OR careers, MSc project, Discrete Event Simulation

Apologies first. I have not been blogging in a long time mainly because I was caught up doing my MSc project website in which there is a heck of a lot of modules to go through and then check to make sure they display correctly. At the moment I have made all 27 modules of the website, now all I need to is sort out display, repeating JavaScript and the most labour-some task Testing. Or as I like to call it "Testing to destruction". The idea of making it fail is more harsh but sounds more fun.

Okay apologies done. On the 16th November 2011, it was a Wednesday (by the way) I attended a Operational Research Careers Open day. This was in Birmingham and started at 10:00 and went on to 15:30. There were a lot of stalls there so to name as many as I can:

• [dstl]
• BA
• GORS
• Tesco
• Hartley McMasters ltd
• RBS
• Atass Sports
• IBM UK
• Cardiff University
• University of Southampton

After browsing the stalls they had a lot of talks from a lot of different companies on what exactly they do. There was talks from Martin Slaughter from Hartley McMaster Ltd on what they did with Vodafone. It was on opening hours and rotas for staff i.e. whether to open on a Sunday or not? Also a talk from Mike Nicholson from IBM UK talking about a case study they did. Next up was GORS or Government OR Services. They talked about how the work is very varied, job security and an amazing pension (better than the average). Then Andrew Long from British Airways Where he talked about the code on an airway ticket and all the different sections which is put together to form British Airways. Then there was a Company I never heard of before that day Tata Steel I presume this is for engineers who describe themselves as mathematicians but I could be wrong. And the very last talk of the day was Tom Hibbert from Tesco who talks about the different problems Tesco faces like perishable good, how much to order etc.

The Careers day was very informative the only problem was travel costs for me to get there by 10.00 i had to pay £70 roughly and to get home i got the cheapest ticket which was around £18 pounds mark. If however they moved the starting time to nearly 12.00 then my forward journey would only cost £18 roughly. Thats the only thing that annoyed me, apart from that well done the OR Society.

For an assessment centre I have to study up on one of four Operational Research Topics namely "System Dynamics", "Discrete Event Simulation", "Bayes net or other decision tree type approach", "Multi- criteria Decision Analysis (or a specific technique from within this group of techniques)".

Having looked at the wiki pages of these I found out Discrete Event Simulation looks mainly like Queueing theory. So I have to brush up on this, luckily I did actually do this in my BSc whilst at Greenwich University with my favourite lecturer Professor Vitaly Strusevich. I have a lot of man love for this guy, a person who actually got me into OR and got me to join the OR society.

UPDATE 13th December
Some links I forgot about. Whilst at the career fair the first talk was from the chairman of the OR Society and he mentioned some projects he was working on they were Green Logistics and ITIS Holding.

Job hunting-feel out this questionaire...

If your in my position (finished university)you will be now job hunting. Depending on what sites you go to, instead of wanting your CV, they want to ask you questions about certain criteria's that they will be judging you on. These questions will be different on every website you do, but the type of questions will be near enough the same. Instead of typing out your answer on every site you go to, I would recommend you make a document which has these type of questions on there, so when you go to a website which asks a question you have previously answered, you can copy and paste your answer and then tweak it to fit what that website requires of you.

Here is some questions to get you thinking about:

1. Describe a situation when you identified a new way of doing something, which affected other people. How did you convince the others that it was the right thing to do?
2. Describe a recent situation when you have had to overcome a challenge. What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve these?
3. Describe a situation which demonstrates how you applied your analytical skills to solve a problem
4. Describe a time when you have worked within a team. What attributes did you bring to the team? What did you learn about your own behavior in this situation and how would you change your behavior in a similar situation in the future?
5. What are your spare time interests? Please explain why these are important to you and include any areas of responsibility

Specific questions

Why have you chosen to join <insert company name>? What has influenced your choice of business area and what particularly interests you in the <insert company scheme>?

