How to Land Your First Software Engineering Role - April 15, 2021

My name is morgan I am the head of student career services here at CodePath.org coming to you from sunny san francisco california today we’re hosting a panel on how to land your first software engineering role so if you’re looking for an internship or a full-time job and this is your first time out this is the event for you and we’re so happy to have you here with us before I introduce our panelists I just want to give a quick run of show so we’re going to start off by introducing our amazing guests for the evening and giving each of them a little bit of time to introduce themselves I have some questions planned for the panelists based on all of your submissions when you rsvp’d for the event so we took the kind of most commonly asked questions and summarize those in the categories and we’re going to go through those first and then at the end we’re going to have about 20 minutes where we can do some live q a so for those of you who are who are brave enough and engaged enough we would love for you to use the raise your hand feature which you can find in zoom at the the bottom of the window I think if you go to chat I think and there’s there’s a raise your hand feature there and then we’ll call on your name and you can come on the mic introduce yourself say where you’re going to school what class year you are and then and then ask your question it’s under reactions thank you jason say that’s my I should know zoom by now all right so let’s get started so first I’m going to have our panelists introduce themselves I’m going to go in alphabetical order so first can we have eileena from intuit can you introduce yourself thanks morgan hey everyone I’m eileen heim university recruiter at intuit out of the san diego office was there anything else you wanted us to go over is that it let’s do it let’s do a fun question what is the last movie you watched on netflix I’m binging shit’s creek right now ooh good show good show it won a lot of emmys this year thank you eileen all right next we have bianca martinez from bloomberg hi everybody my name is bianca martinez I’m a recruiter on the engineering campus team at bloomberg headquartered in new york city last movie I watched so trying to come up with all the oscars get up to speed the last movie I saw was sound of metal highly recommend that oh that’s the one where the drummer goes deaf right wow I gotta see that awesome thank you bianca okay which letter comes next me off a bit all right I think it’s jeannie from hewlett-packard enterprises can you introduce yourself yes good evening good morning everybody I’m jenny laudriere I’m with hewlett-packard enterprise and I live in sunny nevada florida which is just south-southeast of pensacola I’ve been recruiting for 20 years and I’m trying to think what the name of it was that I watched last night but it was hula it wasn’t netflix but we’re getting ready for dune to come out so that’s exciting around the house I was so excited for doom to come out last christmas I read the entire book in a month which was hard it’s like 800 pages and then they moved it back I was crushed but I’m very excited for that movie too all right and then last but not least we have lizzy from mathworks hi everyone my name is lizzy habermel and I am a university or campus recruiter and I am just outside of boston on the east coast I actually don’t watch too many movies I tend to fall asleep before they end so my husband typically has some sort of sport event on tv right now he’s watching the bruins so I usually just go along with that nice yeah I’m also getting to the point where it’s hard to actually stay awake through a movie so I try to watch them before the sun goes down awesome thank you so much to our panelists for being here tonight and for sharing your your expertise and your best practices with our students all right before we get started I’m just going to set the scene I have a polling question I’m going to launch this polling question and we’ll be able to see your responses as they come in and so the question is how many of you have completed a technical internship before and so that can be software engineering mobile development web development cyber security what else is there data analytics technical consulting wow okay we actually have about a fourth of the crowd or oh no 30 percent of the crowd has completed an internship before awesome okay great to know so for those of you who knew I hope that this is new and helpful information for those of you who’ve gotten one before I hope that this makes the job search easier for you in the future all right so we’re going to jump into these questions so these questions did come from students I’m going to ask our panelists from one to two of you to answer each question so if there’s a question you feel like you don’t have an answer you don’t have a strong opinion you can abstain and if you have a really strong opinion I you know we would love to hear it all right so so let’s jump in so the first topic is just going to be general when we’re applying to internship positions what should students share on their resume when they do not have prior technical work experience what can they share that still demonstrates their candidacy for an internship I can take a shot at this question so what can they share if they don’t have technical work experience so any academic experience would be great project experience you have that you learn in school that’s helpful I I for students too I always tell students like high school counts so it’s something that you were passionate about and completed you can also put that on your resume and any leadership opportunities that they’ve done whether they were again a president of a particular club within school anything that just shows that they are able to play well with others I guess is a kind way to put it because so many of our cultures these days are collaborative and you can no longer be an island and I think if you can show an employer that you can work with others that’s helpful too sorry go ahead go ahead lizzy I was just gonna say it’s perfectly appropriate to also spotlight your