[Systers-dev] Thank You Systers !

[Jennifer Redman]

Hi Kanika Vats,
Thank you for your excellent post - I'm very glad to hear you had a good
experience this summer.  This was really our first effort at expanding our
development community and you, Anna, and Malveeka have proved to be a
tremendous help and you also helped us learn a great deal.

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:47 PM, kanika vats <kanika.krikan at gmail.com>wrote:

<snip>



> PS: Please all of you share your GSOC experience too ! I will love to know
> what you feel about GSOC and all of us....tell the good and bad sides
> both.One question that I always wanted to ask...with so many applicants
> during the application period why did you select us as in what did you found
> in us that you considered us capable for this project.
>

Robin and Andy can also provide their own answers -- but I thought I'd give
you some thoughts from my perspective.

When you have a fairly level playing field -- basic skill-sets -- in all
your applicants, my next priority becomes the person's ability to ask
questions, think critically, and admit when you don't know something.
 Applicants (or potential employees) who will say to me "I don't know, but
here is how I would go about gaining more information to help me solve the
problem," will always do much better in interview situations then those who
rely on bravado and well BS (I think that might have been a mini-lecture
;>).  I think I saw that ability -- to think critically -- in all 3 of you.
 All three of you also stayed engaged in the application process and gave a
lot of thought to answering the questions and participating in the
application process.

I would say that we had probably five other applicants to whom it was
extremely hard to say "no."  Hopefully, in the future we'll be able to take
everyone.

Thank you very much to Kanika Vats, Anna, and Malveeka for all your
hard-work and patience, I know I learned just as much from the three of you
as you may have learned from me.

We are working on an actual postmortem-- that will be be a bit more critical
-- so we can learn from our experience and keep the things we did right and
improve those that need work.    Stay-tuned!

Jen