Microsoft (China) and Amoi Electronics signed a memorandum of understanding on “Smart phone plan” in Beijing, under which the two parties will work together on smart phone development. A focus of this cooperation is that the two will enhance their cooperation in TD-SCDMA related R&D.

Last update: 04-05-2007

InterDigital Communications Corporation (NASDAQ:IDCC) is a recognized pioneer in the design, development and delivery of advanced wireless communication platforms. InterDigital began developing its standards compliant TDD technology in late 1990s, and is now one of the board members of TD-SCDMA Forum. On July 25, 2005, Journalist (J) from TD-SCDMA Forum interviewed Mr. Donald M. Boles (B), Senior Vice President and Chief Patent Strategist of InterDigital.

J：What is the contribution of InterDigital to TD-SCDMA and 3G?
B: InterDigital has a rich heritage in developing advanced wireless technology solutions for 2G, 2.5G, 3G and 802 standards. With respect to InterDigital’s innovation for 3G, we have a robust suite of air transport technologies including WCDMA FDD (Release 99/Release 4) TDD and HSDPA, the next generation of FDD. We believe a substantial amount of our TDD technology applies to other TDD technologies, such as TD-SCDMA. It’s important to note that the company is an active participant in the worldwide standards bodies and has made many contributions to the 3G standards.

J: What are InterDigital’s products and solutions?
B: InterDigital has an extensive portfolio of 2G, 2.5G, 3G and 802 technology solutions and intellectual property. Our technology solutions are comprised of patented inventions, software, reference designs, and know-how. InterDigital offers a complete WCDMA solution, offering FDD and TDD, HSDPA, and WLAN. The company provides baseband designs, protocol software, Adaptive Interference
Management? Solutions, and engineering services.

J: Do you have any plan in LCR development?
B: We believe that much of our TDD technology development work applies to other TDD technologies, such as TD-SCDMA. The development of the LCR version of TDD will depend largely on the market potential for deployment.

J: What’s your main IPR on TDD and 3G?
B: As a pioneer in 3G technologies, InterDigital has made a large number of inventions in both FDD and TDD. Furthermore, we continue to drive the evolution of 3G with innovations in HSDPA and HSUPA. As one would expect, InterDigital holds essential IPR in variations of 3G, including FDD, TDD and CDMA.

J: What is the proportion of your IPR in all the 3G IPR?
B: As a developer of CDMA technology since 1992, InterDigital has a robust portfolio of 3G IPR. Through our active participation in the worldwide 3G standard bodies and our innovative technology development efforts we have become a recognized provider of 3G technologies.

J: Besides air interface, what IPR in other area do you have?
B: It’s important to note that with respect to IPR for air transport technologies, InterDigital has IPR throughout the various layers of the air transport – Layers 1 through 3. In addition to air transport technology IPR, InterDigital also has IPR for smart antenna and RF management technologies.

J: Do you have any partners in TD-SCDMA area?
B: At present, we do not have any partners in the TD-SCDMA area. As we continue to monitor the evolution of TD-SCDMA, we also continue to evaluate potential partnership opportunities.

J: What about InterDigital’s IPR in other countries?
B: As the mobile industry has become global, InterDigital has been filing its patents in most major markets – in more than 30 countries -- around the world. In the 2G field, we have licensed about 70-75% of the market. In 3G, our list of licensees and customers continues to grow.

J: What is your future plan for TD-SCDMA development?
B: InterDigital continues to monitor the favorable developments of TD-SCDMA. Our further commitment depends largely on China’s commitment in this field, and the potential migration of TD-SCDMA outside of China.

J: Where do you think TD-SCDMA will prosper outside China?
B: No one knows. If I have to guess, I think the potential for TD-SCDMA deployment outside of China is in developing markets, such as India, Pakistan, countries of the former Soviet Union, etc.

J: Do you have any traditional sense products? Where does your revenue come from? How much revenue does InterDigital get from its IPR?
B: InterDigital’s products are in the form of technology solutions such as software, reference designs, specifications, algorithms and know-how. Our asset is our people and our product is our technology. InterDigital’s annual revenue is more than 100 million US dollars. The majority of the company’s revenues are currently generated through patent licensing. InterDigital also generates revenue from technology transfers and IP product sales.