personal projects so if you know if you’ve been working on something outside of school that’s relevant to the role I would also say go for that as well I was going to say feel free to include non-technical work experience too we want to hear about that if you’re if you’ve done like customer service or hospitality anything it’s really relatable and transferable so you can talk to people you can collaborate just some of the things that we were saying earlier so that stuff is definitely relevant and then you can supplement with personal projects hackathons student groups anything else that you’re doing we want to see like the whole 360 not just the tech stuff awesome thank you all right another question that was very popular is for people that have done maybe their own technical projects their own side projects or projects in class do recruiters look at those so when they link their GitHub or if they link to their personal website do recruiters actually take a look at their technical projects I know we did when I was working at cisco we did take a look at what students put in unfortunately one young man has sent the url to a site that he was extremely excited about but unfortunately it was a porn site so keep those off of your resume please but we do have managers that will take a look at the GitHub accounts to see what the the students are doing that must have been the worst day of his life I know for me personally I’m not looking at the student’s githubs but after I review a resume it gets passed along to a team of engineers I know that they’re looking at it and they’re really excited about it they think it’s just as important maybe as a full resume and that’s something that they can get excited about and talk about in interviews with the students a plus one then oh go ahead no I was just gonna say I’ll plus one that I agree that’s great to hear I think a lot of people don’t realize that resume it gets passed around to a lot of people in the organization right it’s not just the recruiter that takes a look at it all right so for our next questions these questions are about networking so the first question is how can students make their LinkedIn profile more attractive to recruiters I would say most importantly you know make sure your information is accurate and relevant you know I’ve looked at countless LinkedIn profiles that include incorrect graduation dates or even degrees and so just at the most basic basic level you know include correct information and make sure you update it you know if you finish an internship make sure to remove present to the date that you finished it just really simple things like that so that when a recruiter is looking at your profile they know what they’re looking at and the information is correct I’d also say it’s immensely helpful when students provide the right level of detail when describing their internships or projects in LinkedIn sometimes it’s you know it can be really easy to just list them without giving any contacts to what the skill sets that you leveraged or you know any type of you know qualifications that are you know skills that you developed in that internship or in that project so you know just be mindful that recruiters if you know in the absence of a full resume that is your resume so just make sure that it’s you know it’s comprehensive and helpful to the recruiter I’d say like in addition to everything that lizzie just said 100 agree like using your headline or two and including like what you’re interested in that’s super helpful and using the LinkedIn features where you can show that you are open to networking that’s super helpful thank you that’s really helpful and how are recruiters using LinkedIn profiles do do recruiters actually source candidates using the information in LinkedIn I do like 90 of my hires come from LinkedIn recruiter yes agreed simple answer is yes LinkedIn profile and so the next question so something that I encourage students to do is to reach out you know and build their their network through LinkedIn have you ever had students reach out to you on LinkedIn for you know internship or job opportunities and and if so what were the the successful students doing that you would want the students on this call to do as well yeah I for sure get messages all the time in my inbox I probably have like 250 right now so the ones that I typically can get back to are the ones who make some sort of connection so like were you at this CodePath event tonight let me know that do we have something in common you know do you know something specific about bloomberg like have you done the research what are you looking for I also have a lot of people just asking for general feedback and they’re not like hey I want a job at bloomberg they’re like I have a couple ideas or I have a couple questions can I generally bounce those ideas off of you and I’m always willing to help so I think something like that that’s general but also like compelling and some connection to me usually gets the most hits when I’m coming out of my disaster of an inbox I think also students have to take responsibility for their own job search it’s really nice and it’s very easy to just send a resume over and say hey I’m looking for a software engineer what have you got open well okay that’s nice you’re one of about three thousand I’m gonna be taking a look at this week what have you done in order to help you because your job search is your job definitely agree with that you know in terms of getting back to candidates of course we always want to get you know a decision back within a timely manner but if a candidate applies on a monday and on tuesday they’re messaging me on LinkedIn asking for a decision you know I think also just being realistic with the timeline and also you know checking your inbox because most companies are going to you know send you some sort of confirmation email once you do submit your application and then directions or guidelines for how to follow up whether it’s checking a portal or whatever that might be so just be sure and again really simple information but like follow the follow the directions because it’s most likely going to get you to where you