When Ming Can returned to school, it was still early, and she first made a trip to the counselor’s office. Seeing her, Li Jing rolled her eyes in mock annoyance. With a sweet mouth, Ming Can handed over the printed resume and cooed in a spoiled tone to beg for forgiveness: “Teacher Li, I was wrong!”
Li Jing was worn down by her pleading until she lost her temper: “You, oh you!”
She snatched the resume from Ming Can’t hands and read through it seriously. Seeing the contents inside, she felt a sliver of inner gratification, though her expression remained cold.
Reading the room, Ming Can whispered: “Teacher Li, how is it?”
Li Jing forcefully suppressed the smile at the corners of her mouth: “Barely passable.”
Ming Can laughed happily: “Passable is fine. A sister at the hospital helped me revise it.”
When she said the word “sister,” her tone carried a trace of small pride that even she herself hadn’t noticed.
Hearing this, Li Jing tilted her head to glance at her and said formally: “Ming Can, are you still doing your hospital caregiver part-time job? Let me tell you, this time node you’re all at is really important. Part-time jobs can be done anytime, but good campus recruitment opportunities only come around once or twice a year. You need to distinguish between primary and secondary priorities, understand?”
Ming Can: “I know, I know. After the teacher called me that day, I also did some deep reflection. I felt that what the teacher said was exceptionally right, so I quickly revised my resume, practiced interview questions, and rushed over early this morning for fear of missing the special recruitment session.”
Coaxed into an upward curve at the corners of her mouth, Li Jing let out a cold hum: “As long as you know! Go back and prepare. Be sure to review the things written on your resume thoroughly!”
Ming Can walked out of the office with her resume. Since it was still early, she decided to head back to the dorm for a quick glance and tidy up some things.
The dormitory was on the eighth floor. When Ming Can pushed the door open, her hand paused on the doorknob, a habitual action, as normally at this hour, some of her roommates would still be sleeping in.
After the door swung open, she froze.
The six-person room, which used to be packed to the brim, was now mostly empty.
The upper bunk by the window had already been stripped of its bedding, leaving only a bare wooden board. The bed opposite was piled with a few cardboard boxes that hadn’t been packed away in time, most likely packed up to be moved away in a couple of days. Even the hook by the door that always held pajamas was empty, leaving only a loose thumbtack pinned there lonely.
Ming Can stood at the doorway, feeling momentarily dazed as if she had entered the wrong room.
“Yo, you’re back?”
The voice came from the lower bunk near the door. It was Lin Xiaolei. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed with a huge suitcase spread out in front of her, half of her clothes folded, and half a pack of unfinished spicy strips sitting beside her.
Ming Can let out a sigh of relief, walked over, tossed her resume onto the desk, and sat down on the edge of Lin Xiaolei’s bed: “Scared me to death. I thought our dorm had been robbed.”
“Even thieves would think we’re poor here.” Without lifting her head, Lin Xiaolei rolled a hoodie into a cylinder and stuffed it into the suitcase. “Xuanxuan got employed last week and rented a place near her company, and Siqi got an offer the day before yesterday and just rented a place.”
Saying this, Lin Xiaolei pointed her chin toward the adjacent lower bunk: “Look, everything’s packed, just haven’t had time to move it yet!”
“What about the others?” Ming Can asked.
“Mengyao changed tracks to become a QA tester, found a job over in Haicheng, and has already been working for several days. As for Yunxi, you know how it is, her family has a mine, so she went back to inherit the family business. That leaves the three of us. Since Yutong and I both have weaker technical skills, and Yutong’s family conditions aren’t great either, her parents told her to go back home and study for civil service exams. She left just this morning, and my train ticket is for this afternoon.”
“Isn’t there a special recruitment session this afternoon?”
“Not participating anymore, my tech skills are too weak. For these past two weeks, going out early and coming back late for interviews, every question the interviewer asked was something I didn’t know. I feel like I’m just not cut out to be in IT. I’ll just go back to my small hometown, find some random job, and write web novels or something in my spare time.”
“That works too! Expenses in a small hometown aren’t high anyway, and you don’t have any debts on your shoulders. Finding some casual job and writing articles on the side is enough to support yourself.”
