This afternoon, I posted IT女新加坡求职记（上）and have a brief introduction about the background of this series, ways to find a job in Singapore and preparation&phone interview. Some of you may have read and reviewed it, here I want to say: Thanks for your reading, hope it will be somewhat helpful for you. Now I’ll continue to introduce my face to face interviews, hope you’ll like it.
Contents:
① Introductions
② Ways to Apply For a Job in Singapore
③ Preparation & Phone Interview
④ Face to Face( FTF ) Interviews
⑤ Summary
INOBEE CONSULTANCY PTE LTD (web designer)
This is my first interview in Singapore. An awful experience but learned a lot from it. First was filling up some forms. Then the HR and her assistant interviewed me. She asked me a few general questions like: what’s your visa? When do you come to Singapore? How many years work experience do you have in this field? Why do u leave your last company? Sort of….. As she spoke standard slow English, so I can basically understand what she talked about. Last came the Art Director, from his accent, I knew he’s absolutely a Singaporean. Here came my nightmare: he spoke Singlish, and fast, unclear, moreover as he may be ill and wearing a breathing mask that made his voice like a whisper. So I totally can’t understood what he talked about. What an awkward situation! Then the HR had to translate his words to me. As she may find out I have some problems in English, she translated to mandarin for me. As I do have some problems with English, so I reacted with mandarin too. Now I look back at it. It’s too bad to do so, because afterwards the HR had to translated my words to the Art Director too (there’re still a few Singaporean can’t understand mandarin). The result was I failed the interview.
But I still learnt a lot from it:
1. I realized finding a suitable job in Singapore is not an easy thing for me. What I imagined before I came here was absolutely wrong. It’ll be a long way to go. I’ve to fight about it.
2. Web designer in Singapore have to keep pace with the latest web design trends, that means you can do well in flat design, responsive design sort of. But I have no related experience especially in responsive design.
3. Web designer in Singapore is strictly demanded to wireframe. You can’t only reference the others’ design.
4. Many companies don’t have a strict boundary between web designer and graphic designer, so you’d better do both, and still can undertake some web developer jobs.
5. Communicate well in English is mandatory if you want to work in Singapore.
6. One interview question impressed me is: the Art Director asked me to introduce my best web design work to him, and why is it the best. I never pay much attention to this question before, and my oral English is still not so good to introduce the whole project and all the details correctly. So you can imagine how bad I react to this question.
At last, they gave me one test: design a home page for EZ-link card online sale (a card you can use to take bus, MRT, just like bus card in china). The colour of the page can be white, black, red and blue. Your completed files include: one PSD, one wireframe. (Since I felt bad about the interview, I see there’s little chance for me to win, so for the test, I didn’t pay much attention to. But now I look back, that was definitely wrong. I should do it right and send to them ASAP. Because that’s the right attitude one should have no matter what the result is.) My work’s as follows (Psd + wireframe), now I look back at it, it's actually not a wireframe:
LCO Creations (UI designer)
Office Building
This is a Japanese company. The COO interviewed me, she’s a young lady who speaks slow clear English which I can totally understand. From her accent, I guess she may come from Japan. She asked me some general questions like: introduce yourself, work experience in this field, project experience in UI design, details about some of my UI design works. And these two questions impressed me a lot:
1. For the latest design trends, what do you think is the most useful?
2. What’s the difference between flat design and non-flat design?
She seemed to have a good impression on me. At last, she gave me one task:
· Flat design a mock-up for a mobile AP that suits for IPhone 5 (IOS 6);
· The design should be visualization compelling;
· It should be simple, friendly, and interactive enough to cater for all age tourists, mostly Japanese users;
· They think mobile Aps like Air-Asia and Path are both good reference.
Since I never do a whole IPhone 5 AP development, I waste much of my time in data collection. After all that, I think my result should be:
· Considering of Retina screen (same physical pixels but digitally twice pixels), so there should be two sets of images of all the design. And the resolution of IPhone 5 is 640*1136px.