want to be I think the one thing I have to add just to like reaching out over LinkedIn I have a lot of candidates that reach out to leaders like like my ceo for example or my cdo and you know they do respond and it does get back to recruiters so I mean it’s great to get your foot in the door but you know it’s also great to reach out to potentially the person who’s doing the work that you want to get into instead of the leader because the leader can get you get your foot in the door but then it’s it’s like do you even know what you want because then when they come to us it’s like well I’m not sure what I want to do I’m like I’m not here to help you to do that like jeannie was saying right do the research like talk to someone that is in the job that you want to do because then they can help you and refer you to absolutely I think that’s that’s really key you should come with information that the recruiter can help you with not not coming with with problems that you need them to solve so in addition to reaching out to recruiters or leadership another tactic I encourage students to use is is reaching out to people in their own networks especially their alumni networks because what they may not know is that people working in the job that they want to have may be able to refer them to the recruiter or you know to someone who’s making a hiring decision can you all talk about the role that referrals play in in your work when you’re looking at candidates I think they’re huge especially if they met the student and actually like spoke with them you know instead of just saying yeah I got this this resume over here from joe buzzword I actually met and talked with joe at a university of xyz event he was very articulate he’s looking for this kind of a role you know what can you do to help him and typically especially if it’s an employee referral we do take a look at those first but if you sit down and go through a phone book and just write people’s names down that they referred you we have ways to find out that you know whether you’re telling the truth or not and if you’re untruthful about who referred you then what else on your resume or in the up you know what you’re producing to us is not the truth awesome thank you all right so my last question in around networking a lot of students were asking you know what they can do to stand out if they don’t come from a target school so if you you know you don’t go to stanford or mit or what have you but you’re competing with those students for the time same types of positions how can they elevate their candidacy in the the application or the the job search process I think attention to detail is what’s most helpful here from a recruiter’s perspective so one of the most valuable pieces of feedback that I’ve personally ever received was to take a really good look at the job description and incorporate what is in the job description and what you know of the role into your resume and customize it for every single role that you apply to yes that’s a lot of work but it’ll ultimately pay dividends in the end it’s going to help the recruiter and potentially the hiring manager whoever really whoever sees your resume you know process that alignment for your fit for the role and ultimately eliminate any guesswork right the the less a recruiter hiring manager has to guess about your background or your expertise your skill sets the better so you know for example if the company you’re applying to uses or produces like we do we produce a software you know and you have proficiency in that software let’s say it’s really smart to include that in your technical skill sets list right and just be super targeted so instead of like packing your resume full of a bunch of bullet points you know that may or may not be relevant or helpful I would say pinpoint what you what you’ve done why you did it and what is the impact or what are the results that you achieved from doing those those things whether they be projects or internships I would say is most helpful for us I think like in addition to that like getting your I know in this virtual world it’s hard but attending events and you know you guys are already at you know enrolled in CodePath and you’re 80 there just getting yourself in front of employers in some way so like you know just attending any type of meetup or event that your target company is hosting and then putting yourself out there and asking questions during those events yes accounts for sure I would also say put CodePath on your resume so sometimes when I’m talking to CodePath students it’s not on there it should 100 be on there the work that you’re doing through the program is incredible it’s supplementing all the academic stuff that you’re doing already through your university and it’s also a talking point so that way you know we have something in common we can get you know get into the deeper conversation there awesome thank you bianca that actually touches nicely on a question we just got in the chat about you know should students show that they’ve taken courses with data camp or coursera or CodePath primarily CodePath and it sounds like the answer is yes yeah 100 and then I did want to touch this is not in one of the pre-planned questions but I didn’t want to touch on what eileen said about going to company events can you all share how students can learn about events that your companies put on during the recruiting season the house on handshake there we go it’s used on handshake and open to all schools we sure we have like target schools but we’re open to everyone it’s not just it’s not the school that we’re interested it’s the student yeah for bloomberg we have stuff on handshake and then you can check out our careers page in addition to our job postings we might also have events and then we also have a profile on jumpstart with an engineering community within that I would say that’s as close to like a forum is where we’re posting all of our live events and that’s open to everybody I’d also say keep an eye out for your the emails that you receive from any student organizations or affiliations you’re a part of we do a lot of targeted promotion for our events and outreach