Author Archives: kreptonic

Shanghai: The Beginning

Hey guys,

It is with great excitement to share with you what is going on in my life. There’s been quite a lot of changes in the last year so I apologize up front for a rather long letter. I hope you find this encouraging and challenging. 

 Post-Graduate

After finishing a graduate program at UCSD in the fall of 2008, I moved home to the bay area in search for work. The bleak economic state of the nation and the scarcity of job opportunities in the biotech/bioengineering field had me wondering how long I would be searching for a job.  My initial search was fruitless. Despite sending out hundreds of resumes, I was constantly finding myself losing out on jobs I thought I was perfect for. The highs of new dreams that came with each interview and the crushing defeat of every rejection soon took a physical, mental and spiritual toll.

Early in my job search, I was reading through Genesis and I remember telling my dad I was not sure I could wait 40 years for God to call me to where I was to go next as God had done with Moses. My dad jokingly replied, “Perhaps this is your 40 weeks.”
I couldn’t fathom the thought of 10 months searching for employment (as employment typically is tied to location) but as God would have it, my job search lasted exactly 40 weeks. Fun fact, I finished my thesis defense on Sept 11th, 2008 and the day I signed my contract for a position at Illumina was June 19, 2009 (That’s 40 weeks). While I don’t think that indicates that my earthly dad has the power of prophecy, it does indicate to me that my heavenly Father does things in His own time.

Through a rather tortuous journey, I landed a job back in San Diego about two blocks from UCSD, where I had gone to school for the previous five years. The irony might be lost here, but the whole time I was thinking that God was going to send me some place more…unique. 

You see, in 2006 I had gone to a missions convention in St. Louis called Urbana. While there God had opened my eyes to the calling that we as Christians are blessed to participate in. That conference was the catalyst that, when fused with the Perspectives course I took later that year in San Diego, changed my world view about how God intended to use people to further His Kingdom. I no longer saw missions as a thing that Christians had the option of doing, but as a calling for a lifetime.

It is with this mindset that I was pretty sure that God would be using me and sending me into the world. All this leads to my return to San Diego. 

“Physically strong, mentally awake, spiritually straight”

While it is still very early, I am already beginning to see why God has placed me back here. I am convinced that my best years in life are ahead of me and I believe that God has only begun to use me for his Kingdom’s purposes. God has provided me with an abundance of resources in vastly different areas here in SD; including spiritual mentoring, company-sponsored education courses, and physical training. All of this has been provided, as Eph 4:12 states, “to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up”.

A few months ago I began physical training with a friend of mine, David Pat, and through our conversations we came about the topic of missions. I’ve come to find out that any dialogue with this guy inevitably leads to a discussion on body building or missions in < 10 minutes. I learned about his China missions ministry that involves an underground church in Shanghai. My interest was peaked and I was quite ready to support his ministry…financially. 

 “Missions exists because worship doesn’t”

I will be heading over to China and working with a church in the Shanghai region from Dec 25th, 2009 – January 1st, 2010.

A few years ago, I realized that I was beginning to develop a heart for China. Perhaps it was the frequent family trips to China and Hong Kong that fed my love for that country and its people, I am not quite sure. More and more often, I find that my dreams and my ambitions have a path that cross through China.

As I evaluate the present reality, however, I am very aware of my inabilities and my short-comings. Chief among them is my complete inability to speak Mandarin and read/write anything at all. What would I have to offer? What use would I be in going?
I do not know.

What I do know, is that an opportunity has been presented for me to get a glimpse of what my future might look like. What missions and working with an underground church ministry might look like. What the challenges confronting Christianity in one of the top 15 most persecuted countries looks like. In essence, I feel like I’ve been told to go and this time I’m ready to respond. 

