2025 EES AWS: Framing Your Future: How to Network, Stand Out, and Land Your First Role

Hi everyone, my name is Josie and I’m the support coordinator for the career center at Copath. We’re so excited to welcome you to our next breakout session. Before I introduce the session, a few reminders.

Make sure you utilize the chat, talk about what’s going on in the session, and keep your comments relevant to what we’re talking about. Please also make sure that you take a minute to fill out the survey because that helps us with all of your feedback for the session. With the reminders out of the way, I’m excited to introduce you to this session, Framing Your Future: How to Network, Stand Out, and Land Your First Role with Darius Robinson.

Now, Darius and I have done this for three years, and I’m so excited to have him back again. Darius is a dedicated individual with a passion for talent acquisition and development. With over a decade of experience in recruiting, he has honed his expertise in identifying and cultiv cultivating top tier professionals.

Darius currently super spearheads a highly successful program aimed at preparing engineering talent for interviews at Amazon. During his free time, Darius likes to golf, fish, and play table tennis. Hm.

We heard about table tennis in another session. He is also a member of Alpha Fi Alpha. Please join me in welcoming Darius to the stage.

Hey Darius, how are you? Hey. Hey.

Hey. How are you? Good to see you again, Josie.

Good to see you. Three years in a row. I love it.

Hey, I guess I’m doing something right. Right. For sure.

Well, I’m gonna let you take it away. Thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon or good morning depending on your time zone. I am here in Atlanta, Georgia. My name is once again Darius Robinson.

I’m excited to be here again. Raise your hand in the chat box if you’ve seen me present before. Let’s see.

I like to use the chat box. Okay, great. Great.

Awesome. I’m excited to be here. U I’ve been partnering with Cold Path for the last three years, so it’s it’s amazing to be here once again.

So let’s go ahead and get started and everyone can see my screen. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Jamal, we’re going to get you out of that warehouse.

Okay, buddy. Okay. So, let’s go to the next slide.

So, a little more about me. I have over over a decade of recruiting experience. I’ve built a career with around career development.

I’ve placed over 1,000 professionals in this time frame. I have over a 100 plus fang hires. I primarily recruit software engineers in my current role.

I have 40,000 followers on LinkedIn. So, if you don’t follow me yet, follow me today. My new goal is 50,000.

You can also add me on Instagram at day onearius. My Instagram is due so might not find a lot of content but hopefully I’ll get some good content from this session so that I can share it on my Instagram. So a little bit about me.

So here are the primary areas that we will focus on today. We’ll talk about what I like to call PET, which is passion, experience, and technology, which is just a a way of thinking about going on your job search. And then we’ll dive into interaction.

So thinking about, you know, once you decide the type of role that you’re looking for, how do you convert that into interactions? What I’m which is what we might consider informationals or interviews. Most importantly, we need to set goals.

So without goals, there’s no plans and we need the goals to make sure you’re going in the right direction. So before I get started here in the chat box, where are people calling in from or dialing in, however you decide to I’m in Atlanta or what college did you attend? So can all state for me New York?

New York. New York. No, look.

GT. Okay, I know Georgia Tech. I see you, Allison.

All right. Full round ATL, Chicago, UCI. Okay.

A very wide representation. Kennaw State, Marietta campus. Okay.

Go Owls. I’ll be at homecoming. Okay, cool.

Nice to meet everyone. Okay, over to the next slide. So once again, you know, just to backtrack a little, working in this space and working with students and recent alumni and even myself, I I remember when I was about to graduate from school and wanting to work at all the big companies and submitting the applications and not getting a response and having internships.

What I’ve learned over the years though is my own personal experience but also working with talent is that when you can start to align your career with your passion, you will find more success on your journey. And so I’m sure a lot of you want to work at the fang or main companies, whatever whatever calls it today. But I wanted us to spend some time today refraraming that mindset.

What about working at companies that more align with some other things that are important to you that you maybe haven’t thought about before? We obviously will get to the fang companies. I’m sure you see my open tabs.

But I want us to be more open-minded about the job search to see how you can generate success. Okay. So the key passion experience technology which basically means you know thinking about the things you’re passionate about thinking about your work you know your work experiences student organizations you’re a part of like it’s even like CodePath but then also the technology.

So like what types of technology are you passionate about? So raise your hand in the chat box if you are passionate about AI. I’m pretty sure everybody’s going to say yes.

