Just Re-Post

Dear Fasilkom UI undergrads

Worth reading for all undergraduate students. Source: http://naningutoyo.posterous.com/dear-fasilkom-ui-undergrads.

Trust me. If you’re a Faculty of Computer Science (Fasilkom) University of Indonesia (UI) students, and you don’t have a marvelous GPA above 3.7 such as @ianhutomo, or a prominent programmer with a legendary GPA such as @budianto71 or @denvil_13on9, I suggest you to read this post. I’ve got a lot of questions from juniors, asking how could I easily get a job. This might be really long post, but I hope this post can help me answering the question and giving some advices to the juniors as well. 

Speaking  and writing in English might be the biggest challenge for Fasilkom UI students. Every time the lecturer gives an exam in English, the first question regarding to the exam, would be “can we answer in Bahasa?”. Every time the lecturer gives material in English, I see so many friends using Google Translate to help them translating the materials. Every time they see speaking English fluently as a requirement in a job vacancy, their guts shrink and change their mind to not apply for the job. Listen to me, no matter where you work and what you do, English is important. So many juniors expect me to help them get into big companies, but they cannot even speak in English. Then how would they do their meetings? How would they create reports? And what the hell is wrong with learning English? It won’t disadvantage you at all. There are so many ways to keep yourself practicing English. Even now I force myself to think in English. So many times I find myself slipped Bahasa vocabularies during meetings (not to mention I even slipped ‘demi apa?!’ at the office *facepalm*). If you think English courses are expensive, you can try free alternative ways then such as watching TV series with English subtitles, read books in English, do your assignments in English, read the English lyrics for music that you listen, or even join virtual communities and forums around the world. 

Everyone has unique gifts and talents, and the earlier you discover and develop yours the better off you’ll be. What you’re good at might not what you love, and what you love might not what you’re good at. Try reviewing your transcript and look at which courses that you perform best at. Try to dig deeper what you good at and what you love. Make yourself to be some that is mastering the field more than anyone else. Build your personal brand, become a subject matter expert, and guard your reputation. Not only that, stay up-to-date on upcoming and new technologies that is interesting to you or take it in an entirely new direction. Work in different types of programming languages that require you to think in different ways. Work with different people who have different coding styles. You may not be able to code, but by being an IT student, all people in this world will expect you to at least understand technology. Rather than following Twitter like @hotradero or @terselubung, try following something that are actually have quality like @codinghorror, @mashable,@techcrunch, and many more. I’ve put them all in my Twitter list for IT and Tech and programmers, you can subscribe them if you like. Try browsing Stackexchange rather than browsing other websites that will only lead you into a procrastination burrow. 

The purpose of any resume is to improve your chances of landing an interview and securing a job offer. Since resume quality differs from person to person, it is important to ensure that yours stand out for its quality and not for its flaws. Your two pages resume should describe who you are, your skills and accomplishments on paper. I understand if you worked so hard for your organizational activities; however, don’t put each of them on the CV. Put the biggest events or put the ones that you think you have the most work loads. Don’t forget to explain what event you’ve been on and the purpose of the event. Don’t assume that reader is also someone that comes from Fasilkom UI, or at least familiar with the IT field. Don’t forgot to optimize yourself in the search engine. Update your LinkedIn. You can also use about.me. Use your real name for your email. If you think you’re interested in a particular area of interest, write about it, post it on your blog. If you’re good at design or photography, make your own portfolio or use free tools that are available on the Internet. These things are good to make it easier for others to know more about you and contact you right away.

Surround yourself with people smarter than you. You might think that UI is like Indonesian version of Harvard, or whatever it is. But the competition won’t be as easy as you think. You will also have to compete with Indonesians that study overseas, not to mention those prodigies that just have no luck to get into public universities, or might be not even interested. UI might be the best university in Indonesia, but there are tons of other universities that are much better than UI that have Indonesian students that you’ll have to contend with in the future. How well-known your alma mater is, it will never change the fact that you’re only a fresh grad. I help few Indonesian companies and startups in finding potentially great fresh grad. But it’s definitely not one time I heard from them that a typical UI fresh grads attitudes were so bad that some did not even bother to inform the companies if they were running late or unable to attend scheduled interviews. They also said that a typical UI fresh grads are snobs, that they prefer to take other fresh grads because they’re more low profile and they would never refuse to take all kinds of tasks. I understand perfectly that we Fasilkom UI students, having to sacrifice our social lives for getting good grades and other achievements. But you have to understand that we’re not the only one that work so hard to get good grades and outstanding achievements. Nevertheless, most companies use some combination of your GPA and your alma mater (and in some cases your class rankings) only to do an initial filtering. Don’t underestimate other undergrads that come from other universities. The fact that it is so hard to get through Fasilkom UI, doesn’t implies how good you are, or whether you’re better than anyone else. What matters is what’s in CV. Some companies think that grades are important, but they would care more that the person had successful projects and can actually got things done.  

