The first thing was when Rachel, the old community manager at iHub came to my school with Intel to train students on their Native Development Kit. I won the phone, an Intel YOLO, they were giving away by being the most awesome tweeter (twitterer? Either way follow me on twitter) And I got to have a chat with her as she was leading the team that had come to my school. She had just given me her card.
“Can I call you about something other than Intel?” I said while looking at her details on the card.
“Ummm, I don’t know if that would be appropriate”
Looking up with a smile and a slight chuckle,”I just want to talk to you about this internship I want to apply for at iHub research”
“Oh cool. Send me an email with your CV and I’ll see what I can do”
I hadn’t even written my cover letter yet at this point but I was trying to give it the best chance I could when I did.
Later that week, I finished the cover letter and sent it both to Rachel and to iHub Research. And then I waited. I sent it on a Wednesday evening and waited. I was a little nervous wondering whether it was good enough and if I was being presumptuous to apply for internship that didn’t really exist. The next day I got a reply
We will get back to you should an opportunity arise.
I was hopeful now and so I began to reread the reports that Umati had come out with and I tweeted some of my thoughts and interesting things that I had just read. Luckily for me @C_leo_patra, a Researcher who worked at iHub, saw my tweets and asked what my interest was in the project. After I told her that I’d applied she said that she would look in to my application. The next day I got a the following reply:
Are you available to come in to iHub Research for a brief chat to better understand your motivation for working with us and your areas of interest? Let us know what day/time next week might work for you.
Success!!!! I had an interview!!! I had a foot in the door so to speak. Next it was time to prepare for the interview. I’ll be talking about this next post. Peace!!!
Continue the series: part 1(The Search) part 2(the Letter), part 4(the Interview) and the conclusion(Lessons learned)