<p>I am thinking this thread is being read by students about to enter the job market. If this is the case…my daughter had what I thought was an unusual request, but may be something that will be used more frequently by companies hiring…she was asked to remit a YouTube that she felt resonated with her, as a way to communicate her values, humor, and maybe other extraneous elements I can not even conceive. She had 24 hours to send it in for evaluation. She got the position, btw. Hope this helps…APOL-a Mum</p>
<p>thanks everyone! i put this thread because i’m currently doing my first internship, and let me tell you it is nothing i’ve ever expected. the workplace and school environment are two totally different things, and i just wanted to have other students and myself have input from those with experience to see what we’re getting ourselves into, and how to prepare themselves.</p>
<p>belief, yes, your ability to succeed in school can be completely irrelevant to success in the workplace. There is often an element of “fairness” in school - I study, I get good grades, I get academic awards. A salesman can work extremely hard at selling things but may not get good results because he isn’t charismatic. Or he could get great results but boss will not promote just because boss has some arbitrary belief that he doesn’t want this particular guy running things. Getting work experience while in school can be humbling but very valuable.</p>
<p>belief an internship is an excellent experience. Try to keep track of anything that you actually accomplish during that time. If you help in the success of a project or a sale. If you solve a problem for a customer or an internal process. It does not mater how large, if you show accomplishments instead of just activity in your resume you will stand out in the crowd.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ve only hired for engineering positions in Research & Development and will provide my analysis from that perspective.
The following ordered list indicates qualities with major that prepare best for the same.
I don’t nod if a higher order item is missing but will nod if a lower order item is missing.
- Problem solving techniques (Major - EECS, CS)
- Domain specific Knowledge (Major - Domain Specific, internships, projects, work experience)
- Communication (No specific major but found that students from college with 6 to 8 semester of humanities as core requirements are better)
- Personality (Outlook, confidence, pleasant to talk too)</p>
<p>I’ve hired many EE and CS majors for R&D. </p>
<p>For new grads, I ask a lot of questions about previous internships or school projects. I want to delve deep and be sure that the candidate really understands what they worked on. A new grad most likely won’t have the specific experience relevant to the job, so it is important to try to determine how they approached earlier problems, and the depth to which they understood them. I’ll ask them to draw block diagrams, explain what assumptions were used, etc.</p>
<p>The other key thing I look for is attitude. Sometimes I’ll come across someone who only wants to work on X and not Y, which I don’t have much patience for, especially in a new grad.</p>
<p>I work in a company with smaller departments, and I can tell you the two things they want are someone who can get the job done and someone who can fit in socially with the staff currently in place. I have not been involved with the early stages of the process, such as, reviewing resumes, so I cannot confirm how much major plays a role in getting interviews. However, I have been involved from the interview process forward and unless the major is something interesting to talk about, it rarely comes into play.</p>
<p>Here is how the process works in 2 of the departments, I have been involved with hiring:</p>
<p>Entry-level Department: We hired primarily through a temporary agency. The agency would send candidates to us. When we interviewed, we generally looked for a good communicator who would fit socially; we also administered a short math test to assess their problem solving ability. We made offers to >50% of these interviewees for temporary work. We would have them work with us for 2-3 months on a temporary basis - if they showed the ability to communicate well, learned quickly and gained a working knowledge in our field, worked hard, were reliable and fit in socially with our current staff they would then be offered a full-time position. Management reviewed performance, but the staff in that department and other departments gave their opinions to management about a temporary employee, so the temporary employees really needs to work well with everyone who they come into contact with. At best, 20% of temporary employees received the offer of full-time employment.</p>
<p>Mid-level Department: We used a staffing agency to send us candidates. A related major was a bonus but not expected; work experience in our field was required. The process was long, but we were looking for someone who was capable, knowledgeable, had the ability to work independently with little supervision, was able to manage a large caseload, was a good communicator and a fit socially with the current staff. The hiring process started with receiving resumes for potential candidates from the agency, HR would conduct a phone interview and have candidate complete an application, if they passed the initial screening HR would then complete the background check and conduct an in-person interview, HR would then send the top candidates to the department management who would interview the candidates, if they were considering making an offer to a candidate, the other people who were in the same position, (their potential future co-workers,) would get to talk to the candidate. Everyone along the way had to say, that they think this person will be able to do the job and we wouldn’t mind having him/her here, for an offer to be made.</p>
<p>This company pays higher than many similar companies in our industry and actively works to maintain high employee satisfaction, but also has high expectations from their employees. It’s not a hand-holding type of company, so even in the entry-level positions they seek out motivated, self-driven, capable employees who will not make waves with their co-workers. The screening process is driven by this. </p>
<p>So my thesis here would be that, while having a major related to our field may help you to get an interview, work experience and who you are as a person (ability to learn, ability to get things done, ability to relate to all people,) is what will land you the job.</p>
<p>This experience sums it up for me: I was working in the AI field (Artificial Intelligence) at Bell Labs and one day I was having a discussion with a co-worker. On the board was a series of logic expressions which modeled the “thinking” of an AI system we were building. It got to a point in the logic where we could have made either of two choices about how to proceed with the logic. </p>
<p>We were arguing the merits of each choice when the department secretary came in and told me that I had an interview and the candidate was waiting. I was a little perturbed to be interrupted, but I asked her to bring him up to my office. When he came in, we introduced ourselves and then he noticed all the math on the board. “What’s that?” he asked. Well, I was still into the mind-mode of the previous discussion so explained the logic down to where we had gotten before. I said, “that’s as far as we are, right now.” </p>
<p>He thought for a moment and then said, “Well, it looks like you could go one of two ways from there.” I was flabbergasted, but the rest of the “interview” was a continuation of the discussion I had just had with my PhD colleague. I hired him and he was the best employee I ever had. He worked with us for 3 months, then we sent him off to Brown’s Computer Science Department to get a Master’s degree in AI.</p>
<p>What major did he come into the interview with? He had had a programming background in the past, but had just graduated from a music conservatory.</p>