Envisioning Your Future

archit

I’m sorry that’s muted no worries we’ll just let everyone join

and then we’ll probably give it a minute for people to trickle in [Music]

hello Hi how are you good good excited I heard we have about

600 and more RSVPs got a lot of people here it looks like they’re all starting

to trickle in um are you two able to see the chat as well

oh yeah I can see it yeah those are so cool

we we will um really kick things off in about three minutes we’ll just kind of

let people trickle in here um but I love seeing where everyone is from ooh lots of people from New York

got some people from LA Toronto DC

and thanks so much in just a minute

foreign

okay

hey Sarah I think you’re on here I am talking on mute thank you so

much all righty it is three Pacific time

um and I know you all are dialing in from all over the place is so good to see everyone here thank you so much for

coming to Talent boards envisioning your future um we’re super excited to chat with some

new grad panelists and just give you some insight and information onto lots of different companies and just some

great tips as you head into this fall recruiting season so thank you for enjoying

um my name is Sarah and I’ll be facilitating this conversation today but before we get started I have loved

seeing everybody’s location um so keep dropping that in the chat if

you are just joining us um also feel free to to drop in your favorite doordash or ubereats order we

love seeing what everybody loves I’ve got my drink with me here today

um just how you keep how you keep cool over the summer and then I said this a few minutes ago

but just wanted to reiterate if you look at your screen on the right hand side there are kind of three tabs at the very

top event my agenda and session um and so we’re over in the session

column and then from there there’s a chat a poll and a q a tab

um so right now we’re all in the chat dropping our locations our favorite doordash order but you can also head

over to polls we’ve got some polls up we’d love to hear you all um and then we’ve got the Q a box so as

we move through our discussion today we want to hear from you like this is an interactive time and we want to provide

the information that is most valuable to you so drop your questions in the Q a we’ve got some some questions already

loaded but we want to hear what you all want to know

um let’s see uh we will have our speakers up here

um so they will have their video and audio so hold off on sharing yours um

but at the end we will open it up for Q a so you’re welcome to put your questions in that q a chat or you can

come off um video or come on video off mute and join us up on stage at the end

um because this is supposed to be interactive so we want that we’d love for you guys to get up here and chat

with us also all of our sessions are recorded and they will be sent out after the

event um so you know if you’re taking notes or just want to be engaged either is fine

we’ll have this for you afterwards um but before we dive in I would love to

introduce our amazing companies today and just walk through a little slideshow of some high level information just

highlighting when they’ll be kicking off the recruiting season what roles they’ll be hiring all that good stuff that we

know you want to know so let’s just take a look at um a few of the companies that are here

with us today we’re super excited to have Airbnb um Dropbox and Gem with us I know

they’ve got some some great roles coming up so I’ll let you guys like read over this

for a second

and then we are also excited to have OCTA Rippling and zwift with us as well

um and one thing that I just wanted to highlight is as you can see um you know for when recruiting kicks

off it’s it’s a little bit of a mixed bag we’ve got some companies that are up and running other companies that are

going to be posting later into this fall and I know historically some companies wait until even later in the fall so

there is no right or wrong answer um we love providing this for you all to

have a little bit of insight into when you can expect to see things drop um just to show these again but don’t

worry if things um if things aren’t open today they will people are still hiring you guys are

going to see that but we are here to help you um make the most of your hiring season

so I am gonna jump into introducing our panelists

awesome so let’s meet our new grads um and if you all could start off with

your name your company and your favorite doordash or ubereats order

um that would be awesome and Michelle will go ahead and start with you if you want to kick us off

yeah Sarah um hi everyone my name is Michelle I’m a software engineer at Gem and my go-to

doordash order is definitely um it’s like between a couple of things I was going to say poke because there’s

meat and vegetables in it but then someone in the chat said chicken tikka masala so I think that’s like a very

very close second if not like either one that’s very fair very fair no good

orders thank you archit we’ll kick it over to you

hey everyone uh my name is archit I’m a software engineer at Rippling and I’d

say my favorite doordash order um my favorite Cuisine is Mexican and I love trying like any like local places

so um just like local Mexican Cuisine is my favorite doordash

awesome I’m always looking for this little hole in the wall places

awesome Jane I will kick it over to you next hi everyone I am Jane and I am a

software engineer at OCTA I don’t use doordash too much because I’m trying to cook more these days

um but I would say there’s a really good crab fried rice dish at this local Thai

restaurant near me so I would go for that that sounds delicious I bet everyone on

the east coast is ready for dinner right now with all this Taco food all right Giovanni we’ll kick it over to

you thanks uh hi I’m Geo I’m a software engineer at zwift and my go-to is

probably some Chinese food very solid very solid and last but not

least Alexander we’ll we’ll wrap up here with you thanks Sarah hi everyone my name is

