Getting to iHub: The Pitch

Now I had my CV and a decent cover letter. So what next? Well what happened next was a series of very fortunate coincidences that would lead me to an interview with iHub research.

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)