What’s your favorite tool? ChatGPT Gemini or Chat Claude. Okay.

Claude GPT. Gemini Gemini Claude. Gemini plus Claude.

I didn’t know that existed. ChatGPT. Okay.

Cool. Cool. Cool.

I I’m I’m more of a Cad GPT alumni. That’s my preference. I call her Chassity just to give it more of a persona.

But cool. Okay. I like Perplexity.

I’ve never used that. All right. So, let’s see here.

So, what I would like for everyone to do on this call is I’m not sure if you’re taking notes or if you’re using your have notes pulled up on your computer, but we’re going to do a little exercise. This will be live exercise. So, what we want to think about first is your passion.

And I’m going to ask questions. You could either write in the chat box, you can write on your notepad, wherever, whatever you choose is fine with me. But when you start to think about your passion, one of the questions here, let’s see, I’m going to go with number four.

What problems or causes around the world would deeply resonate with me? So, in the chat box, what would be your answer? So, for me, I would say waste, lowinccome housing.

Okay. DEI healthcare impact empowering developing countries. Okay.

Okay. Bias. Okay.

What hobbies or tasks bring me the most energy and excitement in the chat box? Number two. Now, also make sure you write your own notes because you’ll need this after the session.

But let’s we’re just having interaction. Internet safety. I love that.

That’s very important. Photography. Okay, Sarah.

Okay. Gaming. I like gaming, building games, making stuff.

Okay. Cool. Cool.

Okay. How many people in the chat box have a pet? Raise your hand here if you have a pet.

I don’t have a pet, so I won’t raise my hand. So, let’s do a thumbs up if you have a pet at home. Okay.

Okay. I’ll get a cat one day. Okay.

Good. Good. Okay.

So, the reason I ask these questions, it’s like, have you ever thought about tech companies who build technology that are more aligned with pets? Maybe, maybe not. So, guess what?

We use chat. GPT made a simple question. Generate gener generate list of tech companies for pets.

How many people have heard of Pet Cube? I’ve never heard of it. We have Vet Cove.

Chewy, which I am familiar with. Galliant. Everybody knows Chewy.

Chew is the goat. Got you. So, this is a place that you can look for internships, right?

Like and I’m sure you could do more a more specific job search around this but this is something that anyone on this call you can dive deeper you know when you think about technology for pets right you think about shipping which is more on the chewy side but what about wearable technology what about the biotech someone here was talking about safety right so when you start to think about surveillance like there’s there’s so many different companies who have technology available on the market that are targeted toward pets. And someone might say, well, why would I want to work for a company that’s focused on pets? I want to work at a, you know, a more well-known company.

Well, the importance of that is think about the technology you use today. If you wouldn’t you, you know, prefer to be at a place where you the technology that you built impacts your lifestyle or things that you care about because that passion will be built inside of the technology and that’s very important especially as the world continues to change and all this generative AI and things like that. You want to make sure that your mind and your thoughts and your beliefs and your passion is built inside of that technology.

So that’s what you know prompted that idea. Photography. Okay, I’m just checking in the chat box.

Make sure. All right, to the next slide. Experience in the chat box.

What college do you attend outside of CodePath? What student organizations are you a part of? Let me see.

So, I have State. Wow, there’s a lot of Okay. What about student organizations?

African studentship. Color stack. I love color stack.

I e ship. Okay. Girls running club.

I I used to run in my past life. Muslim Student Association. This is good.

Okay. Anyone here a part of the NPC? Okay.

Girls who come. Wow. We have a very large representation here.

Okay. Marching band. Okay.

Michael, cool. These are all good things. And like I hope everyone is reading through the the comments, but you’ll start to see that maybe you have commonality or something in common with people in this chat that you’ve never met before.

And that’s very important. So we’ll jump back to ChatGPT. And as you can see, I asked the same question again.

So I’m going with gaming because who doesn’t like gaming, right? Everyone’s heard of EA, obviously Riot Games, but what about hardware gaming tech? Who’s heard of Razer before?

Or Turtle Beach? Never heard of that company. Oh, Dark.

Okay. Never. Same here.

I agree with you. I guess you I guess the people who know the answers to these questions play video games. Obviously, I don’t play video games like that.

I’m a little older. I grew up on Super Nintendo and the Gamecube. Please don’t judge me.

