Job Search

2 years ago I moved from Israel to the US to live and work,

Analyzing it in hindsight It seems the way I searched for a job was not good, and existing methods and tools are not good enough either. This was my experience

I got Rejected without getting interviews

I applied to Khan Academy and some Media Lab company, and they rejected me without giving me an interview, for both I think I was a good fit, where excited about what they worked on, and could have passed an interview, but got rejected without getting one.

The Jobs I ended up working at weren't a great fit for me

I had 2 jobs: 

The first one, I found very randomly, a non-profit, building an educational search engine.

The second was very default, Google.

In both cases, team, culture and work weren't a great fit for me.

Conclusion

I'm very thankful for what I got,

And although there are way better ways for finding a job like Angellist,( which I didn't know about at the time), In many cases it's still hard to get an interview, and  still hard to figure out if a company is a good fit for you.

And the next blog I'm gonna talk about the solution I'm thinking about. 

Where is the idea?

I have "friend" who is starting his first startup,
As a long time wantrepreneurs he always thought that by the time he will finally start his company, he will have a killer idea, but it didn't really happened..

After I read famous startup success I could see it is sometimes the case,

I really like Elad Gil's suggestions:

• "Start a company.  Don't start an idea" 
•  "Focus on a great market, not a great idea"

Than how do you go about finding great market?

3 things I wish I know when I was younger

Here are 3 things I would tell my "high-school" self if I could go back in time:

• Be judgmental on ideas - Grades are important! are they? it is important to listen to the news! is it? all the Arabs want to destroy Israel! do they? research show X! how do they know? who said so? be judgmental, keep in mind you are probably live in a very homogenous environment. look on the web for new ideas. (e.g Ted.com)

• Don’t be judgmental on people - It can be anything from judging a group of people you don't even met, to judging your teacher, family, friends or class mates. for some reason while we accept ideas without questioning we don't accept people easily. the probelms with that:
• The person or you get hurt by your judgment.
• You block yourself to new ideas.(as mention above).

• Good people want to guide you. - Probably many of them are you teachers. Personally I'm always happy to give any guidance, it can be anything from recommending books and ways to learn stuff such as programming and any science field, math, technology, psychology I promise to replay, and I promise to give my best answer or to ask my friends who will have the best answer. contact me on abgutman1@gmail.com

Fail

The 2 problems with failing are:

1.  It creates a bad feeling.
2.  As a consequence it make us avoid trying.

How can we handle this? so we won't feel bad, and won't be afraid to try?

The power of now helped me create for myself a better perspective.

Failing to me, means:

1. I tried - I fail because I tried something? good, trying is good.
2. I care - If I noticed it, it means I care and I have some will to change it!
3. Any way life is not a big deal.

And Keep in mind we fail all the time, all day long.

For example, 2 fails I had today:
- I picked a bad book to read. (Good! I tried)
- I overslept, more then I planned to. (OK, Good! I care)

Lastly its OK to feel bad, and you can also feel good about feeling bad, as long as you don't care about "yourself" too much.

Skip

I just realize why, non-fiction books contained unnecessary content:

If you are an author and you have an idea and you want to speared it in the world.
And you think let say 40 pages is the most appropriate way to describe this idea.
Well..

You have no good way to publish 40 pages!

For a book its too short!
For a blog its way too long!

What would you do? push unnecessary content.

So when you read remember:

Not all text were bron equal, and you have limited time in this world so just... Skip!

New habits

The problem:

We bump into interesting ideas (books, friends, random lectures etc.)
We think we gonna do something about that, adopt some behavior, but too often we don't.

One useful habit I gain is
gaining new useful habits! systematically!

I simply keep a list of new habits - which I update almost daily,
and those habits I'm actively trying to gain.

Some example from my current list:

• Keep track of time.
• Have a watch on your hand, or clock on the computer, and for each action track the starting time. and end time.
• Define what you want to work on:
• Ask yourself, if I could only do 2 things today, what will they be? (taken from 4-hours work week)

Hope this post will help gain new useful habit :)

6 Tools For English Reading.

Here are the 6, with a brief overviews:

1. Kindle. - If you still think physical books are better you just haven't made the change yet, they are not. Why you should make the shift:

• Larger books collection. one click available. (you can get a sample for free.)
• Highlight text and bookmarks. - so you could go back and review main points.
• Built in dictionary. - get definition in a second.
• Great for traveling if you gonna read more then one book.

1. Google translate. 
2. Chrome. - Because of the built-in spelling correction.
3. Google definition search. - (e.g you wanna know the definition of balloon, search balloon definition).
4. Google dictionary plugin. - double click see the definition. 
5. Push to Kindle plugin. - Its harder to read long text on computer monitor, just send it to your Kindle.