<p>Encourage your kids to get involved in the recruitment process early (2nd year). This can lead to very important internships such as those mentioned by a few here.</p>
<p>Engineering related, CS, and Accounting/Finance tend to be areas of solid recruitment. However, if your kid is studying something else, encourage them to reach out for all opportunities even if they don’t think such a company would ever hire such a major. If the job doesn’t call for specific skills (aside from strong communication and interpersonal skills), then they can really make an impact and open up doors.</p>
<p>My friend will be a new college hire with a Masters in Electrical & Computer Engineering writing software for Qualcomm. And I’m absolutely positive that it is not a 6 figure starting salary at QCom.</p>
<p>I’d be interested to see what school has the highest ratio of applicants to job offers, actually - Microsoft does big-time recruiting at my university, but ~none of my friends applied because they didn’t want to work for The Man. Out of my friends who did apply, however, virtually all of them received offers - but again, only a few accepted. A lot of my friends passed over big-name companies for positions at startups, which I feel like is fairly common at top engineering schools.</p>
<p>@k4r3n2–I’m interested why you decided to go for the Microsoft internship in light of the reaction of your peers. Did you fly to Redmond and interview? </p>
<p>@kkwa–What impressed you about the Microsoft internship? Pros & cons?</p>
<p>I chose MS for the Program Manager position. I was working at Intel at the time when I realized that I wanted to try to get into software. I knew I wasn’t the most gifted or prolific coder, so I felt that the PM position best matched my skill set. I’ve had friends who interned at MS who really enjoyed it. Plus, it’s harder to turn down an offer when they take care of you so well during the interview process.</p>
<p>The company that me and my husband work for is pretty high on this list, which is a bit odd to me. It used to be one of the less desirable companies in their business to work for, because it tended to pay lower in comparable jobs, and many complained. It is much more desirable now that the salaries there have continued to slowly increase, as others have taken pay cuts and layoffs. Apparently job security now counts for alot.</p>
<p>My son is a 2008 Computer Engineering graduate (BS) who was hired right out of college for Qualcomm. He also was offered another job with at the same time and Qualcomm’s pay was significantly higher with signing bonuses etc.around 80K.The interview process is very in depth and intensive-but well worth it.He absolutely loves his job- they tend to hire bright, very self motivated individuals- and give you more challenging work if you demonstrate the ability to perform than many typical corporate structures allow in a short time frame. My son is planning on pursuing a MS or perhaps a PhD down the road- but intends to do so to enhance his career at Qualcomm. From my son’s perspective their reputation as a top business to work for is well deserved.</p>