Okay, everyone knows about Turtle Beach. I need to look them up on Amazon, see if they have any headsets for me. But once again, these are just another way for you to start framing your thinking when it comes to internships and job opportunities.

So, we talked about the the passion, right? We looked at pets. We’re t we’re thinking about now about your experiences, right?

Like gaming or student programs that you’re a part of. Like these are different things that you can look up just from a simple search on on ChatGPT to find opportunities. Okay.

So, let’s go to the next page. Technology. Okay.

So in the chat box what is your major? Sociology CSIT software engineering. Okay.

I’m pretty sure everyone is computer science or similar. Okay. Compai.

Any non computer science majors on the call? Print. Printing engineering.

That’s new. Data science. Okay, Jude.

I like that. Bioinformatics. Okay.

Good. Good. Good.

What about certifications? Anyone have any certifications? I have the AWS cloud practitioner.

Okay. Azor fundamentals. CodePath.

Oh, yeah. Definitely the CodePath search. Love those.

CodePath. Okay. Cloud developer data analysis.

CodePath. Okay. AI practitioner.

Wow. CodePath has has everyone sorted up. I love it.

Okay. So, what areas of tech are you passionate about? I would say LLMs, Cotlin.

Okay. Cyber, front end, fintech. Okay.

Cloud. Okay. Good.

Aentic AI. I I’ve been wanting to get into that front end. Okay, good.

Good. So, we’ll jump back to chat. GPT again.

Same situation. So, let’s see. Oh, this is not correct.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So, this time I I switched it up a little bit.

So this time I wanted to say generate a Google boolean string that finds people on LinkedIn who majored in computer science at Kennesaw State. Obviously I went to Kennesaw State. So I want to find people who attended the school.

Do they have we have similar experiences? And so just from a basic search right and I could drop this I could share this link. Copy.

Obviously, you can edit this link to make it fit for you. But close this, but as you can see, this is a very simple and easy search. Obviously, you can just change this from the different schools.

And people might say, well, well, Darius, why did you make this search? Why would I go on Google or whatever the case may be and find people who majored in computer science that attended Kennesaw State? Well, the reason for this is these are the types of people you want to connect with.

Individuals who attended the same school as you have a similar passion as you. Obviously, you have similar professors. You failed the same test.

You spent late nights in the lab. Maybe you’re part of the same student organization, but more importantly, these individuals have graduated from the school and they are, you know, out into the world and they’re learning and they’re getting experiences and you want to start to connect with those individuals. And the reason for this is that this makes it easy to make the connection.

You know, if you’re just randomly adding people that you have zero connection to, they’re less likely to add you and you probably are going to feel less enthused to even want to connect with them. So, just making sure you you keep that in mind. Let’s see.

So, we’ll go to the next one. Back to presentation. Okay.

So we talked about that. Okay. Landing the interview.

Now for this slide, I really want us to to start thinking about this first quadrant here, right? Who do you know with a similar passion? And in the chat box now, you can already see several individuals with the same major as you that you’ve never met before in this chat room.

So, what I’d like for everyone to do right now is just take 30 seconds to just scroll up and like or love someone’s comment that has a similar passion as yourself. So, we come here. Let’s see.

Denny’s Okay. Machine line models. Jude, I like this.

Is there a reply option? Oh, it is. Learn something new.

Let’s connect. So, let this is a great time for us to start making connections, landing interviews, getting to know people. So, let’s start this engagement.

But what you will also see here is just some things that you can do as you’re starting to run these searches. You know, obviously yes, you can go on Google as you can see on this link and start to add people, right? But what happens next?

And so on this slide, you start to see some things that you can do to start to generate that that interaction. Okay. Any questions before I go to the the next part?

Let me go back here. Oh, okay. Allison, I like this.

I’m loving the energy here. Okay. All right.

So, I’ll go to the next slide here. We want to set tangible goals. Okay, these are very simple goals and easy to accomplish.

As we can already see in the chat box, connections are being made and I love it. This is exciting. Like I could only imagine if if I was a senior or a junior in in college and I could have an opportunity to interact with people in a chat box and generate interviews and connections.

That would be great. When I was in college, we didn’t have all this. It was just Skype and there was not a chat box.

So I’m loving the innovation and how technology has evolved. So I’d like for us to continue using technology. What I’ve created here is actually a I made a Google sheet so that we can all connect.

