For the latter, well. It was biochemistry. Fortunately, the professor was quite generous, and the exam was easy (which is important because I spent only one hour cramming).

I received my inorganic midterm back today as well (the TAs and the professor are unnaturally efficient). It was bad, with dumb mistakes galore. The class average is even worse. Don't ask me about that one.

Onwards! More assignments, more interviews, more midterms!

*Materials Safety Data Sheet, obviously. On the other hand, "WHMIS" seems to be a Canadian thing, so I guess maybe that's not so obvious...
**Of all the people I've had interviews with this term, only one person knew what it was (which means, of course, he knew how it worked, as well). Most people use more powerful techniques to get the same results, because this instrument can detect only two elements.