Modelling/problem question

1. Quantitative Analysis This Refers to a situation where the analytical questions have been established and you need to produce a concrete and quantified solution using numerical analysis and /or modelling. Please describe:
   1. Your role
   2. Any analytical techniques you used and how you used them.
   3. How you used available data or produced it.
   4. How you assessed the accuracy and usefulness of your results
2. Drive for results It is important that OR analysts plan their work clearly and can respond to clients requests within deadlines, being proactive and using initiative when problems arise. Please describe:
   1. Your role in the project;
   2. Your objective and the steps you took to plan and monitor the project;
   3. How you dealt with challenges, both foreseen and unexpected.

You may not get these exact question, but it will be along the same lines as these. If you are job hunting good luck out there, and be careful of spam website and spam job posting.

IMA 14th Early Career Mathematician Conference

I went to this on Saturday mainly for the career talk which was held in the morning and bits of the afternoon. The conference was held at the University of Leicester. And during some of it people were twittering #ecm14. Adrian Hamilton took the talk on career planning workshop. We first looked at what to include on a CV, the very broad first:

1. Profile (Pen Picture of facts)
1. Management level
2. Business Areas
3. Functions carried out
4. skills, abilites, strenghts
2. Achievements
1. Some selected achievements
2. Excerpts from experience
3. Career Progression
1. Start from most recent
2. Dates, name of organisation, what it does
3. Key tasks and responsibilities
4. Other Relevant Facts
1. Education, qualifications, training
2. Outside work experience, interests, personal

He did mention that CV change over time, the format I mean but they should about 2 pages no more. Any more and the employer will get bored, as he/she has too see loads of these.
We then did a group discussion on identifying Achievements and then trying to get as many doing words as possible to show what you have accomplished. He also mentioned as a side note that apparently there a preconception that mathematicians aren't good with money, so if you can show you are good with money it will be no bad thing (nudge, nudge).
We also looked at the different ways to search and apply for jobs.

Cold Approach
It's simple, one letter. Useful if growing company. But there may be no job available. Also the chances of success are small.

The other methods most people know:
Contact Networks
Response to Adverts
Recruitment Agencies

The Contact Network seemed to be the best way of getting a job you want. We also looked at Referral Interviews. This was completely new to me. If you have some one in a contact network and you ask them about getting a job in a particular sector, they can refer you to someone who may have more knowledge about the goings on.

The first step is to get referred to someone. Next write them a letter about what you want to get out of it, these referrals are not for you to ask them for a job but talk to them your career plan in general sense, also send them your CV. Next to phone them to confirm a meeting. This is where you mention your letter and make clear that you are not after a job. Mention that it will not take long and you know their time is valuable. If they say they can't help you, stroke their ego tell them they have vast knowledge about this particular field.
If it all goes well hold the meeting, then send a thank you letter for meeting that person.

We also spent some time looking a questions that may be asked i.e.
What recruitment agencies specialise in this sector?
What sort of papers or source should I look at for job advertisement?
Realistic Salary?
Do you other people that could help me out and me more information in these sort of areas we have discussed?
Is my cv okay?
can I hear about your experience.

We then looked at responding to to job adverts, difficult interview questions, do and don't of interviews. Then each person was given a snippet from Mathematics Today (February 2011). This featured a bit about job options and describing where certain people work. One option some one mentioned was Transportation planner. Then a list of website to find jobs:

1. Datatech Recruiment
2. DSTL- Defence science and Technology Laboratary
3. Government Actuary's Department
4. Government Communications Headquarters GCHQ
5. Government Operational Research Service
6. Government Statistical Service GSS Jobs
7. Matchtech Group
8. Met Office
9. Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry PSI
10. Office for National Statistics
11. The inside career guide to Actuarial Work
12. The institute of Actuaries
13. Transport Planning Opportunities

At the end of this there was a talk by Peter Rowlett about mathematics teaching and learning. Aperiodic tiling by Edmund Harris and a talk by Steve King on something to do with Rolls Royce.

As a side note they did say for students you can join the ima for free or £5 fee.