Obviously, I made three different tabs. Now, the purpose for this is I don’t know how many people on this call, but I’m sure there are hundreds. But if you could just come in and enter your name and your LinkedIn But I also have to let me close this.

If anyone on this call has an internship or full-time role already secured, please enter that information. And and folks might say, "Well, Darius, why would I answer that question?" I have a manager that I previously worked with for three years here at my company. And she had this this common theme she would always tell us is that we win as a team.

And everyone on this call is a part of CodeAD. And now some of you have internships already lined up for next year. Some of you have full-time offers coming off of an internship.

It would be great for you to share that information, right? So if you have a recruiter that you work with or you have a manager that you work with or a program manager that you work with at these companies, it would be important for if you’re open to it, you know, sharing that information with your fellow Cold Path commu community because you Darius, the document is view only. It’s view only.

Oh yeah, that’s important. Well, super important. Let me change that.

Thank you. This is a great idea. So, thank you so much for coming up with it.

Well, thank you for innovating with me. Okay. Well, yeah, let’s let’s take a minute.

Can you be my recruiter? Honestly, I recruit mid to senior level roles. So, I don’t recruit internships or entry level anymore.

I actually am more focused on clear talent. So, individuals who have some type of a top secret or higher clearance and and just so everyone knows there are three tabs. So, you know, you can go over to tab three or copy of copy of copy sheet one.

I doubt anybody’s on that page. So, we make it a little easier so that everyone can get the information here. And what I’ll do when we get to the question part of the interview is consolidate all this information onto one sheet so that after the call you can go in and make your connection and get more details around if someone has an internship or a full-time role.

If you want to add the information in column E, feel free to do so, but you know, everyone has their own preferences. U so cool. Let’s see here.

So to go into more detail around the theformationals and the referrals, as everyone on this call knows, and I’m sure that there’s generative AI and people are using AI to, get applications submitted and to update the resume so that it aligns with the job description. All of those things are great, but one thing AI cannot get around is human interaction. And what we are taking advantage of right now today in this chat box, you can’t edit.

Okay, let me see here. Oh no, it says editor. Oh, it’s because of her traffic.

Okay. Yeah, maybe you need to reload the page. There’s too many people on it.

Obviously, I’m not a computer science major and I crashed a website for the first time due to every traffic. Okay. Okay, cool.

Let me come back here. Okay, let’s refresh. People are deleting.

It’s heavy traffic. Okay, we’re we’re learning this together. We’ll find a way to to work through it.

If you want to drop your link in LinkedIn into the chat box, I can copy all that information into another tab on the sheet just in case you your information is not loading. So we have it all in one place. You see how we innovate together?

I like this group, Josie. There we go. Okay, cool, cool, cool.

Let’s see here. Okay, back to my point around the applications, right? A lot of people here are computer science majors.

I like to use the example around front-end versus back-end development, right? So when you apply to a job, you could think of your resume going into a database, but that’s on the front end. So if you’re coming in from the front end of the interview process, there are what we in the tech world would consider firewalls.

One of the firewalls might be your major. It might be, you know, your years of experience. It could be whether or not you have a some type of a secret clearance.

These are all things that can push you back out of the the system and ultimately get you a initial rejection email. But you also have backend development. And so people wonder like, well, Darius, how can I come in from the back end and and like get my resume to get from like resume to assessment?

Well, if you go the other way, if you submit a referral, now obviously a referral is does not guarantee you a next step in interview process, but companies do have referral programs in place. Also, if you refer someone at a company, they do receive monetary incentives for referring you. So there’s more in it for someone to send that link to you.

But to think about this from a high a higher level, imagine if the CEO or the director of of the CTO of your company or your school sent you a random message. Let’s let’s just imagine everyone on this call is a recruiter and the CTO or the director or the manager from the other side of the company send you a message on Slack and says, "Hey, I just I just spoke with, let me just find somebody’s name here. I just spoke with Jonathan.

I think he’d be great to join the team. Can you push him through the interview process? What do you what would you do in the chat box?

And I’ll just I’ll tell you what I’ll do. We’ll put it right here. ASAP.

Okay. Okay. Good.

And so what what I’m getting to is if you go through the front end, you’re going to put your application into a database and hope that you would receive a link. But if you go through the back end of the interview process where you maybe work with someone from Cold Path who has an internship or someone who already has a full-time job, they have more information. Maybe they know the director, maybe they are the manager, maybe they have been at the company for a couple years, and they can reach out to that recruiter and have them push your application to the next phase.

