It's career fair season ~ list your tips here

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>This is my personal feeling about attire:</p>

<p>I will look nice for a job fair but not wear a suit. If a potential employer is looking at the way I dress as an indicator for the fitness of the job or how much I care, I’m glad that they won’t hire me. I don’t want to work for someone who cares about looks or reads into impressions too much. I want to be hired for my abilities and nothing else. This is, to me, a sort of filter for companies.</p>

<p>///////////////Story about how I got my current (amazing) job: ////////////////
Freshman year, I was at a party at my dorm (tequila night) and a not-so-sober alum came to my door and said, “Hey, I heard you are into rockets. Can I use your bathroom?” When he came back out he gave me his business card and we chatted for a bit (though the company was and still is in stealth mode so I didn’t get too many details) and he told me that I should apply for the (highly competitive) summer internship.</p>

<p>So I applied for the internship - three years in a row… and never got it. Come Dec 2008 (as a senior) I was sending out resumes and contacting companies for employment (17 total!) and was having no luck. On a random afternoon in January, I got a phone call from the recruiter and I sort of forgot that I had even applied to this company. In my mind I thought it was not even a possibility so I just forgot about it. </p>

<p>I chatted with the recruiter for a bit and then he had me talk to the program manager (the head person at the company) and we set up a phone interview for later that day. The phone interview was about an hour long consisting of some critical thinking (and detail-oriented) questions as well as some basic intuition and history of spaceflight/rocketry. I thought I did okay and as a matter of fact they asked me to come up to do an in-person interview and prepare an hour long presentation about some technical project I’d been a part of in college.</p>

<p>So in February I flew up to the company and gave my spiel and then did technical one-on-ones for four hours or so. They were really probing not only what I’d learned but how did I approach problems that I’d had no exposure to in the past. I thought I bombed the interview…</p>

<p>But then one day, while driving up to a Honeywell site visit (eating lunch at a burger joint in LA) with my research team and professor, I got a call from the recruiter saying that they wanted me a part of their team and asking if I still wanted the job. I said “Hell yeah!” and and started jumping up and down acting like a crazy person outside the joint in LA. These guys only hire a few young people every year and I have been lucky enough to be one of them.</p>

<p>…and moving up here has had romantic implications of its own. Talk about a life-changing party!</p>

<p>////////////////////end story/////////////////</p>

<p>So you NEVER know where you are going to learn about the company that will change your life. Keep your eyes and ears open. Talk to alums at parties and make your passion noticed. (I even had an offer [stemming from another party] from Stanford Research Institute my sophomore year but didn’t take it because it was defense-related)</p>

<p>There is NO substitute for genuine passion and owning the material. A smart employer looks for these things… and these should be the types of employers you are gunning for.</p>

<p>Hit the books, the lab, and the flying field.</p>

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<p>This is why in my previous post I said “I’ve found that younger recruiters are more concerned with technical skills and older recruiters are more concerned with non-technical skills.”</p>

<p>For some reason, people directly out of college have the impression that engineering ability is all that matters - like the most important factor in your career success is if you can solve a partial differential equation. The reality is that technical skills are only a small portion of the equation.</p>

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<p>"The reality is that technical skills are only a small portion of the equation. "</p>

<p>Depends if that defense contractor needs those “bodies” before the Feds snatch that contract away. If the need is great enough the main question asked at the interview is “Can you do this?..do you have experience in that?..and when can you start?”</p>

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<p>my recent telephone interview was odd. He asked if I had 15-20 minutes and then bombarded me with crazy technical questions (while I was cooking!, had to turn off the stove) . They were like - Why would you use this instead of that? or What does this process do, How would you calculate this function and graph it in matlab… </p>

<p>The reason was this -> A highly technical intern position that required someone who could work in isolation. He even said that its stressful sometimes and asked if I can handle projects that are mentally challenging and technically complex. “Soft” questions weren’t asked at all. I still have more interviews to go. </p>

<p>P.S. gpa was not asked only the courses I took, and i passed that round :)</p>

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<p>In my experience fit is much more important than technical ability. The ability has to be there, but they’d rather get a guy that they think will fit in and will be there for a while than a really good guy that they can train and then watch walk out the door.</p>

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<p>Interviews with many technical questions usually happens at lower tier engineering school. If you have a good GPA from UT-Austin, for instance, everyone assumes you know your stuff. A good GPA from UT-Arlington doesn’t mean nearly as much, and you might see some technical questions.</p>

<p>Fit is absolutely the most important thing, and something most interviewees miss. You want to make the company think your life-long goal is to work for their company (whether or not it’s true). Your objective on your resume should be tailored to the company and position, your questions should show that you understand the company, and your answers should be enthusiastic towards the company. </p>

<p>The worst-case scenario is hiring a good candidate, sinking tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars into training, then have them leave for an MBA or a competitor right before they start to provide value work to payback that training (it takes 3-5 years before the average engineer has enough experience and education to actually make some real money). </p>

<p>Soft skills are second to fit. You could be e genius, but if you can’t communicate your solutions to others or get management buy-in, your solutions are worthless. </p>

<p>Technical skills are third, and as mentioned, usually not even discussed because your school and GPA usually tell recruiters all they need to know.</p>