J: What are your comments and suggestions on the TD-SCDMA Forum?
B: We believe the Forum has been active and professional. The Forum has done an excellent job in bringing together the regulators, the network operators, and the equipment vendors. We hope that we can continue to rely on the TD-SCDMA Forum as our main information source and contact for the Chinese market. We also believe that the Forum can play a key role in positioning Chinese manufacturers in the global market.

Last update: 07-03-2008

In general, case interview is very common in interviews with consulting companies, interviewer will measure a candidate's attitude toward risk and comprehensive logical analysis ability with some cases, to see whether a candidate is flexible and can adapt quickly.

There are two stages of case interview: preparative stage and formal case interview stage. During the preparative stage, you may need to introduce yourself. Then answer the interviewer’s question about your resume and some broadly issues about personal considerations.

The next stage is a formal case interview. Case interview is to draw a conclusion about some business issues with analysis. Unlike other kinds of interviews, case interview is an interactive process. You will get some business issues from the interviewer and are required to provide an analysis and advice on these issues. Your task is to put forward some logical questions to the interviewer in order that you could have more comprehensive and detailed realization on these issues, and finally give a conclusion through systematic analysis.

Please keep in mind there are not absolutely correct answers in case interview, interviewer concerned about your analytical ability and creativity exhibited during the interview, but not the answer.

Purpose of case interview

Consultant will spend lots of time with their clients and colleagues for the purpose of intercommunion, and they were required to have some special qualities in order to succeed in consulting projects. These qualities include: ability to remain calm under pressure, ability to quickly established an assumption according to the details of projects, and make a conclusion depend on strong logical analysis capability and so on. Therefore, the cases interview which highly interactive and tight bounds for practical as well as strong requirement analysis skill would let interviewer evaluate the qualities of candidates effectively.

Which qualities are crucial in case interview?

•  Leadership

Consultant must be able to work independently and lead a focused team to achieve common goals. Therefore, the leadership is very important to a consultant. During the case interview, you need to grasp the initiative and ask target questions confidently in order to embody your leadership potential.

• Analysis ability

Analysis is the core competency in consulting industry. In case interview, your task is to put forward assumption depending on the facts, understanding the meaning of the data, and then form a set of analytical framework, reached the conclusions and recommendations finally. During the case interview, you need to put effective and purpose questions in order to embody your analysis ability.

• Expression ability

Once the consultant has carried out a detailed project analysis as well as work out best strategy, he need to demonstrate the solutions and recommend it to the consulting team and discuss it with clients. Therefore, the ability of expression is also very crucial to a consultant. For this reason, in case interview you should always spend some time think before speak, would rather to slow down a bit than stammer.

• Energetic

Consulting firms want their consultant still energetic enough when them appearance before customers even after 12 hours aircraft time. So give your interviewer a firm handshake, a genuine smile with self-confidence and clean appearance will leave the interviewer a good impression and get a good start in case interview.

• Calm

In case interviews, sometimes the interviewer will deliberately create a very tense atmosphere, for example, ask constantly aggressive questions and always deny you. These does not mean that you've come a wrong way, In fact they want to inspect whether or not you could stay calm under pressure. You should know that when a consultant face to face with clients, it is very important quality of thinking deeply under pressure and resolve the problems calmly.

Types of case interviews

There are three general types of cases interview: guesstimates, business cases and brainteasers. Let’s discuss these in detail:

• Guesstimates

These kinds of questions are always referred as market assessment, you need to estimate the size of a market even though the details are not available, such as: you may be asked to estimate the elevation of rocky mountain.

Same as the other case interviews, it is not very important to get a correct answer, but the method you decomposed a large-scale project into several small-scale projects and resolve each one respectively is really the most crucial, as well as you should have some common sense to answer these kinds of question.