Alexander I’m a software engineer at Dropbox and I’d say that my go-to order is Indian food there’s an amazing

restaurant just a couple blocks away called serene’s that if you ever get the chance to visit or hang out in the Bay

Area we’d definitely recommend you headed up I love having all those local

recommendations I think my favorite is Indian food too well thank you so much

we’re really excited to have you all here we’re gonna go ahead and dive into the panel um we’ve got some great

questions and we’re going to start off with just like the basics of fall recruiting and interviewing

um so Michelle we’re going to start off with you again um with fall crew recruiting with fall

on campus recruiting quickly approaching can you share what methods you use to

get an internship or full-time job last time um what like especially virtually what

does it look like as many companies will continue to engage virtually this fall

yeah so there’s a couple of um methods that I used the last time I was looking for internships the first

one was just cold emailing honestly I went on I would say dozens of different

companies websites and on their jobs page they would often have like an email um and I prepared a template kind of

introducing myself and kind of sharing what I’m looking for in an internship and that actually worked for me

um not in my most recent internship which with Jen um but the internship before that

actually I got a response to my cold email so I just wanted to call that out because it surprisingly worked

um the second way the second thing that I did was just apply to as many applications as I possibly could through

um my school’s employment portal there’s usually a limit to how many internships you can apply for but it’s important to

like hit that limit if you can because that’ll give you the highest chances of getting interviews then eventually

getting hired for internships thank you no I really appreciate that

insight and Geo I think you had some great thoughts on this as well um yeah absolutely so like Michelle said

I think the most important thing is to just apply as much as you can most large companies use automated systems to

filter out applications these days so it’s it’s basically just a numbers game until you get the interview

um and then among other things I personally used a service called Ripple match I don’t know if anyone’s heard of

it um and it basically just finds jobs it thinks you’ll be good a good fit for and

then it helps you through the application process and I used it to send out a lot of job applications and

among the interviews I got was whipped which is where I now work it’s really exciting now big big fans of

Ripple match and there’s so many great resources to take advantage of I think that’s part of why we want to get you

guys up here and talking and knowing what career services can do for you and

how you can leverage it or these other companies or or groups out there that are working for you to help connect you

with the right opportunities thank you well archit we’re gonna swing

over to you how did you navigate getting to know organizations virtually this past year

yeah so I definitely my go-to resource was like uh career fairs at schools

um and other events that we had but I feel like there’s always going to be companies that are difficult to reach in

that sense where like they might not have like any like in you know in-person events or like even like Zoom events uh

that you can like reach out to them so my strategy there was like even if I was like remotely interested in like a

company I would go ahead uh do some like research about it and apply because uh

usually with like a lot of companies um prior to like the technical interview process they’ll schedule like a

15-minute like recruiter phone call and I I learned to like really like take

advantage of those like 15 minute phone calls to go ahead and like learn as much as I could about the company see if it’s

a good fit for me um and like just you know any other questions I had I would go ahead and ask

them then what were maybe some of the things that you found when you were researching or

looking on Career sites that were really valuable to helping you like get to know more about a company

uh sorry could you repeat that please oh yeah like why and you were doing some of the research that you talked about what

was maybe some of the information or or where did you look on a company’s site to find some of that valuable

information yeah so like the first place was

um definitely just like the the job description so I would see like um usually with like a lot of new grad

programs like they tend to have like pretty like generic requirements and then like they do like you know team matching for you

um but in addition to that I would look at like you know the culture of a company uh I would you know like Google

uh maybe like find like you know LinkedIn employees uh see what like they think about the company as well uh and

like the best resource was definitely like other new grads like recent new grads who had joined because like they had gone through the process like you

know just like not that long ago so they knew the most about them oh yeah oh yeah

good insight there I’ll open it up to if any of you others want to jump in at any point in time

feel free to um but we will like go ahead and let’s talk a little bit more about

interviewing and let’s hear about how you all um prepped for interviewing

maybe Alexander we’ll start with you yes

different strategies that you can take um I found the two that were most helpful for me were to take a class if

your university offers one and I was I think a sophomore I ended up taking a

class that was all about you know how do you do well what should you expect how do you handle different types

of interviews lots of mock interviews giving you tips on what to say what to say when you’re stuck which is a very

useful skill to build up and as sort of a corollary to that you

should definitely prep with your friends chances are you have a couple friends around you who are in a similar program

who are also trying to get internships or trying to get new grad positions if you’re taking the same class you can