through you know different organizations and student groups so keep an eye out for for those emails don’t let them go unnoticed or to your spam filter through your spam filter I’ll just really emphasize going to these events is really really really important it’s not only going to help educate you on what the company is like and what the role is like and you know who’s at the company what a day in the life is all of that but it’s also going to you know allow you an opportunity to potentially engage with you know future community members so ask good questions and it definitely doesn’t go unnoticed if you attend those events fantastic all right let’s move on to talking about interviewing because this is really where a lot of people can get tripped up so first let’s talk about behavioral interviewing so when students are doing the phone screen I know some of them prepare by creating what’s called an elevator pitch do elevator pitches still matter to you are these still an effective way for candidates to kind of communicate their professional background I think so loosely I think that you should come prepared with like a one-minute summary of who you are and all the important points that you want to get across your recruiter sometimes we’ll start a conversation we’ll be like tell me about yourself pretty big but that’s where the elevator pitch comes in the one thing I would say about that is like try and make it less rehearsed like we recognize that you definitely practice and we’re in the mirror beforehand but when you’re in your interview we want to get to know you we want to see that human component so kind of let that guard down and then just be authentic talking about your experiences but I would say the elevator pitch is a good place to start and always to fall back on to start an interview or if you’re at a career fair or something and you do have that limited time and do your research before you go into an interview whether it’s a prescreened with a recruiter or you’re actually talking to the the vp of development example hewlett packard split five years ago I work for hewlett-packard enterprise so we’re the software as a system if somebody comes and I’m doing a phone screen for them they tell me how much they love their computer their printer their laptop you know their copier I know that they didn’t do their research because hpe doesn’t make those hp I kept those so knowing the difference between what has happened to a company you know some that went as long as five years ago but definitely get online get a feel for what’s going on now because that kind of technology and those technical questions are the ones that you’re going to want to be talking to about the team that you’d be working with and or the manager that you’d be working for and so what about students who get really nervous when talking about themselves what advice would you give to students who you know they’re like oh I was so excited for that phone screen and then I just clammed up and it went so poorly how would you how would you advise students prepare if they know that they’re going to be really nervous when they get on that call with you I’d say practice career services offers a lot of like you know mock interviews practice with your friends practice in the mirror like bianca’s saying you know I think that really helps with the nerves and then just say you’re nervous you know just just tell them like hey I’m so sorry I’m a little nervous right now you know then you just come off really authentic I think it’s really hard to talk about yourself right and you know be really proud of what you’ve done and and spend you know one to five plus hours talking about yourself the whole day right but if there’s a time to be comfortable with it or to do that it’s really during an interview it’s the whole point right but I think it’s kind of that like showing and not telling that can be helpful so you know maybe instead of telling the recruiter telling the hiring manager you know you have strong time management skills you know you come up with a one or two examples of a time when you applied those time management skills so I think that can be you know both effective and also make it a little bit easier just to show the recruiter that you have a skill set and you’re good fit for the role without kind of just like you know I’m really good at this I’m really good at that I’ve done this I’ve done that you can give a solid example I also think it’s important to realize that literally everyone is nervous it’s my job to interview and then when I’m on the other side of the table I act like I’ve never had a conversation before I’m just realizing that interviews are daunting for everybody is kind of the first step and something else that I was doing when I was interviewing is I was taking calls with recruiters that maybe I wasn’t the most excited about and I was using those for practice so that way when my dream job did come along I knew that I had nailed it and that I would be more prepared and more confident I’m just using practice and even if an interview doesn’t go well okay that was practice for you and you have more experience under your belt to you know nail the next one but never let them see that you’re using the interview for practice right all right so this is CodePath so I do want to touch briefly on technical interviewing and I know that you know you all on the call do not do technical interviews but can you share what common feedback you get from engineering managers who maybe did the technical interview with the candidate and then came back and had some critical feedback what should students work on improving for these technical interviews sure there’s like a few things that call outs and their themes that we see when people don’t pass the interview so number one while you’re coding articulate your thoughts out loud because they want to hear what you’re thinking while you’re coding so that if you are going off the you know going in a different route the wrong route then they can course correct and give you a little nudge in the right direction if you’re not saying what you’re doing then it’s just like silence and you know they