• Business cases

For business cases interviews, the most common case is that interviewer ask you how to analyze an project according to the description of project background such as market entry, profit decline, industry analysis, sales decline and so on. The interviewer always doesn’t provide you enough detailed information, so you need to keep on asking targeted questions in order to get more useful information.

• Brainteasers

Brainteasers are often very hard and very tricky questions that include mystery question and numerical estimates question. The purpose of these questions is to inspect your creativity and ability to analyze and resolve issues under pressure.

In general, case interview will include either a long time business case, or two short time cases: almost inevitably one should be guesstimates and the other one might be brainteasers or a short time business cases.

Last update: 21-07-2007

Because of efficiency, cost and so on, recruiters may be likely to perform a phone interview. Phone interview is the first step for employers and job seekers to contact with each other. Phone interview often used for applying positions at investment bank. Even email is the most popularity method for communication all over the world, telephone is still play an important role. 

Different companies will have distinct forms for a phone interview. But in general terms, the interviewer would talk with job seekers via telephone roughly about 10 minutes to 30 minutes. There are two stages for phone interview: self-introduction and question. With phone interview, the interviewer hope to find out the basic ability and experience of the candidate, judge whether the candidate satisfy the basis requirement of applying positions, and thus determine whether to give the candidate an opportunity to be invited to the next stage of interview. 

Top 10 phone interview tips

1. Have a clearly career objective

Phone interview is the pre-stage before face to face interview and is a pivotal chance should not be loss by job seekers. Time consumed for a phone interview usually not more than 30 minutes in the most case. We must always believe of we have the ability to turn any ideas, plans, objectives, strategies or programs into reality. Please write down your goals on a slip of paper, read aloud every day and keep a long time, After doing this, you could be most clearly about your career objective, keep in mind the clearly career objective is a base for effective interview preparation.

 2. Preparation in advance

After submitting the application materials for your desired position, you should prepare to receive a phone interview at any time, because you could not know exactly what time they will inform you for a phone interview, maybe 8.00 to 9:00am when you are at dreamland, also might be 5.30 to 6:00pm when you are at work, So you should have psychological preparation in advance, maybe you could also find some useful interview information on forums of major job seeking websites.

The way of phone interviews has a little bit different from a normal interview, in the phone interview, you are not actually face the interviewer, he's not able to see your gestures and your appearance. But do not consider this an advantage. Body language is quite important in communication, you should keep in mind that you must treat phone interview as seriously as face to face interview at all the time. Some practical skills are given as follows:

3. Strategy for being requested a phone interview not prepared in advance

If you are outside for shopping or on the way to go home, or other circumstance that you have not forecast to an instantly phone interview. It is not need to be tensions, dealing with calm attitude and answer question with positive and friendly voice: “Thank you for calling me, would you mind call me again five minutes later as my cell phone does not receive very well here, or you may leave your phone number and I will call you back?”

Usually the interviewer will agree to call you a few minutes later, so you have time to prepare. Of course, in addition to an excuse for bad cell phone signals, there are so many other reasons, but it is must to be a reasonable explanation. After finished the phone call, breath deeply to ease your tension, then find a quiet place, recall the outline of the company carefully, think about the requirements of your desired position, inspect the detail of your resume, If you have prepared an abstract note for this company beforehand, you can review it. When the phone rings again, you should have already done a thorough preparation, keep smiling, answer the question with self-confidence.

4. Always say thank you

In the phone interview, you should always say "Thank you", for example: "Thanks for calling me," "Thank you for giving me this opportunity", "Thanks for your time and consideration. It is really nice talking to you ", with these expressions, you should leave the interviewer a good impression.  

5. Remember the interviewer's name

In the beginning of phone interview, the interviewer will give a consuetude self-introduction, and you should remember his name, in the whole interview process you can refer to his name naturally during your discussions. Thus the interviewer would feel respected. 

6. Grasp the opportunity for last question

At the end of the phone interview，the interviewer will ask if you have any questions to ask. You should not relax at this time. If you could not put forward some real significance questions, the interviewer will guess that you are not very interesting on the position and not thinking too much about the job. Therefore preparing 3 – 4 depth questions before the interview is absolutely necessary.