quiz yourself otherwise you know there are tons of sample interview questions online so you can just

find some that your friends haven’t seen yet and Mark interview them or have them

mock interview you um Additionally you know going closer to

new grads if you happen to be in student organizations that have alumni um you could maybe check with them if

they can help you out set up mock interviews with you as well

thank you I’m Michelle did you want do you want to chime in

yeah I think Alexander just gave some really really great advice so like first of all thank you so much for sharing

um but just to add on um I use I use leap code and hacker rank I

know most folks on the panel and most folks in the chat probably heard of those but just in case you wanted to call those out

um and also reading about and practicing Big O notation just to the point where you’re comfortable kind of talking about

it and explaining it a lot of interviews will often ask about that and it’s something that a lot of like online

um specifically algorithm related questions don’t really cover sometimes so just as an aside would be good to

study thank you I love calling out like the

specifics like that because sometimes you can study and then be like oh no what did I miss and um you know just having knowing what all

the bases to cover are Jane we haven’t heard from you yet what are your thoughts

yeah um I think definitely echoing off of Alexander and Michelle’s points about

the lead code I definitely think there’s a lot of value in doing Lee code but I also know

at a certain point some of the questions are probably extremely detailed and

impractical um I I think my short answer is try to use your best judgment because not all

questions are probably that useful um I think you can probably find Threads Online just kind of talking about like

most popular questions and whatnot but one thing I wanted to highlight pretty

um importantly about the mock interview aspect that’s probably the best advice I

would give as well um because you may understand how to solve a problem but there’s a huge

aspect of being able to communicate that with your interviewer um I I don’t think you can underestimate

how important the communication aspect is I’ve sat I’ve conducted several interviews for my company and

it’s there’s sometimes quite a bit of a disconnect when you’re not able to really understand the logic behind

um your candidates thought process because then possibly what if they’re like

um what if they’re they already memorized some solution of some liquid question and they’re just spitting it out to you

you know you you want to you want to really understand um how you should understand your own

thought process to how you’re um solving a problem and really conveying that to

your interviewer and especially with mock interviews um you’re gonna you’re probably

whiteboarding or using some online code Editor to do this

um so being able to talk through each step um being able to go back and forth with your interviewer is really valuable

practice no totally being able to explain your

thought process and even explain it while you’re coding or actually walking through a problem is a skill in and of

itself a great thing to practice uh Geo oh yeah go ahead there’s one tiny

thing I wanted to mention um I would definitely say practice talking about your resume as well

because sometimes people have projects on their resume and then the interviewer will try to go into a bit more detail

about it but then you don’t know how to talk about it um so definitely expect that

no that’s really smart if it’s on your resume be ready to talk about it great

great tip oh Geo um what about you yeah sure so I’m probably gonna Echo a

lot of of what’s been said already but um yeah I studied my notes from my data

structures and algorithms courses um I did a ton of leak code and hacker ink and stuff like that and I

participated in a few rounds of Google Kickstart which is a one of Google’s coding competitions

um and then yeah like like what’s been said already um for entry-level software engineering I’d say the most important

thing is to study data structures and algorithms and then do mock interviews because grinding leak code and doing

coding competitions may help you Ace some technical interviews but unless you have a good understanding of the

fundamentals that those problems try to test you on it’s not going to be too easy Once you actually start working

yeah yeah so what I’m hearing from you and and Alexander is to really find somebody that you can practice with and

just practice in that kind of mock interview environment it’ll go a long

way um well archa anything else that you want to add

yeah so uh I mean plus one to everything that’s been said so far

um I guess like in regards to like the technical interview um one advice that I thought was really

useful is like um make sure that you’re like well-rounded in terms of what you study because

um at the start I was kind of just doing like you know random like leap code questions but then I found myself getting like really good at like one

topic like you know like linked lists or something like that but then like when another topic came up I was like oh no I

don’t know how to do this at all so there’s like this one popular list called The Blind 75

um it’s supposed to be like you know a well-rounded list of like the 75 like most popular questions

um with like a little bit from like all like the different categories so I think that that was really useful for me

uh in regards to mock interviews uh the two platforms that I found useful were

um interviewing dot IO and uh pramp um basically with those

um you like take turns interviewing someone who’s also like you know looking to do interviews so you go ahead and do

like you know a 30-minute lead code question with them and then they do one with you so it’s like a good way to

practice like you know technical communication so that you’re ready for that during the interview and then

lastly like in regards to like you know non-technical aspect I think it would uh

some really good advice is to prepare like a personal mission statement or like you know like your 30