China

This trip will serve more as a vision trip than a typical short term mission trip. I will be shadowing David Pat and working with the local church in Shanghai. This is the fifth year in the partnership between David and the church and the focus of the team’s ministry is a three-pronged approach: leadership training in the church, college ministry, and working with the poor and marginalized in the Chinese society.

leadership training in the church
The church David works with is not part of the registered church and therefore is not recognized by the government. The majority of the church is in the working class young adult demographic.
Most in the underground church are first generation believers with many who are recently saved and new to the faith. Due to government censorship, there is a lack of Christian literature and solid theological teaching. Part of David’s ministry is training up leaders and workers. This will an especially relevant need as explained later.

college ministry
The goal of the college ministry is to raise up Christian workers who could become the future leaders of China. This ministry is in the beginning phases and there are many universities in the near area.

migrant workers and orphans
The third key aspect of the ministry is encapsulated in James 1:27, to look after orphans and the marginalized in society. China has had difficulty accepting migrant workers and their families, and often it is the children of such families that are most affected by this. Unfortunately, educational opportunities and resources are scarce and do not foster a nurturing environment to raise up healthy and strong children. 

I decided to team with this ministry for several reasons. I want to get a good, honest perspective of the life of a missionary and the local church in China. The nature of this winter trip is also to prepare and plan for the summer trip the following year where David will return with a larger student body. I support the missions focus that David has and this was an opportunity that met availability. Due to my inability to speak Mandarin, I will most likely be working in the college ministry arena and shadowing David to get a glimpse of the missionary lifestyle. 

Where do you come in?

The awesome nature of our Heavenly Father is that He is Lord over all the earth. What God does in the far reaches of the Earth is of paramount importance to us because it points to His complete sovereignty in this world. While we were still sinners, God demonstrated his love by sending His Son, and an even greater demonstration of love is His inclusion of His people to further His Kingdom.

Just as I have been extended an opportunity to participate in something larger than myself, I write specifically to invite you to participate as well. Whether you are in a place to be a prayer supporter or financial supporter, there is a need for both.
Prayer requests:

  • Recently the church has been regulated by the Chinese government and the group has been forced to relocate and separate into smaller groups. As mentioned in an early section, there are few leaders and this sudden church plant from 1 group of ~60 believers to 4 churches of 10-20 will require immense prayer, direction, resources, and training.
  • Please pray for the brothers and sisters as they have gotten the first taste of persecution and the reality of the price of following Christ. Pray that God would use this event to multiply his church and raise passionate leaders.
  • Finally for myself, if you would pray that God would use these next few weeks to open my eyes, soften my heart, and clear distractions so that I may be tuned to what He will show me in China.
I’ll be honest, this ‘walking by faith and not by sight’ thing is quite new to me. As unsettling as it may be, I take solace in knowing I’m in the hands of the Living God.

Take care and God bless.

Knowing where to look

Now this being an underground guide for how to get ahead, I’m not gonna go over the traditional job search techniques like personal networking, informational interviews, and online applications. There’s a million websites/books on those and they’re better at dishing great advice. Rather, I’m gonna expand on some underhanded techniques that’ll get you a few bites here and there if you’re really stuck.


LinkedIn

The facebook of working people for job searching. No pictures or wall posts or apps, but it’s pretty useful. Add as many friends as you have and the best feature on there is being able to see their connections. I went through all my contacts and began seeing where their friends worked. From there I began looking up their company websites and looking for job postings. You’d be surprised how easy it is to begin a dialogue with someone you don’t know about job searching. People within a company know infinitely more about how to best apply for their company than an outsider does.

Venture Capital Firms
There are millions of start up companies and it seems some pop up out of no where everyday, but where do you find these companies? Venture capital firms. A great suggestion by a colleague of mine over at Abbott Vascular.

VC’s are a phone book for start ups and you just need anything to help you expand your scope. I’ll show you one that I used in my job search: http://www.devicelink.com/links/venture.html

Here you’ll find hundreds of vc’s and each of them list who they’re funding and who they’ve funded in the past. From the first vc, you look under “portfolio” and you’ll find links to dozens of small time companies. From there you get a glimpse of what kind of companies are in your area and what they do. Unfortunately 8-10 of them show little to no information but a scant few do have legit job postings. If you’re planning to cold call or email a million companies anyways, this is a great way to get started.

