Tag: Personal Brand

What extra steps do you take to increase your chance of getting an interview?

In the past whenever applying to a job I have tried to go a step beyond what the employer might have requested. In a few cases the requirement was C++, so what better way to demonstrate your skills than writing a C++ program? After some thinking I decided that a C++ based resume would be a good sample. So, I ended up writing a program that renders my resume almost exactly as it would have been rendered by Microsoft Word. Instead of hard coding the complete resume I wrote a text rendering engine that reads an array of string and renders it on screen based on some simple rules.

To make it simple for the hiring manager to run this program I embedded the text in a string array so they can just pass the exe around without having to worry about sending multiple files. The program works just as well reading from a text file. Here is a quick screenshot of this program.

This program renders my resume just as Microsoft Word would have rendered it.

So, what extra steps have you taken to increase your chance of getting an interview?

Presenting at TechNow09 tomorrow

Tomorrow is the TechNow09 event happening in Royal Oak, MI. ShopFiber is one of the companies presenting. We will be doing a short skit about what ShopFiber is and how it can help the average consumer shopping for electronics. I will be playing the role of “Bob,” an average consumer and Jake will be playing the role of “Neo,” a gadget lover. We are hoping that this will be a very entertaining way to showcase ShopFiber. There is a plan to broadcast the event on ustream and I will post a link once the setup is finalized. I will tweet the link as soon as I find out, so follow me on twitter if you would like to watch the live stream.

I am planning on being there for most of the time after the main event so come and say hi if you have a chance.

Site Design Changed

New, simple site design

As part of my rebranding I have redesigned my personal website. As you might have noticed a little while back, I changed my twitter name from “@thebitguru” to @farhanahmad. This redesign is the next step as I become Farhan Ahmad from thebitguru 🙂 Why? you ask. Well, it is a little weird when you go to events and people recognize thebitguru, but don’t know who “Farhan Ahmad” is. I will still keep the domain name, but my name will be more prominent from now on.

For now I went for a simple design, no fancy graphics. My goal is to make minor changes as I get more time. Also, I am now publishing my twitter updates on the site.

Hopefully you like what you see 🙂 Enjoy!