Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Colorado anyone??


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Posted by Rick Denney on September 12, 2001 at 19:52:20:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Colorado anyone?? posted by D.C. on September 12, 2001 at 18:43:16:

So, why should you be any different?

I have many times gone to oral presentations where millions of dollars of engineering work, and the jobs of real people who work their whole lives without tenure, hung in the balance (including my own). In 95% of the cases, there was a clear favorite. Sometimes it was my company. Most of the time it wasn't.

I have lost enough of those I was wired to win, and won enough of those where someone else had the inside track, to know that the guy who they wanted still has to deliver the goods on that day. When I had the inside track, I knew that it was mine to lose, and that I was fully capable of doing just that.

Sure, the guy they like may have been the favorite going in. But what if someone else came in and just blew him away? Sure, the committee may have ignored him. But perhaps not.

If you attend auditions thinking that it is really wide open, ripe for the picking by anyone who is (usually only by tuba player definitions) fractionally better, then you are living in a dream world. In the engineering world, it is a given that all finalists who give an oral presentation are fully qualified to do excellent work. We take that as a fact, and it usually is. We therefore try to portray that extra something that we have that goes beyond technical expertise. Sometimes we succeed; often we fail.

As they say around the track, that's racing.

Rick "who recommends developing that special something" Denney


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