can’t help you yeah so there I feel like that’s like one of the major ones and then clarifying the question before jumping to solve I think that’s a really big one because then you can go so far 10 minutes down the you know 10 minutes of a 30 minute tech interview and you’re like oh shoot I don’t even understand the question so I think like those two things can get you pretty far did eileena cover it I think she did a great job wonderful all right we’ll we’ll move along okay so after the interview a question I get a lot from students is about the follow-up how should students follow up with you or with the hiring manager after the interview what should they be putting in their their thank you notes I like to see thank you notes if nothing else call me old school but it still goes back to that personal touch where you are cognizant of the time and respectful the time that it took for somebody to spend that 15-20 minutes with you especially if they’ve got deadlines looming and things like that and I think it also sets you apart from the other students because not a lot of students do that anymore granted you don’t write them and use snail mail but a real quick message to the recruiter saying you know thank you for helping to facilitate this I really enjoy talking with dr so and so can you please pass along my message to dr so-and-so and then write the message that you would like to send to them if you could a lot of managers will give you their email addresses so if you do get that use it wisely and again make sure that you’re letting them know how you can fit into the position that they’re looking for yeah plus one I love getting thank you notes and when we’re in the office I would love getting the cards in the mail yes people still do that it’s it’s amazing and I do if somebody asks for the interview or an interviewer’s name email addresses I give it to them we want to hear from you so then it does it for me it does make you guys stand out definitely I would say authenticity and customization is really key here we can tell when you’re just copying an online template so that I don’t say that can hurt you but you know if you’re gonna take the time to write the email in the first place you might as well customize it yeah I’m not steve I admit I definitely did that at least once or twice when I was in college after you at least now with google or with gmail they have like the 10 second delay and you can undo but oh sitting on my email and just seeing the company name was wrong I was like it’s over okay well yeah we’ll move on I get intel sometimes yes I’m sure you get intel maybe what are some other ions there are a couple yeah awesome all right so my last question before we open the floor to q a are there any common just like errors that students make I’m sure well-intentioned that you think just kind of immediately take them out of the running what are some easy mistakes that students can avoid overall swearing I had one student okay it doesn’t bother me quite so much but I had to have him kind of tone it down a little bit before he went on to anybody else because he would have made a few marines blush but and that’s not the kind of language that you need to be using in an interview it’s okay to use it with your crew or crib or whatever things are going these days but that’s definitely not in appropriate for a professional environment yeah along those lines getting too comfortable right I think that’s what happens you start swearing hopefully you won’t start swearing but sometimes people do get too comfortable and you know lose their professionalism during the interview kind of along those same lines sort of is just you’re going to probably speak with a lot of different people throughout the whole interview process at any given company that you talk to or that you interview with so I would say just be mindful that you know we are all colleagues and we all speak to each other so whether you’re scheduling your interview with a colleague of mine or whether you are speaking with a hiring manager it should go without saying but just you know treat everybody with respect regardless of who you’re speaking with because again we all we all talk we all kind of you know hear if something goes awry and then just another red kind of red flag it is a red flag is when a student applies to like 15 different roles within the company you know it just kind of shows us that you are just throwing your resume out without taking the care and really demonstrating passion focus intent enthusiasm all of the above for a particular role so kind of you know that’s that’s just that can be a little disheartening when you see someone anyone not just a student but anyone applied to you know 15 or 20 roles at the same time I think an easy you know add-on is just being thoughtful so if I’m interviewing a candidate and I ask them why bloomberg and their answer is because it’s in new york for me I just I’m kind of like that’s crazy there are millions of companies in new york like why specifically this organization in new york and that can easily be remedied by a quick google search and looking into our philanthropy or looking into our guilds or anything about machine learning like just something that it’s like you did a little bit of research and you’re actually excited about this opportunity I would say would make you stand out from someone else who is maybe giving a canned or very very basic answer all right thank you so much ladies for your great responses okay we’re gonna open up for q a I’m gonna ask that if you would like to ask a question that you use the raise your hand feature and I’m gonna call on you and that is in the bottom right of the zoom and it says raise hand okay let me open the participants all right first up we have horatio horatio can you say your name what school you go to in your graduation year and then ask your question yeah so my name is I go to uc santa cruz I’m currently a junior so graduating in and this never happened to me but what if you have a bad interviewer like he’s not interested and really like interviewing you like can you request a new one or you just kind of start with with that I think