So, what I want everyone to take from this is purpose of all these different tabs that I’ve opened is to provide you with opportunities to go into LinkedIn and start to build that community. If you find a place like Chewy that you’d like to work for, great. Find people who graduated from Kennesaw State or UMass or whatever school that you’ve graduated from that currently work at the company.

Make those connections, have those calls, see if they can submit you as a referral. My favorite goal here is to, you know, schedule your first round of interviews by the 1 of October. If you don’t have an internship already set up, if you follow this process, making 25 connections a day, scheduling five calls a week, like I mean, there’s enough people on this call to talk to somebody every day for probably about the next three weeks for sure.

And this is not including going on LinkedIn or running these Google searches to identify individuals who either graduated from your school or have similar passions as yourself that can get your resume pushed through the interview process. Okay, so Raphael said, "Most of my LinkedIn connections go unanswered." Great question. So once again, we think about optimization.

When you go on someone’s LinkedIn page, and this is not foolproof. I don’t have a data behind this, but you can see if someone has recent activity. So, if you go to add people, open their profile in a new tab, or maybe you can make some chatbot or Google extension that can look at LinkedIn pages and see like I don’t know, let me go back to this page right here.

So, you could probably build like a Google extension that opens all these pages something like this. And connect with people who have recent activity. So, if I come here, as you can see, this person is what I would consider active on LinkedIn.

I don’t even know if Brian’s on the call. He might be on the call. He just graduated.

But, as you can see, go to their page and see if they have recent activity. They’re more likely to be active. Now to be transparent, a lot of the people that we’re seeing right now are from cold path.

So the likelihood that they’re using platforms like LinkedIn is very high. But I do know recruiting software engineers that individuals who have more experience are less likely to be on the platform. But I do know that more senior level individuals like directors and managers and VPs are more likely to be on this platform.

So the higher you go when you start to think about job titles and individuals who might have something in common with you, there’s a good way there’s a better chance that they’re active on the platform. Asking let me read this question. Someone asking for a referral and that’s for social and I apologize if I’m saying your name incorrectly.

When asking for a referral, is it something you asked during the coffee chat? If so, what’s the most effective way to ask for a referral? Personally I think it’s best to just have a discussion with people like you might find out just from CodePath alumni or people who maybe work at these companies that they might say hey you don’t want to work here it sucks.

You just might find that out. So the the the goal here is to have informationals. Schedule these calls, get to know people to understand if if this is the type of environment you want to be a part of.

Because if you don’t have that question answered for yourself, then you could find yourself, you know, moving across the United States to this new company with this new job and thinking everything is fine and then a month later you’re miserable. And so in the chat box, raise your hand. You know, no, you we don’t need to use the chat box.

We can use the emojis. Raise your hand if you’ve had a terrible internship experience and you would never go back to work for said company. Just raise your hand.

Okay, I have not yet. Okay, not yet. Not yet.

Okay, gotcha. Good. Raise your hand if you had a wonderful experience and you would love to go back to the company and you can type the company’s name in in the chat box.

Wow. A lot of woos and wows in check. Okay.

Both. Okay. Good.

Okay. I love this. What are some other companies in the chat box?

A lot of these companies I’ve never heard of before. CVS Health. I didn’t even know they had a health division.

Okay. WS in the house. Okay.

Amazon. Okay. So, as you can see here, right?

See, I love this Allison. This is what I’m talking about. Networking Allison, keep it coming.

Okay, HP was amazing. This is great. So, for everyone on this call, as you can see, it was actually a trick question.

There are people in this chat box who have already worked and had amazing internships experiences. These are people you can go and schedule calls with, people that can maybe get you a referral or get you in contact with the last manager or help you on this journey. So, please make sure you you capitalize on this and and let’s continue to work together.

Okay. So, so just to you know just to review like apply the pet the pet method passion experience technology use these three variables as a starting point and for looking for your internships or full-time roles. Let your path, let these things be more of a barrier to entry because it will help you be more successful going through that journey.

We set goals. I know everyone here loves goals and executing on them. Let’s do it.

I would love to reach reach out to me on LinkedIn once you get that first internship or get that job offer. I think everyone here is all about community and building together. And the more we do it, the more successful we’ll be.

So team work, continue to work with the cold path community. I know there’s alumni community, there’s undergrad community. Like those are these are all great places to help you on this journey.

