My project team is hiring again. This round we have 3 opening for verification position and 2 opening for design position. I have been interviewing every day for the past two weeks and met over 10 candidates. I have met some good ones and some bad ones. It is only a few months apart from last round interview, but I am surprise by the quality of the candidates. We get much better candidates in this round.

I guess the job posting is out for a few months, so we have accumulated lots of good resume. In last round, we have some good new hires, but its not a tough decision picking out the wheat from the chaff. This time we have so many good candidates that we actually has think harder to rank the candidate and pick the best one. Since there are more good candidates than our opening, we have to reject some otherwise decent candidates. If we were still in 2000, when the company is growing like crazy, we would hire those candidates without a second thought.

Come think of it, timing is a really important factor in your career and it is out of your control. When I graduated in 2000, it is really easy to get a job especially when you have good grades. Nowadays when the job market is tight, having good grade only gives you an interview, but the hiring decision requires a lot more. Most of my candidates have master degrees. I am not sure is it because of the job market is pretty dead a few years ago and push lots of jobless new grad into the master program. But not having a master degree is definitely a disadvantage in today’s job market.

When the dot com bubble burst, I always whim about I was graduating a year or two years too late that I had missed golden days. Looking at my candidates, most of them just graduate a year or two after me and they totally missed the train and end up drifting between jobs and school, went through multiple layoffs. Looking back, my graduation timing is not too bad after all, at least I still able board the last train leaving the station.