that’s a really good question and it’s tricky and it definitely does happen interviewers are human too maybe they’re having a bad day or a busy day and they can’t they are not fully present and that stinks on both ends what I would say is follow up with the person who is helping you schedule your interview after the fact and give some honest but also polite feedback maybe they’ll offer to reschedule your round and even if they don’t that’s really good feedback for us that we can improve our process and make sure another candidate in your shoe never has that similar experience that’s good thank you thank you all right next we have benson hi my name is benjamin currently I’m a senior at the pennsylvania state university my question is what kind of candidates would you be more comfortable advocating for because you probably get a bunch of people who request you to advocate for them but what would make a candidate stand out to you so that you could advocate for them to like the hiring managers managers and the team I think being able to communicate you know we don’t we advocate for those that we think are good fit if there’s something missing technologically or technically rather within your background and we know that it’s not going to be a good fit then we wouldn’t necessarily go and advocate for you but if you’ve been able to prove that you’re strong in the particular skill that they’re a very close match to what the job description says I think someone was talking earlier about you basically make sure that your correspondence goes with the the job description make sure that your education that your experience also kind of mirrors the job description while being truthful so that it makes it a lot easier for us to say hey you need to go talk to benson look but he’s got this this this you know you were looking for this particular language or this particular you know ood then it makes that a whole lot easier rather than just tossing it in and saying yeah I’m one of five thousand just to add to that too passion for the company we mentioned earlier about doing your research so if it is your a company you’re targeting we don’t we want to know why that would help me to advocate for you thank you all right next we have you peng hello can you hear me yes we can all right so my question is what should I do if a recruiter is too busy and forgets to get back to me because I know that ghosting is something that’s very refreshing among many applicants and I’m just curious as to what your thoughts are on this I think it depends where in the process you are I mean really if the recruiter says we’ll get back to you within three to five business days or by a certain point you know I think that if that if that sort of window has passed kind of egregiously if you’re now two weeks out from that point I think it’s appropriate to politely check in and just you know say that you’re checking in for you know just an update on your application especially if they’ve given you a specific timeline I think that’s totally totally doable and okay all right thank you all right next we have sabrina hi my name is sabrina I’m a senior at notre dame dynamite out here in california in the bay my question was 100 descriptions that deter you from wanting to hire them like for example if I apply for a job that’s asking for two years of work experience and I don’t have that how would you respond to my application I would still take a look to see if there’s something that you’ve done that I can give you credit for when it comes to that and just also kind of a side note here they’ve done a study and found that women will only apply for position if they think that they feel maybe 50 percent of the requirements where 90 of the males will apply for it if they even meet only 10 percent so as a female don’t give up simply because it’s on a 100 match the other thing is is you might not be a hundred percent match but the manager is not looking for a hundred percent maybe they’re looking for 75 or 80 percent you just don’t know from reading it what the manager is it’s got to have and what’s a nice to have which we have a little more insight into that they’re willing to negotiate a little if you will when it comes to the skill sets so again this particular role is going to be focused more on teams and look for some of those soft skills but you can’t put it out there you know on a resume necessarily that says yeah I got good communication skills I can’t spell worth a heck but I got good ones so you know like some of those seem a little bit bizarre but I’ve been recruiting for 20 years so you’d be surprised what I’ve seen but definitely don’t give up and and try like I said you don’t have to meet a hundred percent but the manager might not be looking for a hundred percent thank you that’s funny you read my mind that’s the exact same thing I was thinking writing that question down awesome thank you so much okay next we have jay trang hey there so my question is is it possible in an interview if I I showed like I have skills in two different areas and even though I applied to one the recruiter might put me into another like so like for example let’s say I reach out to eileena and I show that I have technical skills and financial financial skills I might get turned down for the technical role but would she put me into the financial role instead I think the way we recruit it into it’s a little different because when during the pre-screening process we do find out what your interests it lies and if it’s both then you probably go in both pools so you would go in the finance side and then technical side so like each company is different though okay so that means it’s possible I might have two separate interviews or correct they might yeah okay but some might have one interview for everything as well so it all depends on yeah it depends on the role I mean if you’re look for example if you’re looking for a software engineering role you would only have one interview but if you’re looking for like a software engineering world and or maybe you’re potentially looking for like I don’t know a product management role it’s two different functions so you’ll be