· Responsive design & Flat design
· Visualization compelling, simple and friendly to use, interactive
In the process of achieving it, I tried hard to build up a virtual development environment on my computer which wasted me a lot of time but still failed. So I can’t do a real IPhone 5 AP mock-up. At last I had to give up and choose to do a web mock-up instead. But I still don’t understand how to suit the Retina screen. My work is as left (Psd + wireframe + web mock-up):
The result of this interview is the COO wrote me a long email explaining how they made a difficult decision to not pursue my selection further this time since there’s small differences in the candidates’ qualifications and experiences.
From this interview I realized I have these shortages:
· I wasted too much time in data collection but that didn’t help me much in achieving the task. What I should do is get the task done and send back to them ASAP;
· I ever did in my previous jobs in mobile AP design is strictly graphic design. So I don’t know the whole process of android and IOS AP development. I don’t know how to putting up a virtual development environment. I don’t know how to achieve a mock-up in this environment: what tools I needed? What languages should I use? And how can I test it?
· I know little about the differences between android AP and IOS AP. I don’t know how to convert my design to suit the retina screen;
· I know little about responsive design, and still don’t know how to achieve it.
Var Connectz Pte Ltd (Website Designer)
I felt blue those days and didn’t want to do anything. So didn’t prepare for it. Then I went for it but failed to find the place and be so much late. So I felt I already ruined it and unwilling to give it a try no matter how the HR asked me to go. But now looking back, I’m such an idiot. Behave irrationally. No matter what happened, you should behave like an adult. The bad thing made you sad, reacted like this only made thing worse. So be an adult, be responsible for yourself. If you want something, you should try your best.
Aleph Lab (Front-end Developer)
Office Building
A recruitment agency recommended me this position. I think it’s not fit for me. But he convinced me to give it a try. The interviewer is a Pakistani. An easy to please man. He asked me a few questions like: how do u know about JS? Do u know JQuery? How about your skills in HTML5 and CSS3? Can u do responsive design? Sort of. In which three questions he raised impressed me a lot:
· Use JS to achieve showing and hiding of an object
· Convert a rectangle to a round
· Use CSS only to draw the shape 
Shortages I realized in this interview are: to be a better web designer, I should also grasp some basic JS, JQuery, XML, HTML5 and CSS3.
DREAMEROS PTE LTD (WEB MASTER/GRAPHIC DESIGNER)
The only one company which interviewed me all in mandarin. That made me felt so much easy. After a small test, he was satisfied with me. But I found it’s a company selling adult merchandise. So I don’t want to work for it.
NTU- CELT (Multimedia Designer (2D and 3D))
Office Building
It was a senior position demanded for 2-5 years 2D and 3D animation and interaction simulation work experience. Since I have work experience in 2D and 3D, although they’re not in animation and simulation field and I know I’m not good at it too. But I really wanted to give it a try. Because I had a plan to attend a graduate school, and this is really the one. The position can not only be convenient for my graduate school plan, but also can fully combine my 2D and 3D experience and put them to actual use. The preparation process made me feel awful and depressed as I found so many shortages I had in the field. The feeling like a soldier already knew he’ll die before he actually went to a real battle. But I thought it’ll be a valuable experience for me, so I didn’t give up.
The interview is in Tuesday afternoon, I spent one and half hours to get to the venue. After a long time’s waiting, there came in three interviewers: one Chinese, two Malaysians, all around 40 years old. The interview lasted about 40 minutes, they asked me many questions like: introduce yourself. Could you show us the best three pieces of work in web design, graphic design and 3D design, and why do you think they’re the best? How about your skills in HTML5 and CSS3? Do u have more animation works, flash, 3D animation is ok? So all your work experience is in China, u don’t have any local work experience yet? When do u come to Singapore? What you’ve been doing since u come? Sort of.
From this interview I learnt:
· Multimedia designer can be one of my future ways, but it’s too much for me right now. I do have work experience both in 2D and 3D field, but my existing 2D&3D experience and knowledge don’t have any intersection. Since I already know the basic requirements for this kind of position, I can fuel myself better if I want to achieve it.
· If u want something, u must can pay for it. Otherwise the more strong feeling you have to want something out of your reach, the more depressed and awful you’ll feel.
Next time, I’ll continue to share other of my face to face interview experiences. And maybe some of you can benefit from it. Thanks!
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