Cold Emails

In this day and age, the economy is so bad that there are hundreds of applicants for a job. Think you’re unique? Doubt it. The following is a response I got from a cold email to a start up:

Thank you for applying to the Product Engineer job at CellASIC. After a tough screening process you have been selected as one of 5 out of nearly 150 applicants for an interview. Congratulations! Please let me know what times you are available next week (March 9-13). Times between 9am and 6pm are fine.

That’s right 150 other applicants. I had a friend working in HR in the norcal area and he mentioned how he simply discarded applications without a cover letter. It did not matter if they were born for the job. If you cannot do it the right way HR will move onto the next hundred that’s waiting. So how do you get past the first hurdle which is the human resources department?

Emails always look infinitely better if they’re coming from within the company. Any email with the company name after the @ sign is always received better than a @gmail or whatever you may be using. Here’s the trick. Send an email to the VP of the company you’re interested in and have them screen your email. If they’re not interested, you wouldn’t have gotten past the first HR hurdle anyways. If your resume does look attractive, they will be sure to pass it on to HR, because nobody wants to pass up a good candidate. The hard part is finding those email addresess of higher up management in the relevant department you’re working for. If you know absolutely no one in the company it is a minor hurdle.

I’ll work you through a real-life example. I was interested in microfluidics and stumbled upon a company called Microchip Biotechnologies Inc through one of the VC listings method above.

  1. Typically, companies will have their company names as email tags. I looked up their ‘contact us’ site and found the end of their emails: @microchipbiotech.com.

    Under ‘About Us’ -> ‘Management team’ I find the name of their director of engineering, Roger McIntosh.

  2. The next part is tricky, you need to know how companies phrase their emails. All companies like to keep things standard so it could any iteration of R.McIntosh, RMcIntosh, Roger.McIntosh. Go back and google “@microchipbiotech.com”. Soon I find a site that lists “Barney.Saunders@microchipbiotech“. There we go!

I send an email to Roger.McIntosh@microchipbiotch and a few weeks later I get this:

Thanks very much for the inquiry.
I have forwarded this to the relevant people here at MBI.
– Best Regards, R

It’s all about maximizing the bites you get. Any way in door is a good way to start a dialogue!

Waiting for a rabbit

Waiting for a rabbit

Once, there was a farmer in the Song State. While toiling the fields one day, he saw a rabbit run past him, break its neck on a tree, and die. The farmer threw down his tools, grabbed the dead rabbit, and went home to make a stew out of it. That evening he thought to himself, “life would be much easier if I just waited under that tree for a rabbit to run and crash against it.”

The next day the farmer sat under the tree patiently waiting. Day after day, he neglected his work and sat under that same tree, waiting for a rabbit to come by. In no time, the planting season was over and the farmer looked upon his desolate land in agony.

What seems like an old antiquated proverb is surprisingly relevant in today’s job search. In my first month of job hunting I sent out hundreds of online applications and resumes to dozens of companies. Within a few weeks I was contacted by a company in San Diego, Illumina (ILMN) for a job. It was my first real lead for a job out of college. Though I couldn’t close the deal in the face to face (f2f) interview, I walked away thinking “getting interviews isn’t going to be that hard”So I continued to send out resumes the next few months and everyday I sat by my phone and waited…and waited…and waited. Like the farmer, instead of focusing my energy towards toiling my field I waited for that rabbit to come by again. I was sure I’d get the job the next opportunity I got.No wait, you say, online applications for jobs are completely out of your control, all you can do is wait.

Yes and no.

There’s only so much you can do, but boy there is a lot you can do before you can say you’ve adequately done enough. Prepping your resume, cover letters, interview questions, building your personal network, setting up informational interviews, researching company information, defining your industry focus, learning new skill sets, etc. We’ll definitely expand on this stuff in the following posts, but you get the point.

Sending out a mass of emails and job applications and sitting by the phone is like the farmer waiting by the tree. it’s foolish and if you’re currently doing that…this blog is for you.