Mike,

I work in the Dallas/Plano area and might be able to help by mentioning you to someone hiring, but not in the cellular phone industry to which you've been talking. If send me some preliminary information to my e-mail account above I'll ponder if I have any contact that would help. No guarentees, but I might think of some companies you wouldn't know to contact.

Regarding your message:

A lot of interviews are done by managers that really have no technical idea what is going on (business in the U.S. is not like Europe as we promote the guys that contribute and know the least thereby maintaining overall productivity).
Anyone that says MCU knowledge is not important simple isn't thinking or isn't clued-in. Sounds like some idiots I know at HighwayMaster (if they're still in business today).

C++ differs from Embedded C++ like driving a sports car differs from driving an 18-wheeler (aka LORRIE)... both are based on the same basic idea but the 18-wheeler crashes into things much easier. Embedded C++ requires learning all the secret handshakes and voo-doo chants to make "Hello World" compile.

If you have the time or luxury, buy some such compiler and development board and program a quick doghouse door counter and then you can tell interviewers that you have used Embedded C++ and have worked on a sophisticated queuing theory monitors for analyzing traffic patterns.
:)

RTOS - I hate the idea of it. Using someone else's real-time operating system would rob me of the pleasure of designing my own, again and again. But its a reasonable thing to have exposure to.

TCP/IP, SNMP, ETC - RUN AWAY! No job is worth it. These guys just want to stick you with the dirty work they dread. I'm just as diabolical but I'm not hiring at the moment. :)

I don't think these cellular phone guys would be that much fun to work for anyway. The nice thing about being in the assembly language microcontroller world is that there are so many NEAT projects around. Big companies just ruin projects and they certainly ruin the fun. But they have nice badges that you get to wear. :)

The best thing you can as I understand it so far, is to get some current experience on a motorola processor with a C and assembly compiler. An old Tandy buddy of mine has a small company that sells development boards (I think for universities???). I'll email you their web site later. They started as a 8051 house but are now mostly Motorola micrcontrollers (the most convoluted uP design since underwater inverse Polish calculator key-entry).

aka Jay on vacay-tion