If you’re about to ask for help to other people (eg: lecturers, seniors, alumni, even janitors and security staffs, etc), make it less obvious. Appreciate people that they’ve given some of their time to help you. Say thank you, say sorry to bother, and help them in the future as a reciprocation. That’s why you need to make friends with others as much as you can, you won’t know when you’ll need them in the future. Be nice to people regardless of their rank and designation. It sounds philosophical but when you are nice to people they go out of their way to help you. 

Fasilkom UI has been there for years. So many Fasilkom UI students work or study overseas because they don’t see them self fit in Indonesia because of their skewed field of interest. So for students that have very specific field of interest, we have so many alumni that can help you. I myself, interested in UX and usability, apparently there’s @uxqonita who is a PhD in the field. If you’re interested in IT governance and management, we have @FeHa. If you’re interested in tech journalist, we have @amirk. If you’re interested in voice recognition, we have @ronnyluke. If you’re interested ini English and Japanese, we have @yogadwitya. If you’re interested in game development, we have @affathfirdausi or @agp12. If you’re interested in character designing, we have @faizalrahman27. If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, we have @nataliardianto and@ilmanakbar. If you’re interested in cybercrime or intelligence agency, we have @friscoo. If you’re interested in organizational and non-academic activities, we have @fira2104. Not to mention our amazing lecturers such as @rulimanurung, @aakrisnadhi or @rifkishihab (and so many others that might be not on Twitter). Our lecturers are those people who have live their lives attaining knowledge for as long as they live and still have the passion in teaching us. Respect them. I doubt if you were them, you still have the interest to teach. I can even help you to find alumni that have an at least similar field of interest for you to consult. We as alumni would be more than happy to help our juniors in finding their career path.     

Push yourself to the limit. Internships, volunteer work, coursework, membership in college organizations, and almost anything else that might help you hone your professional skills can be considered experience. I bet after you’re reading my sentence you’ll think “Hmm, we have lots of assignments and projects that need to be dealt with, we don’t have time for anything else”. Here’s a thing. You, are the only 2% from those thousands of people that passed the public test for Fasilkom UI. So you are /at least/ above average. I never regret myself for getting 24 credits, 2 organizational activities, participating in competitions, and not to mention I was working for my previous workplace in one semester. That was tough and stressful, I never say that it was easy. But after that, I can see myself that I’m able to work under pressure and multitasking. I nailed everything and I’m happy with it. So, don’t fear to push yourself to the limit. There must be a good result after all the hard work you’ve done. I’ve heard people talking about me that i’m just surviving by dumb luck that got really good work experience with no real academic achievements. I’d say it’s just their fault for not getting out from the lab and start networking to ‘real creature’ like humans. So many activities you can join other than college activities. Try volunteer works. Try participating in communities and organizations. Try joining yourself in competitions. Try working part time in a small-medium business or start-ups. Participating in other activities than college life, may accomplished so many benefits. Networking, social and soft skills, experience, and many more.    

In the end, you might probably think I’m a ‘ms-know-it-all’. Or for alumni that are already working as professionals might also think the same way. But hear me out. I’m just trying to help my juniors to expose themselves to the real world, and not encouraging them to withdraw oneself. Or locking them self in their room to study or code for tomorrow’s exam. Or being so active in the digital world while having no contribution in the real world. It’s definitely not something that can be done in a day or two, or a week or two. It’s not like you can prepare yourself to the future like you prepare yourself for final exam. It is something that has to be done as soon as possible, and something you need to think of while you’re living your college life other than studying. I wish you all the best.