Lin Xiaolei was the most talented among the six in the dorm. Ming Can knew that everyone had their own choices, so she didn’t say much more. The two chatted for a bit around the topic of web novels.
Ming Can also read novels regularly and was quite familiar with web novels and their platform rules.
“Can, what about you? What are your plans for the future?” the roommate asked.
“Aren’t I back here for campus recruitment? I’m planning to make another push. Who knows, if I get lucky, maybe I can get into a big tech company or something,” Ming Can joked.
“Can, you totally can!” Her roommate had a lot of confidence in her. “You’re the most likely among the six of us in the dorm to get into a big tech company.”
Ming Can modestly replied: “No way, the macro environment is so bad right now, and I’ve been busy with part-time gigs lately, so I haven’t done any particularly high-value projects.”
Hearing about part-time jobs reminded her roommate: “Right, Can, that super difficult caregiver part-time job you had at the hospital last time, how did it turn out? Aren’t those capitalists terribly hard to serve?”
“No,” Ming Can instinctively denied, “she’s a really good person, not like what people say outside.”
“Huh?” Her roommate was surprised, but meant no harm.
Ming Can wanted to explain, yet feared involving Su Zhi’s privacy, so she ended up using herself as an example: “Didn’t I owe people money? Last time, debt collectors chased me into the hospital ward to beat me up, and she was the one who stepped in to block it for me. She even advanced my salary so I could pay off my debts.”
“Well, hearing it like that, she sounds like an okay person,” the roommate said.
“Right, she’s genuinely a really good person. Sometimes what’s portrayed online is just what other people want us to see, and the truth isn’t like that.” Ming Can didn’t elaborate further and diverted the topic: “What time is your train this afternoon? If it doesn’t conflict, should I walk you to the subway station?”
Her roommate waved her hands repeatedly: “No need, no need. I’ll head over once I finish packing here. You prepare well for your interviews, and I’ll wait for your good news.”
Ming Can didn’t insist further. She packed up her things, took her materials to the library to review, and during that time messaged Gong Que to ask about Su Zhi’s condition. Everything was normal over there, so she felt relieved enough to immerse herself in a sea of practice questions. When there was only an hour left before the special recruitment session, she brought her resume in advance to get familiar with the venue.
The school attached great importance to this special recruitment session. A roll-up banner stood at the entrance printed with the list of participating companies. Ming Can stood at the entrance to scan it, mentally ranking her preferred companies before taking a deep breath, smoothing down her clothes, and walking inside.
The venue was crowded, especially at the booths of big tech companies, where long lines required squeezing in. Ming Can prioritized heading to her top-ranked booth: Zhongkong, a medical device company with a high reputation domestically.
Many people were queuing up in advance, but the interviews moved fast. In less than half an hour, the twenty or so candidates ahead of her had already been screened out. When her turn came, Ming Can handed over her resume and greeted politely: “Hello, interviewer.”
The person in charge of the initial interview was a woman in her early thirties wearing thin-rimmed glasses. After taking the resume, she didn’t even lift her eyelids. Scanning a few lines, she finally raised her head slightly, her gaze gaining a bit of seriousness: “Seeing that you’ve written quite a lot of projects, have you ever encountered projects related to medical informatization?”
Ming Can paused and answered truthfully: “No, but I’ve worked part-time in medical-related roles and made some observations and statistics regarding the workflows of hospital staff.”
Quick-witted, she prompted an “Oh” from the interviewer, who signaled her to continue.
Clearing her throat, Ming Can quickly ran through the things she had subconsciously absorbed from Su Zhi’s hospital ward in her mind.
“During my time caregiving in the hospital, I observed that the information entry system at the nurses’ station has several areas that can be optimized,” she spoke at an unhurried pace, trying to make her expression sound professional. “For example, in the medical order verification step, it currently relies mainly on manual secondary confirmation. When medication adjustments happen, handwritten notes are needed before retransmission, which actually causes redundancy in the workflow.”
She paused, glancing at the interviewer’s expression. The interviewer didn’t interrupt, simply putting down the resume and leaning forward slightly.
