Communicator test

Today I have had my first phone interview with a potential client in the US. A two-hour gruelling session was intellectually stimulating and got my adrenalin going. The client, a small product-oriented company from NY, was represented by three gentlemen of whom at least one had a Soviet background. My current team leader seems to be only half-joking when he says that speaking with American clients most of the time he does not need English. Well, one more blow to my old dream to work in a predominantly WASP environment :(

The IP phone used during the interviw immediately indicated its inherent weakness. The algorithm suppresses IP traffic during long pauses and a typical interview is prone to have lot of them. The suppression leads to sound jitters and other effects making a conversation quite unintelligible. The experience makes me wonder why we did not just use the old good Skype - we would have had much better quality even in a 4-way conference call. I still cannot believe Americans are behind Europeans in this respect.

As for the interview itself, I made a few technical errors indicating the lack of experience with particular technologies. I spent way too much time working with technologies only distantly related to the skills required from an average developer looked for in staffing companies. It hurts my pride but I swore I would survive anything for the sake of the visa. On the other hand, it dawned upon me that being employed by a bodyshop I risk working on a commodity such as a web-based MIS for years. After all the years of careful positioning and career choices this perspective is mildly frightening.

A more significant deficiency I demonstrated was mumbling under pressure. My pronunciation, vocabulary and adherence to the grammar still tend to blur when I am concentrated on a difficult question. The less I am sure in my answer the more gibberish I utter. They say this malady is cured by practice but I was definitely dissatisfied with my performance in this respect.