So make sure you continue to capitalize on that. Obviously ChatGPT I know we have people who use other platforms but hey start a conversation build these prompts out and make sure that you are moving forward. So let me go to questions.

So I think I have I’m checking the chat box. I think I have five minutes four minutes. You have a bunch of minutes.

We’re good. What time? What time do I have till?

We have until well 3:30. Oh, okay. We have plenty of time.

Oh, I thought it was Yeah. So, production’s gonna bring up some questions from the Q&A chat. I’ll read them out to you and then you get to answer them.

Gota, hi. Does hi. Does AWS have an interest link or an application link that EES participants can apply through?

Not at this time. I do know that the companies had partnerships with ES with Cold Path before. Maybe some folks on this call have secured an internship through the platform.

But I know currently I’m not aware of one myself. All right. And we know when you get links you’re going to send them to me to put on Career Connect.

That is correct. What makes a LinkedIn profile stand out most to recruiters when reviewing early career candidates? I would say activity.

You know, the more you build out your LinkedIn profile, the better. I can actually just randomly take someone’s LinkedIn profile now and give some, I guess, some real time feedback. This is random, so please don’t take this personal.

Eric at Stonybrook. Let’s go ahead and connect. Yeah, like the about section is critical.

Like this is good. He’s active on the LinkedIn. This is great information.

Any experiences you have is great education. Cool. I don’t see a mention of CodePath on your page.

I would definitely follow CodePath and mention it inside of your profile because this is something that companies or individuals might look for especially with the level of impact Cold Path has has had when it comes around like these different types of certifications. Companies are looking for that type of profile. So for everyone on this call, if you’re not mentioning Cold Path on your LinkedIn, I would strongly suggest starting to do so.

And liking our comments and sharing them. Yeah, those things too. Yeah.

And talking about what you’re doing with CodePath, right? You know, and you know, like to Eric’s page, right? I’m not sure if he mentioned that he’s attending this conference on his page and he’s here in the session and he’s here in the chat.

Come on, Eric. Let’s get active, buddy. All right, let me see here.

Let me go to someone else. Jinara. Okay.

Artist web developer. Oh, you’ve already added me on LinkedIn. Okay, this is good.

I would add a little more juice here, right? Talk a little bit more about your projects. Oh, this is good.

Any if you have a GitHub, if you have a portfolio, if you have a leak code, if you have a HackerRank, put that information on your LinkedIn profile because this is just another way that a recruiter can go in and find out what type of work you’re doing, right? Outside of your school work, GitHub is a great place. Everyone on this call knows you you have to get on leak code or neat code or some type of code to prepare for these interviews.

So if a recruiter is looking for someone who’s active on these platforms by you providing a link and and maybe even add that to your your resume if you don’t already like add those links because that these are things that people can see like this recent achievement like you want to have that that public on the profile. Yeah. And then you can also share it into the Slack channel at CodePass.

So that everybody else who’s seeing it can thumbs up it. So, the more traffic you’re getting on your posts, the better. Yep, I like that.

Yeah. All right, let’s go to the next question. As a student without prior internships, what’s the best way to frame my story so recruiters see my potential?

I’m glad you made that question. I think I’ll go back to my presentation like let’s see here. Think about this.

Your passion, your experience, and the technologies that you like to spend your nights and weekends working on. It’s how you tell your story. So, when you go back to this presentation, I don’t know how how I’ll be able to download it some kind of way because I can’t share it.

Oh, I can put on social media. Let me go ahead and do that real quick. Oh, I’ll find another way.

But take some time going back through this presentation and thinking about these questions because this is going to start to help you not only find ways to tell your story, but also help drive discussions with other individuals. You know, if you love shooting pool or you love gardening or video games and you start to find LinkedIn groups or Slack channels or GitHubs where people are passionate about gaming, that’s where you’re going to find your opportunity by just interacting with people who have similar understandings about information that is important to you, but most importantly that you are very very knowledgeable about and I hope that answers your question. Yeah, I would agree.

For anybody who was in the base 10 session right before this, you will notice that the engineer who was on that session got his job by playing pingpong. Oh, I love table tennis, too, by the way. Anyone wants to play a big competitive sport right now?

Yes. And I just started pickle ball like two weeks ago. So any pickle baller or table tennis folks on the on the in the chat, let’s connect.