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<p>Technically, you can take 12 extra Humanities credits( 4 classes at nyu ) and pad your gpa. What sucks is that major gpa doesn’t change. Good employers will always weed them out.</p>

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<p>“Interviews with many technical questions usually happens at lower tier engineering school. If you have a good GPA from UT-Austin, for instance, everyone assumes you know your stuff. A good GPA from UT-Arlington doesn’t mean nearly as much, and you might see some technical questions.”</p>

<p>Meh. Some places put everyone through the ringer just the same. We have people from MIT, Caltech, HMC, Stanford, UMich, Purdue, Tufts, GTech, CU… and they don’t even ask for GPA (at least they didn’t for me). It seems we are all held to the same standard to really try to get the best candidates and not give an particular institution an upper hand.</p>

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<p>G.P. Burdell constantly talks about school rankings, but I don’t believe employers really care as much about them as he makes it sound. I know my company doesn’t, for sure.</p>

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<p>^^ Each school has its own talent. IMHO, rankings are useless, the recruiters treat you as an individual so I don’t really know how rankings would be of any use. Would they really disregard you just b/c your engr’ing dept is lower ranked than a rival schools?</p>

<p>Regarding the whole fancy paper vs. printer paper:
I just had a Boeing recruiter talk to us about getting internships and how to properly greet, meet company representatives and create a resume. I asked about the paper question and she said that as a College kid looking for an internship/part time job, that this was a non-issue. She does expect the person to be dressed nicely, have a firm handshake and know some sort of background about the company when they first make initial contact. I asked, “…so, you guys won’t look down on me if I have my resume on normal printer paper?”. She responded, “Nope, not one bit!” YAY!</p>

<p>Although, if I were a graduating senior and needed a full time job, I would pull all the stops and get that resume paper. </p>

<p>Bottom line: There are MORE important things than just the paper, BUT having it is a nice touch!</p>

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<p>You think employers treat Georgia Tech engineers and Alabama engineers the same? No one says “Hmm… UIUC moved from #6 to #5 this year. Let’s hire some of their students.” But people do give special consideration to the first tier schools. When looking at where to apply, many companies just take the USNWR Top 25, cut out some schools, then add in the local state university.</p>

<p>That’s why some schools have immensely helpful career centers that place nearly all students, and other schools have career centers that are “useless” and “horrible” and why “some schools have waiting lists for companies” at the career fair and at others students “make fun of people who go to the career fair”. You can go into the jobhunter thread and pick out who goes to a first tier school and who doesn’t.</p>

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<p>Haha, you noticed that too?</p>

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<p>As far as school rankings…I only agree PARTIALLY of what G.P.Burdell says.</p>

<p>For a fresh graduate…yes, school rankings may matter more because ALL the employer has for evaluation is your school and your grades.</p>

<p>The more good work experience you have, the less emphasis is placed on which school you attended. Furthermore, if your technical specialty is in a high-demand area…the employers care even less.</p>

<p>If Northrop and General Dynamics are both subcontracting to Lockheed on a particular contract and Lockheed says “whoever brings in a viable candidate will get the vacancy”. You think GD is gonna let some qualified candidate walk just so Northrop, CSC or Boeing snatches that same candidate…all because of the B.S. degree alma-mater from 5 to 10 years ago?..I think not.</p>

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<p>Except I don’t think most employers dig out a copy of the USNWR school rankings and compare each new grad resume to the ranking. It’s more like “that’s a good school” or “I’ve never heard of the University of the Pacific.”</p>

<p>And even more likely, it’s along the lines “oh, University of Idaho. That’s where the last guy I fired graduated from” or “Montana State University, we have several MSU graduates and they are working out well” (The last was a quote I heard from the hiring manager at my current employer.)</p>

<p>So I don’t think it’s ranking as in Purdue is #27 while Stanford is #2, but the certain employers will be more familiar with some schools than others. The employers that have had good experience with graduates from your school are more likely to hire you.</p>

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<p>Yeah I dont go to a top notch school although our alumni are as far up as CEO/Chairman of Lockheed Martin. I also dont think that its a dead beat, our school has a 20% 4 year graduation rate with less than 4000 students in total ( from Bsc - phd ). It’s not an easy school. I say with confidence that there are some students from my school that are probably better than those at MIT or Stanford. I worked with students from Columbia, Cooper union and Cornell and heard their stories. A 3.5 at my school is better than a 2.7 from Cornell, no matter how much he learned.</p>

<p>But the career fair is definitely a waste , I admit that. People say " over dressed!! over dressed!! HAHAHA " during class when someone comes from the CF and i understand why. I think the people that show up just come to get a break from their office routine. National grid sent an attorney while a couple of companies took notes and required you to write code for them on the back of the resume.</p>

<p>Many companies hire locals too. I will not find a circuit designer position in Manhattan, so I applied 2 timezones away. There is a first tier school 9 miles away and I still made it through. Boeing has a large number of Uni. Of Washington students and so does Microsoft according to Linkedin. So I dont think it should matter, its just that Top 10 will attract more companies to their campus compared to us surfing monster.com for the same opportunity.</p>