Every Buetian or should I say every graduate gets nervous when it is time to look for a full time job after a long student life. When I encountered that time in my life I was not only nervous but scared too. What if I don’t get a job? Why people should hire me? Those questions came across my mind. I tried to find the work place of some senior brother/sister whose cgpa is around me as I thought their work place could be my potential work place. But soon I found out the equation of getting/having job isn’t that easy.
Having a job depends on personal decision, interview and afterwards it depends on employee’s dedication. My first job was in Samsung R&D Institute, Bangladesh. I attended five/six hiring exams including campus recruitment exams organized by Therap, M&H Informatics, Reve Systems, Commlink, Eyeball, Google (Yes, Google arranged a campus recruitment for us!) Nobody called for a second round interview except Reve Systems and Samsung. My interview with Reve Systems was in middle of my 4-2 term final and I didn’t do that well. The last one was Samsung R&D. Our result was published by then. I was getting depressed day by day thinking about jobs. By that time I think I applied over twenty software companies, nobody showed any interest.
So, Samsung R&D was the first company who gave me a job. The training period was about seven days and it was really enjoyable. First I was assigned in a linux system group to write code for core tv sdk. There was a big Samsung tv in the office and soon I found out that was for the app building group. One day during lunch, I told one of my senior colleague apu that I would very much enjoy writing javascript code for app building team than writing c++ code for the linux team. I don’t know whether she recommended me or not, I was assigned to app building group. The app building group was really very helpful to me and coding in javascript was fun. The most fun part was running my app on tv. It was really going well in Samsung. Colleagues became friends and I found out it always helps to ask my senior colleagues if I got stuck somewhere in my work. Samsung office was in Badda that time and it was just 10 minutes walking distance from my home. So I had nothing to complain.
But nothing in this world is permanent. I had my heavenly first job only for two months. Samsung was preparing to transfer it’s office to karwan Bazar and they didn’t provide any transport that time. So, I started looking for another job. From my childhood I always wanted to go abroad (All of my uncles were there and they used to bring gifts each time they visited BD, maybe that’s the reason!). So I started to prepare for GRE and TOEFL.
Working full time and preparing for those hard exams were really challenging. So this time I was looking for academic job with less pressure. My second job was in BRAC University as a Lecturer. Eight people, all of them were my classmate joined with me. So, it was more like a party. Teaching was a new experience for me. But I tried my best.
Here I also learnt one important thing which is reputation. You can build a good reputation/bad reputation of yourself by your work. It is very important to build a good reputation at the beginning of any job. People always remember first impression. Here good reputation means being responsible about your work. You shouldn’t be late at least in your first month at work. Those things help you in the long run.
This teaching experience helped me to get Teaching Assistanship job in George Mason University, VA, USA where I got full funded phD offer. So, my second job lasted for fourteen months and by that time I have saved enough money (enough only to buy ticket and some stuff! sigh!) to start my student life in USA.
My teaching experience in abroad is more interesting than it was in my country. Somehow I have taught java in most of my teaching life both in BRAC and GMU. I found abroad life boring as I don’t have as much friend I used to have in BD. Life is also hard in USA. I have to do all the work by myself including paying rent, bills, cooking and what not. But all of these are new experiences in a new country which made me more confident about myself. I just hope that, by the time I will start my job hunt in USA, I wouldn’t be as nervous as I was when I just graduated from BUET!