Yeah, especially if you’re in the Atlanta area, you can go play together. Hello. Does AWS have research opportunities for undergrad students?

If so, what is the interview process? What does the interview process look like? I’m not 100% sure.

But we can always run this a search on Google. I did check before the call and I don’t think our intern any there weren’t any internship positions posted at this time. I know because I looked on the website before the call.

What I can tell you is this. Identify the companies who have already started to hire for these research roles. As everyone knows on this call, internships or especially for a computer science student, it’s scary times right now because imagine how many computer science majors are building bots that can apply for these jobs.

You have some hefty competition these days and it’s not the students, it’s the computers. So what I would recommend for anyone on this call is get on LinkedIn, find individuals from CodePath, find individuals who graduated from your institution, find leaders from these companies that you aspire to work for, set up those calls, and you know, try to find a way to get that referral link, but more importantly, get that assessment link. What about getting away from the computer?

What do you think about networking outside of being in front of a computer? Oh, I love it. I was actually just working with a client about a month ago and she was she was very she was what you would consider an introvert, right?

And so she says, "Well, I can’t I can’t get into I’m not getting any interviews. I don’t know what to do." And so we talked about her passion. So she loved basketball.

So we went on Google. We found some some women’s pickup basketball games in the metro Atlanta area and two weeks later she was playing pickup basketball with come to find out which was the VP of a company and she starts her new job next week. Amazing.

Amazing. And I’ve heard so many people going to their local chamber of com commerce and going to events there and professional networking not necessarily having around computer science or tech. Yeah.

You know and that’s that’s what’s important right like you could think about networking from two standpoints like one of them is to go to events just so you can meet people and everybody’s not interested in you know I don’t like talking to people. I don’t have anything to talk about. I don’t know what to talk about, which is why I’m on this slide.

Whatever. What’s your passion? Are you a gamer?

Do you like gardening? You like ChatGPT? There are different learning communities available for you to take advantage of and go interact with those people.

But make sure you bring in like, hey, I’m attending Stonybrook. I’m looking for an internship. Do you know anybody that I can speak with?

So it it makes it easier for you to integrate that into the discussion. Yeah. So no matter where you are, talk about your passion.

Hi Darius. For internships, is it better to apply as soon as the role opens or wait a few days to apply with a referral? I have heard different things and would love to hear your perspective.

In today’s market it does it doesn’t help whether you wait or go the first like either you do it the first day or the 15th day. There’s I was looking one of my buddies works at Google and he recruits interns. They had 11,000 applications on one requisition.

They only needed to hire I think for his team like 50 interns. So if you want to get ahead of all those things, you want to make sure you are finding alumni from Cold Path who work at these companies. Ideally managers, directors, VPs, folks who have influence at these companies to make sure that your application is pulled so that you can get into the interview process.

Great advice. How do you make sure networking doesn’t feel transactional? Talking about the things that are important to you.

You know, if you if you reach out to someone who’s a part of CodePath, like it’s not transactional. You have a story. You have things in common.

If you talk to people who graduated from the same institution as you, like the way that you avoid it making it feel transactional is that you don’t make it a transaction. You make it a interaction. And what I mean by that is you get to know people, they get to know you and you also figure out is there anything that you can do for them?

Like don’t think because you’re a student that you can’t help someone who’s been working in the industry for 15 years. There are a lot of people who are still new to using ChatGPT or using Generative AI and don’t know anything about it. You can provide so much value to a lot of people who have a lot more experience that maybe graduated from your institution just from the types of things you do and those are ways that you can be more interactional versus transactional.

What would be your tip or proposed game plan for those who were late to the game, didn’t find an internship but are graduating soon and looking for a job? I would say Oh, I realized that I should be looking on this other page. I’m looking on the wrong page.

Let me close this down. If you’re late to the game, it’s not too late. It’s still early.

If you’re still in school, this is the time where you could double down on what you learned in this presentation. Get active on LinkedIn. Find people who who are already working full-time.

Start having these discussions because especially, you know, if you start to look at smaller companies, you might find more activity. Everybody want wants to work for the big boys, the big names, the fang, the mains, but there’s so many other companies out here that you would be a wonderful fit and you would probably have a lot less stress going through the interview process. And I don’t know anybody on this phone or on this on this on this chat box that loves interviewing, but I know I don’t.