interviewing for two different roles got it awesome thank you so much jay next we have daniel hi guys thanks for coming to or hosting this event today so my name is daniel I’m a senior at uc san diego majoring in business and with a minor in computer science my question I had today was since I’m coming from a non-traditional background with my minor in computer science how do I stand out within a competitive applicant pool especially with a lot of computer science majors right now I have a personal portfolio and my own website and a couple projects as well as CodePath is there anything else that I can do to stand out to you guys recruiters thanks so I think that what you’re doing is great I wouldn’t say you necessarily have to add anything on to that I think that if I’m speaking for bloomberg specifically we’re open to candidates who aren’t cs majors we’re open to minors we’re open to tangential majors as long as you’ve done coding to some extent we want to see you and apply and we’re excited about you especially if you have a business or econ background that meshes well with what we do at bloomberg so I think you’re hit on the head there with that one cool thank you so much all right I’ll continue applying yep it’s all about persistence unfortunately so it sounds like you’re doing all the right things so just keep going next we have samuel hello everyone my name is samuel j and I’m a second year computer science student from the university of ghana so my question is are candidates from africa disadvantaged in any way because I know like there’s a lot of advocacy for like diversity and overlap I’ve seen a lot of diversity programs just focusing on black people in the united states and like what’s like the role of get getting that visa from say a candidate from ghana applying to like palante in the united states like how does that work and how is the candidate disadvantage in terms of that I know at hpe we don’t hire anybody who’s not currently living in the country in which they’re going to work so if you’re going to school in ghana then you know unless you’re applying for a position within ghana we probably wouldn’t consider your resume but if you were a student at uc san diego and you happen to be from ghana well you’d be over here as an f1 student and you would be treated like all of the other international students when it comes to recruiting whether it’s an international or not we just don’t happen to hire anybody that we’d have to relocate internationally on the other side of that at bloomberg we do offer sponsorship and then we also offer relocation so I don’t think it’s a disadvantage at all to live internationally all right thank you so the next we have avish hi my name is avish I’m currently a student at stony brook university I’m on track to graduate in 2023. I just had a question about cover letters so I actually have two questions about it how much do cover letters matter and what would an ideal cover letter be so what would it include in short this is going to vary from company to company recruiter to recruiter and probably role to roll I would imagine but I read a lot of resumes and look at a lot of applications unfortunately you know I can’t look at you know thousands and thousands of cover letters so I would say you know the documents that we’re looking at you know primarily are your resume the actual application that you put together I was would also say what might even be more helpful is to have a copy of your transcript your academic transcript so that we can see what kinds of courses we that you’ve taken thank you so much okay next we have sasamp hey everyone my name is shashan and I guess I don’t I just want to start off by saying this is my first event attending a via CodePath and someone said I’m learning a lot but a little about me is I go to rutgers university I’m studying computer science and I’ll be a rising junior here and I’m currently co-opting here at colgate palmolive working as a software engineer and the question I have is I took many interviews now and what’s come across it is how you deal with a disgruntled teammate and I’m just curious on what you guys look for in an ideal candidate to go about this question so this is a question you know it comes up a lot and in different forms right obviously you know a lot of work a lot of the work that you’ll do after graduating is going to be in a team or collaborative setting so it’s important that you know how to you know kind of navigate conflict because that’s ultimately going to arise so I would say instead of focusing on what the actual conflict was I would say focus on what the resolution was and what your personal contribution to resolving that conflict was so you know I would just kind of make make it all about you and what you did to actually help overcome that challenge in the group or help solve that you know or you know solve that problem in your team I hope that’s helpful sweet thank you awesome thank you all right next we have ezekiel hi my name is ezekiel solar I’m going to I’m a sophomore at bloomfield college my question was does it matter the coursework that someone who wants to apply for your job to you guys take a look at the coursework they took that they completed in college so not necessarily their major but like if someone had a strong background in math or someone took various computer science courses does that is that something that like sets them apart or gives them the edge would you look at your coursework and if you’ve taken data structures and algorithms that’s a good indication that you would do well in our interview if you hadn’t taken it that doesn’t mean we won’t consider you it’s just helpful if you have all right next up we have rahul hello can you guys hear me yes we can alright perfect so I’m rahul I’m a freshman at umd university of maryland college park and I have a really simple question so honors like eagle scout and stuff like that do they matter in an application is it like something you look for or is it any benefit I think it helps stand out helps you stand out if I see eagle scout like oh wow they have like you know different set of skills skills to bring to the table I see