I'm not against start-ups. I'm not against innovation. I enjoy Silicon Valley (the HBO show) for its satire.
I came across this today:
"... is a well-funded advanced technology company, backed by top VC firms, with the intent to completely disrupt the metal additive manufacturing industry."
How do you disrupt an industry that is barely past its infant years?
Friday, February 17, 2017
Friday, February 10, 2017
My story
Tell the story of your life
This post is a few weeks late.
I read this article several weeks ago. Coincidentally, I also came across it before heading out to an interview. The on-site interview process involved three one-on-one behavioral interviews, several technical "interviews" with different groups of the company, and a 30-40 minute presentation. Before heading out to the interview, I gave a practice presentation to my research group. The advice/criticism I received?
"You're not presenting about your research. You're presenting to sell yourself."
I thought from reading the article, I understood it. Although when I gave the practice presentation, it turned out I didn't. Refining my presentation to tell the story of me, was far more challenging than I expected, especially when every PowerPoint presentation I gave was a technical presentation.
I always believed my story was boring, especially as I've always stayed in the academic setting. I started doing undergraduate research the summer of 2008, after I failed to find an internship. The research project on water purification using metal oxide nanoparticles led to the WaterCampws REU for the next two years. The REU opened up to me the various aspects of academic research between writing, making posters, preparing presentations, attending seminars, and so forth. I graduated, applied to graduate school, and found myself at Carnegie Mellon University. When I came I envisioned working with the next generation of biomaterials, but instead I found myself fascinated by grain boundary engineering and microstructure evolution. I defended my thesis as an expert on annealing twins, grain growth, recrystallization, and microstructure characterization, and then found myself doing a post-doc next. At NIST, I changed gears again (but this time at least still working on microstructure and metals), focusing on deformation and formability of sheet metals.
While in a technical presentation nobody would ever care about this story, and I myself didn't think much of it at first, I realized it showed my flexibility to change between fields and my adaptability to become an expert (maybe not the leading expert) of a topic.
We all have a story to tell. What's yours?
This post is a few weeks late.
I read this article several weeks ago. Coincidentally, I also came across it before heading out to an interview. The on-site interview process involved three one-on-one behavioral interviews, several technical "interviews" with different groups of the company, and a 30-40 minute presentation. Before heading out to the interview, I gave a practice presentation to my research group. The advice/criticism I received?
"You're not presenting about your research. You're presenting to sell yourself."
I thought from reading the article, I understood it. Although when I gave the practice presentation, it turned out I didn't. Refining my presentation to tell the story of me, was far more challenging than I expected, especially when every PowerPoint presentation I gave was a technical presentation.
I always believed my story was boring, especially as I've always stayed in the academic setting. I started doing undergraduate research the summer of 2008, after I failed to find an internship. The research project on water purification using metal oxide nanoparticles led to the WaterCampws REU for the next two years. The REU opened up to me the various aspects of academic research between writing, making posters, preparing presentations, attending seminars, and so forth. I graduated, applied to graduate school, and found myself at Carnegie Mellon University. When I came I envisioned working with the next generation of biomaterials, but instead I found myself fascinated by grain boundary engineering and microstructure evolution. I defended my thesis as an expert on annealing twins, grain growth, recrystallization, and microstructure characterization, and then found myself doing a post-doc next. At NIST, I changed gears again (but this time at least still working on microstructure and metals), focusing on deformation and formability of sheet metals.
We all have a story to tell. What's yours?
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