7. Make a note

You can make a note of phone interview, writing down the important information gathered in this interview, these information could be used subsequently at interview. On the other hand, in case the interviewer was interrupted by other things for some reason, as he come back to ask “what are we just talking about?”, If you can answer him very soon and accurately, these should leave him a deep impression. 

8. Honest answer

When answer the questions, you should be honest, concise, accurate and complete.

9. Take into account that you should be fully focused on this interview, so eliminate any disturbing element, like TV, other persons, noise, etc.

10. Treat the phone interviews as face-to-face interviews, Verbal, via the words you choose and how you handle the negotiation inside the communication (question-answer, feed-back, straight to the point, conversation without "aaa" or "Ummm"s). Feed back with self-confidence answers like, "Yes, I understand",” Yes, of course" or other things like that. It is very important to leave the positive impression to the interviewer firstly. Do not talk about salaries and benefits in phone interview. 

Last update: 19-07-2007

Stress Interview is not a separated form of interviews, it is often an interlude between behavioral interview and case interview. The reason why we discuss it solely is just because the way of answer to this kind of interview question are not the same with other kinds of interviews.

In stress interview, stress is mainly from the difficulty of the question and constantly aggressive questioning of the interviewers. And these problems will accelerate your fear and tension like activators. The main purpose of stress interview is to remove what you prepared beforehand with your fear, look into your response under stress, and thus learn about your true character. However, the fact is that as long as prepared, you will be able to facing stress interview calmly. Bear in mind: there is no essential difference between stress interview and general interviews, just like the musical, pitch has not been changed, only the volume been increased.

Stress Interview tips
Stress interview always appears suddenly in the interview of other forms, and its purpose is to create stress on you deliberately and to find whether you can keep calm when you are under stress. If you can prepare for stress interview beforehand, also be aware of what is the time that interviewer will ask you some very challenging question, you will be able to feed back to interviewer with good response.

A common stress interview skill is set up traps for you: firstly asking you with very easy question in order to relax you, then seize a detailed with sequence questioning. Below is an example of possible interview questions within stress interview:

1. Are you able to work under stress? Simple answer or discussed in detail.

2. Please give us an example about you work with a team that faced stress from your experience.

3. Why do you think it will conduce stress? (Do not criticize your boss or collaborators friend).

4. What is the worst thing when you faced with stress? (Begin producing stress now)

5. Which transaction is not good for your colleagues whom also faced the stress at the same time? (This is inviting you to criticize them, Do not do it in any case!)

6. If you are a leader of the team, what could you do better than the truly leader? (Your specialty could be highlighted, still do not criticize others!)

7. What do you think that you have learned from it? (stress interview  finished, Summery what you have learned would be good)

So as you can see at stress interview, if we are not carefully, or not prepared in advance, it is very likely to fall into the traps set by the interviewer. And if you prepared with right strategies, it should let you outstanding from the numerous candidates.

We summing up the strategy as "CAR" which could be used on the stress interview:

Confidence
You should know that the purpose of stress interviews not only review what you are answer to the questions, but mostly important is to observe your behave under stress, Therefore as interviewer put up a very challenging issue, you could pay more attention to behave as a self-confidence man, not only making your answer perfectly. Whatever the issue is, your should to be calm and confident, answer questions with your eye keep in touch with interviewer.

Ambiguous
There are lots of different between stress interview from traditional interviews, you should not give a directly answer to the questions at stress interview. At most case it could not to benefit you anything with directly answer. Since most of the question at stress interviews would be dealt with your shortcomings, so you have to link these shortcomings or deficiencies with your merits. For example, when you are asked what is your biggest weakness?, one possible answer is: "I have a lot of strengths which is also my weaknesses, because if not handled properly, then it will become a bit shortcomings. For example: my greatest advantage is I am a very objective man and not jump to conclusions at once, this is my advantage; But sometimes I will be over-cautious, could not believe my own intuitive judgment, this is also the greatest flaw." With such an answer, not only you answered the interviewer's questions, but also did not fall into his traps, as well as lay out your own merits and your self-confidence. Won one stroke.