So if you want to reduce the number of interviews that you need to take, you the more of these interactions you have with people, the more likely that you know you can, you know, work your way through the interview process a little faster. When is the best time to connect with recruiters or people you have seen at events? During the event or after two or three days after the event, weekend?

Immediately. I I have a saying and I’m actually working on it. My my advice to people is to not focus on reaching out to recruiters.

And the reason for that is we already have, you know, and I’ll just use my friend as an example, they have 11,000 applications in the queue right now. Okay? So, if you’re reaching out, it’s which is great.

It’s nothing wrong with it. They’re less likely to respond, right? But if you focus on individuals who are software engineers or managers or directors or VPs that are active on these platforms, they’re more likely to respond because they’re not getting bombarded with messages.

Now, the types of recruiters that I do recommend that people work with are recruiters from staffing agencies. I’m not sure if anyone is is familiar with the term, but staffing agencies, it’s just another way to help you with the interview pro like with landing job opportunities. Essentially, staffing oper staffing companies work closely with companies to identify talent for open positions.

And I have several friends who have degrees in IT or similar who basically worked their way up through a staffing agency. They took a temp job, they got a little experience, now they’re working full-time, and they work their way up. So, if you haven’t looked into staffing companies and you’re about to graduate, I definitely examples.

Let’s see. So, there’s like tech systems, tech systems, aerotch, robber. I mean, it’ll it’ll it’ll pop right up on chat.

Robert Hop has been around forever. Yeah. And maybe there are staffing companies that are more, you know, that work closely with like entry level talent.

I don’t know any off the top of my head, but a Google search or a a ChatGPT would definitely start to pull that list for you. Right. Just off the top of my head, I know everybody on this call is working on a personal project.

What if they have a problem in their personal project? Do you think it would be appropriate for them to reach out to an engineer from a different team to ask them about that problem and how they can solve it? No, I think that’s a wonderful idea.

Okay. I think that’s a way to make things interactional, right? Hey, you know, my name is Darius Robinson.

I’m majoring computer science at Kennesaw State. I’m working on this personal project. You know, I see that you’re an engineer at this company.

I’m trying to, you know, use this technology. Can we jump on the call? Like, that’s cool.

I love it. I would even post something like this on LinkedIn or like post it on Reddit like and let the magic happen. That interaction is critical.

And it also can just show someone, you know, your it helps people know about your skill level, the way you think, the way you move, the way you operate, which are all important when it comes to, you know, not only interviewing, but making, you know, being a fit on the team. All right, we have time for one more question. Do you believe LinkedIn Premium is worth subscribing to?

It will enable writing personal notes for more than five connection requests a month, but since I’ve heard mixed reviews about it, I’m still not sure it’s worth the cost. Wow, Alexia, that’s a great question. You are investing in your future.

If you feel that LinkedIn premium is is is optimal, maybe give it a try. I think Google searching and public profiles will give you if you take a more strategic approach to adding and connecting with people on LinkedIn, you will get a lot more success with people with people more likely to add you. So I would try spending more time being more specific about the people I add based on maybe their activity and their the level of security they have on their profile because it will increase the chances that they actually just connect with you.

And obviously I think that’s our ultimate goal when we send connection requests. You could also go comment on their pages, right? Like someone has activity, their profile is public, you could go run the gamut and like all their posts and make a bunch of comments and that’ll help them find you in their in their feed.

Awesome. Well, thanks Darius. This has been so much fun.

Hasn’t this been fun? Yes, I loved it. Is it possible to get the the chat information after the call or I guess Yeah.

So, yeah, we can definitely make that happen for sure. Okay. Well, let me just share my screen one last time so that everyone has my information.

Let me see here. Share. Okay.

No, you’re sharing the ees the air meet screen. Okay. Let me take that off this page.

All right. So, just so everyone has my information. There it is.

It’s here. And then D, please add me on LinkedIn. I’m trying to build up my connections and IG.

You’re trying to start a new IG page. Yeah, I know. That’s why I just added that.

Yeah. All right, Darius. Well, thank you so much.

This was so much fun. Everybody give your thanks in the chat. An emoji to Darius.

Yes. Bye bye for now. See you soon.

Awesome. Awesome. And with that being said, we have a message from Bobby.

All right, I’m back and guess what? Now we’re transitioning into the open networking session. Now you can visit the networking lounge to build connections or check out company booth to learn more about organizations joining us here at the summit.

Now don’t forget EEES is all about those moments of connections that can change your future.