Saving future students from stupid examples..

...Sometimes I just want to establish a company and make it huuuuuuuuuuge international success and make sure that it has nothing to do with mobile phone industry. I am very annoyed by the fact, that in basically every class when we have some examples, they are always about Nokia or mobile phones in general. Okay, there have been few exceptions to this rule, but mainly things have revolved around these topics.


Annoying like hell.


Okay, lets admit that I wouldn't mind if someone else beats me to it and another Finnish company becomes huge success. But please, SAVE THE POOR STUDENTS OF TOMORROW FROM THESE AWFUL, AWFUL MOBILE PHONE DISCUSSIONS!!

Thank you for your interest...

aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. That time of the year again when there is endless amounts of these letters in my mailbox. Somehow the figures do not give me that much optimism for the other applications either:

• At Fortum, they have received over 6000 applications for maybe 20-30 places.
• At Vaisala GiantLeap Program they received about 740 applications for 20 places max. 

From those figures it is easy to see that there is a bit of a competition going on for the few open internships/summer jobs that are out there. When you think about those kind of numbers logically, it means that the companies just can not read every application and they sure do not do that. Then the question arises that how do they narrow those applications down? I have no idea. Maybe they look for some magic words, maybe by throwing a dice or maybe utilizing pigeon feathers and cat whiskars in the process.

Or maybe I just suck at writing applications.

Applying for job in the 21st century

Things are definitely not the same than in the past. Today, seeking and applying for jobs is done mainly in the Internet. For a job seeker like me, it means that I have to visit several websites where they post the ads for vacancies. Some of them include lots of same ads, since companies want maximum visibility and do not want to miss potential employees because they didn't use the portal that the company uses. Basically you keep seeing the same stuff again and again with some different postings in the middle.

Quite so often the actual application happens in online portal. Which sucks to be honest. Usually it means entering the same basic information again and again in the form where they are then uploaded to their HR system. They want to know your name, address, contact information, work experience, language skills, education etc. It is really frustrating to input the same stuff that you have in your CV. On top of that, many companies want also your CV as an attachment. Yeah, so what is the point of typing in all the information then to these forms?

As if that isn't bad enough, today I experienced something totally new. After putting in all the required information and answering questions like "are you from UK? What about Canada?", writing a cover letter, copy&pasting my CV as well as attaching it, I had to do series of tests(!) to ensure my application is submitted. First, I needed to answer sixtysomething questions, which tried to get an image of how I work in a group, what is my background, how do I deal with deadlines and ideas and so on. That test took 30 minutes to complete. After that came another one, reasoning test which required me to choose a correct alternative to series of visual problems. You know, the kind that for example Mensa uses.

On some level I can understand these tests. It is a way for the company to profile the people and cut off unsuited people from their selection process. But for an applicant point of view that is really annoying! It took about 2 hours for me to apply to this ONE position! I consider it to be a bit of a long shot anyways so to waste that much time on this is really frustrating. When I began to apply there, the website didn't say anything about these tests. If I'd known, I guess I would not have applied....

So all in all, I just wish it would be easier. Just write a cover letter and CV, send them via email and then wait for response. In the current situation you just throw a rock and hope it reaches its target.

Mmmkay, this is going to be ugly

Disclaimer: this is going to be a rant. If you are not interested in reading negative post, then don't read it.

Then to the issue itself. I am now sitting in a research seminar. The idea of this would be to think about our thesis's or dissertations. Which are due in about 1.5 years and should be started maybe one year after today. One year. And still we are here in the classroom listening to these presentations about whatever. Okay, that's not that bad. But the thing that this guy is expecting us to write some kind of research proposals soon for our dissertations....

WE DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT ARE OUR TOPICS YET!

...and its very nearly impossible to know them at this point. So what is the point of doing some research proposals when you know they don't have any value for anyone? I have no idea.

But that's not all. The teacher is expecting us to write a blog about our thesis's, start using Google calendar with all the milestones and as a cherry on the top of all this make a 5 minute YouTube video about our thesis proposal! Hahaha.

Video. About thesis proposal.

How is that going to help me with my thesis? How is that going to make me write or finish the work with better results? How will all that bring extra value for my research?

The thing is: it doesn't. All it does is to help me waste my time doing some stuff that does not make any sense, does not help in any way and does not bring any value to anyone.

I mean. I have already written one master's thesis and I know what the process is like. I know what are the parties that are interested in the research (yourself, university, company), what helps in the process and what does not. And frankly, none of this bs what we are doing now does not matter at all.