Receiving the cue, Ming Can continued: “I was thinking at the time, if a simple status module could be added to the system to connect the doctor end, nurse end, and pharmacy end data in real-time, it should cut down a lot of communication costs. Of course, I hadn’t actually done development in this direction. I just made some records and statistics based on observations. I roughly tracked the average time spent on over fifty medical order adjustments. The manual confirmation step alone takes an extra seven to eight minutes on average.”
The interviewer finally lifted her head completely, her gaze lingering on Ming Can’t face for two seconds: “You recorded data?”
“Yes,” Ming Can nodded. “I originally thought that if I ever got the chance to do medical-direction projects in the future, these observations could serve as a reference, so I just jotted them down along the way.”
The corners of the interviewer’s mouth twitched slightly. She didn’t smile, but clearly grew a bit more interested: “How long have you been a caregiver?”
“On and off for about a year and a half.”
“A year and a half,” the interviewer repeated the number, a hint of surprise in her tone. “Then you must have seen quite a few departmental scenarios.”
“Mhm, I stayed the longest in orthopedics, also went to the emergency room, and spent some time in the ICU waiting area,” Ming Can hesitated here before adding. “However, what I mostly came into contact with was patient caregiving. The system-level stuff is just things I figured out while watching from the side, so they might not necessarily be right.”
The interviewer lowered her head to write a few notes on her resume, then looked up: “These observations of yours, why didn’t you write them on your resume?”
Ming Can hesitated: “Because I haven’t actually developed them yet. They’re currently just my preliminary observations, and landing the requirements is a long process.”
Hearing this, the interviewer’s pen paused slightly on the paper.
Instead of speaking immediately, she flipped Ming Can’s resume back to the first page, re-examined the school, major, and grade rankings, and only then looked up, her tone becoming much more formal than before.
“Your situation,” she deliberated her wording, “is actually very easy to get screened out when we filter resumes.”
Ming Can’t heart tightened, but she didn’t show it on her face, listening attentively.
“Non-key universities, mid-to-upper grades, no major tech internships, and project designs leaning mostly toward coursework. To be frank, among the resumes submitted to our company today, there are plenty that look prettier than yours.” The interviewer’s tone wasn’t sharp, sounding more like stating a fact.
Ming Can pressed her lips together without refuting or defending herself.
“But what you just said,” the interviewer pivoted, her gaze falling back onto Ming Can’s face, “is precisely the kind of thing we want most when hiring people, yet it’s the hardest to see from a resume.”
She picked up Ming Can’s resume and placed it separately on the right-hand side of her desk, that stack was noticeably much thinner than the one on the left.
“In the direction of medical informatization, there are plenty of people with good technical skills, but very few who understand both technology and medical scenarios,” the interviewer said. “The fact that you were able to observe system workflow problems while in a caregiver position and had the heart to record data, that mindset is different from many fresh graduates.”
Hearing this, Ming Can’t heart skipped a beat, yet she restrained herself from showing too much emotion.
The interviewer pulled a blank sheet of paper from beside her and pushed over a pen: “We’ve chatted enough about the resume stuff. I’m going to test you on two algorithmic problems. You don’t mind, do you?”
Ming Can took the pen, smiled, and nodded: “Please go ahead.”
“First one,” the interviewer folded her hands on the desk, her tone flat. “Given an integer array, find two numbers such that they add up to a specific target. Assume that each input would have exactly one solution, and you may not use the same element twice. Tell me your approach.”
Ming Can spoke almost the exact instant her voice finished falling: “Use a hash table with a single traversal. As we iterate through each element, check whether the target minus the current value is in the hash table. If it is, return the indices of the two numbers. If not, store the current value and its index into the hash table. Time complexity is O(n), space complexity is O(n).”
After finishing, realizing she had spoken too fast, she bit her lip with a hint of embarrassment.
Without commenting, the interviewer continued: “Second, reverse a singly linked list, requiring both iterative and recursive implementations.”
Ming Can lowered her head to write on the paper, her pen scratching rhythmically. She first drew a schematic diagram of a linked list, marked the pointer direction changes, and then quickly wrote out the iterative code, habitually adding a line of comment after each row. After finishing, she switched to another area to write the recursive implementation, which was much shorter than the iterative one, and finally used arrows to mark the recursive return logic.
“Done writing.” She pushed the paper back.