any extracurriculars I I thought I saw a question on extracurriculars definitely put all that down leadership experience awesome all right next we have medha hi can you guys hear me all right yes we can good I think first of all thank you so much CodePath for organizing this event and a little bit more about me I just graduated from penn state in december with a major in data science and a minor in mathematics and I actually have a set of I have three questions which aren’t really long so I hope you can answer them for me my first question is for a resume right I did do a couple of internships in the past during my school year like four or five internships and I’ve had a lot of leadership experiences and projects and things like that do you do you see two page resumes as like a you know like a red flag or like how do you guys take that and then I’ll ask the second question after you guys answered I think that would be easier I think it’s going to depend on your background if you’re a phd student that’s totally that’s very common to have multiple pages of publications and things like that on your resume so I think it’s just going to depend on your background and just going back to my point from earlier you know if you are just filling your resume with a lot of stuff a lot of noise that can actually detract from you know from from a good being a good resume so I would say just make sure that it’s relevant if you go into two pages I don’t think it’s the end of the world as long as it’s relevant and and invaluable sounds good and my second question is I think lizzy mentioned before that the candidate applies like 15 roles it just is like a you know it doesn’t look really good the recruiter and they kind of sort through the you know software resumes it’s like to that person’s application and things like that but me I was actually a first a computer science major for the first two years and then I switched my way to data science to get more experience and things like that so I feel like I could be a good fit for like a software engineering role all like a data analyst role or data science role so what like how many roles do you think can canada fly at a time like it like in a course of six months or so like what do you think is a good number I think if you’re truly a good fit for the roles and you think that you are qualified you shouldn’t apply to as many as you feel like makes sense I don’t want to put words in lizzie’s enough but I think what she was thinking about I’m thinking is you know if you go on our website and you just want to work at you know the company and you apply to 20 roles and one of them makes absolutely no sense for your background it’s kind of like it’s it’s not thoughtful so I think it’s as long as you’re being selective and making sure it aligns with your background and skill set apply to as many as you think sounds good and my last question I promise how has new recruitment efforts changed for international students be covered and post forward like how is just because you know a lot of visa restrictions things like that so how is it changed with if anyone can talk a little bit more about that just to give gain a little bit more perspective on how recruiters have changed their perspective africo with and budget issues all that kind of came all that kind of things came up I know at hpe for this year you know postcode when we’re looking at resumes there were a lot of students that were affected in 2020 that they had internships and the companies then reneged on them from that angle hpe didn’t but we do take a look and with an understanding that not everybody you know had the fortune good fortune to work for a company that was going to support them over that summer so if you’ve done an externship or what else did you do over that summer did you take a course you know where you enrolled at CodePath and learning something else really doing something to improve yourself that comes into play now whether you’re an international student or u.s citizen that’s based on role by role and manager by manager and typically I know where I’ve been working that’s the technical positions are the ones that have a higher success of hiring an international student than say somebody in marketing or finance because it’s hard to kind of defend to the u.s government why you couldn’t find a u.s citizen to do that position all right thank you medha so that’s all the time we have for questions thank you so much to our panelists for answering our questions before we let you all go I do want to share about a CodePath course we have coming up this summer it is called technical interview prep sal if you can share the screen perfect thank you so this is a class that we run every summer which helps students prepare to ace technical interviews so if you’re trying to work at bloomberg or hpe you’re into it or math works this is a class that you should sign up for right now it runs from june to august it’s a 12-week class it’s a hundred percent free and students who come out of this class typically they have more than one offer when they go into finding internships or full-time jobs usually they have multiple so it’s going to teach you how to prepare for interviews but it’s also going to prepare you to be a really strong engineer and the the companies on this call have all participated in our virtual career fair which comes up at the end of the technical interview prep class the next one will be in september so if you’re looking to get in front of these wonderful recruiters that we have here and the many others that work with CodePath that’s another great reason to consider taking this class so I want to thank all of you so much for your time this evening thank you so much to jeannie lizzie eileena and bianca for your time and for giving your great advice to to these students and I hope to see you all at another event soon oh and the last thing I know that they want me to share is that we will be running this panel again next thursday the 22nd with four different companies so if you have more questions that went unanswered you can join us again next week thank you so much and have a great evening thank you morgan