Ed King landed at Skillsoft!

Posted by: "edking42" edking@comcast.net   edking42

Wed Jul 22, 2009 5:22 pm (PDT)

Hi all,

I have successfully landed at Skillsoft! I started as a QA Software Engineer in their Finance group last Monday, July 20.

I located the job opening through Indeed.com, which picked up the listing from NashuaTelegraph.com.

I remembered that someone I had worked with 10 years ago might have ended up there, but I had lost track of the person. I used LinkedIn to search for Mary and found out she was currently working at Skillsoft.

I invited Mary to connect, and mentioned that I was applying for a position. I asked her to describe the culture, how she liked working at Skillsoft, both the good and the bad aspects of the company.

Mary responded that it was a very good place to work, and added that another person I knew was also working there. I now had two personal contacts there.

When the corporate recruiter contacted me about an initial phone interview, I asked Mary if it was alright to mention her name. She said no problem, go ahead and mention her.

I was asked right up front in initial interview about salary expectation. I deferred, saying that I had been working as a contractor for past three years, which skewed the numbers due to lack of benefits. The recruiter told me what the job paid, which was well within my expectations (and hopes!).

The recruiter set up an initial phone interview. I Googled the person I would be interviewing with and found some things to use in the interview. The actual interview ended up being with three folks on a speaker-phone, so I could not use the Google facts to break the ice.

I was called back for in-person interview with the same three folks. This time it was one-on-one. The people who conducted the interviews were very straight-forward, friendly, and enthusiastic about the direction the department was moving in.

I was called back for a second round of interviews with the same three people plus three more. One of the interviewers asked me what my greatest weakness was. I thought about it, and decided to address a key area to set the expectations clearly. I explained that, while I had written complex SQL queries some four to five years ago, my skills had become rusty. In an effort to reduce operational costs for the IBM database, there had been a major move to reduce the number of jobs being run, and, as part of that effort, only DBA's were permitted to write and submit SQL queries. 

The hardest part of the process was writing all those thank-you notes by hand in ink. My handwriting could drive cryptographers to tears of frustration! I first typed each note in Word to make sure everything was spelled correctly, then hand wrote it on the Thank You card. I mentioned something from the interview for each person I thanked. For example, when thanking the person who had asked about my biggest weakness, I indicated in the note that I was eager to learn better, tighter SQL coding. 

The total time from responding to the initial job posting to landing the job took 2 full months.

I cannot fully express my appreciation for the help I've received and the new friends I've made at Acton Networkers. I will miss you all at the Friday meeting, but intend to remain a member in order to pass on any leads I become aware of.

--Ed

Ed King
Experienced SQA Professional
edking@comcast.net