The interviewer looked down for a few seconds, her gaze lingering on the comments before a very faint curve finally touched the corners of her mouth: “You write your comments very carefully.”
“Afraid you wouldn’t clearly see my thought process,” Ming Can answered honestly. “I’m used to writing code this way normally so it’s convenient for whoever maintains it later.”
Without pressing for more algorithmic questions, the interviewer set the paper aside and shifted directions: “Have you learned about our company?”
“I have,” Ming Can sat up straighter. “Zhongkong is in the first tier domestically in the field of medical informatization, with its flagship product being the overall solution for hospital information management systems, covering core modules like outpatient, inpatient, electronic medical records, and image archiving. I checked the company’s annual report and recent news. Last year it won the bid for the overall informatization upgrade project for three Grade-3 Class-A hospitals, and currently has new layouts in the two directions of smart wards and clinical decision support systems.”
The interviewer raised an eyebrow: “You have time to read annual reports even as a caregiver?”
Ming Can smiled: “Crammed for it last night.”
This honest reply coaxed a rare laugh out of the interviewer, short, but genuine.
“Last question,” the interviewer removed her glasses, placed them on the desk, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “You’ve been a caregiver for so long, and you study tech. In your opinion, what is the biggest problem in the medical informatization industry?”
Ming Can didn’t answer right away.
She thought about it seriously, and what surfaced in her mind wasn’t some macro industry report, but rather scenes she had encountered in the hospital ward. Nurses shuttling through corridors pushing computer carts, doctors holding tablets to flip through medical orders during rounds, and family members of patients pressing a call button only to wait ten minutes for someone to arrive because a nurse was handling medication verification in another ward.
“I think,” she deliberated as she spoke, “the biggest problem isn’t that technology isn’t advanced enough, but that technology is too far away from people.”
The interviewer looked at her without speaking.
“I’ve seen many systems in the hospital wards. The functions are all very powerful, and the data analysis is awesome too, but when nurses use them, they have to switch across several interfaces. When doctors write medical records, they have to repeatedly confirm whether information is synced, and family members of patients have to wait forever just to check test results. The more complex technology is made, the less smooth it feels to use in practice.”
She paused, recalling what the interviewer had said earlier about very few people understanding both technology and medical scenarios, and added: “I feel good technology shouldn’t force people to adapt to it. Rather, it should adapt to how people work. This sounds simple, but to actually achieve it, you have to go into various scenarios to observe. Relying purely on requirements on the surface is somewhat insufficient.”
The interviewer fell silent for a few seconds, put her glasses back on, picked up Ming Can’s resume, and wrote a few characters in the top right corner of the first page.
“Go back and wait for notification, about three to five working days.”
Ming Can stood up and gave a slight bow: “Thank you, interviewer.”
As she turned to walk out, she heard the interviewer say behind her: “Remember to keep the habit of writing comments when writing code in the future.”
Turning back, Ming Can smiled and said briskly: “Got it.”
Then she walked briskly out of the booth and moved on to the next one.
The gymnasium was still crowded. You could sum it up as queuing for two hours and interviewing for two minutes. Ming Can picked the important ones to queue and interview for, answering quite well. When the time was about right, she didn’t continue interviewing, walked out of the gymnasium, found a quiet corner, and sent a message to Su Zhi.
[Sister, my interview is over.]
After sending the message, she waited a good while without receiving a reply. She didn’t exit WeChat, instead replying to other messages in her chat column, from her counselor, her roommate, and a photo of a sleeping Su Zhi sent by Gong Que around three o’clock.
After replying to the relevant information, still no message from Su Zhi. Ming Can hesitated, tucked her phone into her pocket, and stepped toward the shop near the school gate that sold crucian carp and tofu soup.
It wasn’t quite dinner time yet at four-thirty, so there weren’t many people in the shop. Seeing Ming Can, the proprietress greeted her with a cheerful shout: “How come you have time to come over today?”
Ming Can greeted her familiarly, packed two portions of crucian carp and tofu soup, and received a message from Su Zhi right as she was paying.
[How did the interview go?]
Looking at the message, Ming Can’s lips curved slightly upward. Instead of typing a reply, she directly initiated a video call.