Reflexive Question
Friendly ask the appropriate reflexive question is a very effective tip. After your statement finished, asking that "don't you think so" or "what do you think about" with very friendly tone, the action will make you behave as a confident man with calm attitude. But this technique must be using carefully: the first is natural, not to let interviewer feel that you are intentionally; The second is to ease the tone friendly.

To summarize, when your face to unexpected stress at stress interview, there is not need to be tensions, dealing with calm attitude and answer question skillfully, the trembling stress interview should let you become a winner of the opportunity.

Last update: 19-07-2007

The reason why we discuss self-introduction solely is because of no matter what form of interviews, it is must needs a self-introduction at first, as well as your self-introduction in the interview should leave the first impression to the interviewer, first impressions are shown to be very hard to change, so it is obviously that self-introduction is an very important stage of interview.

The duration of self-introduction would roughly about 1 minute to 2 minutes. Because most job seeker would prepare for self-introduction in advance, and should oral presentation in recitation, interviewer often browse your resume within these several minutes, observe the way of your expression, and look at which of your achievements are you most proud of. Even so, you should keep your eyes on the interviewer most of the time in the presentation, other than endorsement with your head bowed.

Self-introduces is the first stage of interview, there are several strategies should be considered. We summing up the strategies as " URBAN "(Unique, Relevant, Bonding, Arousing and Neat) which could be used on the self-introduction of an interview:

Unique
The purpose of self-presentation is to make you stand out from the other candidates in the first minutes. So the introduction must be unique!, think about which of your distinctive strong suit or experience should be unique. For example: If you have been living in poverty-stricken area about two months, to help people in the area, try to understand their perspectives, This kind of experience is necessary to be introduced in a self-interview.

Relevant
You should know: the interviewer merely wanted to know your personal experience and personal characteristics, and thus judge whether you satisfy the requirement of applying positions, So you should remove such irrelevance information in self-introduction, For example: maybe there are some important events in history happened on the day you were born, but this has no relationship with your future work, so you should not mention it at all in self-introduction.

Bonding
Interviewers are ordinary people like everyone else, they are also will tend to hire people who are similar to them or someone they liked. It is more difficulty to refuse a friend than a stranger, who would be willing to hire someone they are unwilling to work together in the future?, So you should doing investigation and collecting some information of the company before you attend interview, find out what of your characteristics will suit with the culture of the company, but you should not to fictional characters and incidents cater for the interviewer just for the sake of bonding. If they find out you don’t have the characteristics what your have calmed later, they will suspicion of your credibility and integrity.

Arousing
Although most of the self-introduction prepared in advance and would be recited out, the represent methods of recitation are also very crucial. Let us think about it, the interviewer listening to a dozen or even several dozens of self-introduction all day, most of recitation pretty monotonous and extreme boring, suddenly they heard a very emotional, very rich passionate self-introduction, It is naturally that the candidates should left a deeply impression to the interviewer. Therefore, you should not only prepare for the content of self-introduction, but also pay attention to your emotion and your tone of voice, the auditory effects should also play an important role in the interview.

Neat
Because of the self-introduction would finished within 1 or 2 minutes, time is very preciously, therefore the contents and represent methods should be concise. It is not necessary for you to involve in too many details, you should speak point-blank but not fussily. If a candidate making a self-introduction hum and haw, the interviewer could not expect he would give an outstanding representation in the rest of the interview.

It is necessary for you to record the tape of your self-introduction after writing and reciting it well, and besides, you’d better ask some friends to listen to it and offer some suggestions; you will prepare it in advance, while the interviewers know that you will be prepared, thus you should try your best to act it perfect.

Do not act as on-the-spot play deliberately during the interview, you will overdo if you haven’t done it well enough; while if you have done it well, the interviewers may think that you are not professional enough and you don’t pay too much attention to the company as you haven’t prepared your self-introduction. So please remember that the interviewers know that your self-introduction is prepared in advance.

Last update: 18-07-2007