second like elevator pitch uh where like you kind of describe like you know some of the projects you’ve worked on what

you’re interested in and maybe even like you know some like non-technical characteristics that are either like

unique or like you know you consider one of your strengths so yeah

no I love that and I love that there are resources out there that are are already helping facilitate a lot of these things

um instead of having to like figure out who am I gonna mock interview with and

that’s also just to reiterate what some of them have said what some of these groups and organizations can help with

maybe that’s a place to find some of these some of these people to to practice with or maybe more resources

thank you so much those were a lot of tips um I know we’ve been typing like crazy

over here to get all those down um love seeing in the chat it looks like you guys are sharing some resources and

links to things as well so thank you for that um well kind of going back to campus and

interacting with recruiters I know a lot of things have been virtual the last couple years but were there some

memorable events that you all attended that really helped you connect with employers

uh maybe Geo will start we’ll start with you um yeah sure

um okay so most people might not have the chance to attend an event like the one I’m going to talk about but I still

think knowing about it is beneficial and I’ll explain why in a second um so every year at my University my

major is Honor Society puts together an event the evening before the fall career fair and at this event attendees get to

meet and play games with Recruiters in a much more informal setting than a standard career fair and the goal is to

break the ice between the recruiters and the students right before the career fair which has a number of benefits for

everyone who attends for the students it’s a way to leave a far more memorable impression on the recruiters and it’s a

great way to establish Rapport and reduce nervousness before the more formal career fair and yes job offers

have been made at this event in the past and we get recruiters from all sorts of companies including some that I never

would have imagined would go for something like that so if your school happens to have an event like this then

Gray great by all means I highly encourage you to attend but even if not I think that just knowing that this sort

of thing is a possibility is valuable you may be surprised what recruiters would agree to if a student organization

asks and is able to sell the benefits well um and so if you happen to lead a

student organization or happen to know someone that knows someone Etc by knowing that this has and

continues to be done successfully um I think it’s it’s a good thing that’s so

much fun what kind of games did you guys play um they’re like Icebreaker games so like okay

yeah I can’t remember any off the top of my head there was one like where you where you create a story like each

person says a word or like a sentence in a story and keep going like that yeah

what he said of recruiters want to be creative we really want to actually get

to know you guys and to just spend time like getting to know your backgrounds and so it doesn’t you know a great way

to get information about a company is to go to an info session or one of those kind of talks but it could also be

something more informal and yeah run it by a recruiter see what happens you never know

um anyone else have any memorable events that they attended last year or any events that were really helpful in

getting to know employers

maybe I should ask this did you guys attend many events

I can step in and yeah remove the awkward silence

um I guess for my experience I actually I’m not

like a fresh fresh new grad I graduated in 2020 um so a lot of my recruiting was done in

person um but I do feel that there are equivalent like online um versions now

um but a lot of the events I tried to take advantage of um for a like the big Career Fairs a lot of the

times I would try to plan beforehand which um which companies I wanted to

specifically talk to um and kind of research their companies a little a lot of the times when you

start talking to recruiter if you actually sound like you’re interested and you know stuff about the company uh they might

um I guess like I think there are sometimes different piles from what I observed so definitely

connecting with a recruiter is uh super important um and then my my University also had

several different clubs that just had a lot of meet and greets with companies

where the company would come in and talk about all the stuff that they do typically there’s like an engineer that’s there as

well as recruiter so that’s really great opportunity uh since it’s in a smaller setting

um and then yeah I think those two were the main sources of connections thank you

that’s great well now that we’ve kind of talked about interviewing and being on campus we want to really hear more about

your experience so we’ll um we’ll stay with you Jane and how did you prep for

your new role um you know as a new grad yeah so I returned to OCTA as a

converted intern um so a lot of it was

in the beginning I would reach out to my manager beforehand and I’d be like hey like I’m joining in a few weeks is there

any material that I should prepare OCTA is like a like a security identity management company so I think there are

certain security topics that I kind of wanted to brush up on before I started uh I might not necessarily work on those

things but you know it’s really good to have context um on kind of the overall product that I would be dealing with so definitely

reaching out to your manager beforehand hopefully you have that contact UM and I think really just mentally

preparing myself to be open to learning uh that was a huge thing uh for me

um because back in college I had not actually had a computer science background I switched

Midway um and I think there were certain insecurities in uh back then and I would

definitely kind of just tell myself again that you know

when you’re a new grad you honestly don’t know that much and it’s completely okay so definitely

coming in with an open mindset um was is the best advice I can honestly

give yeah I think that that food goes a long way Michelle what about you

yeah I was just like nodding because huge plus one to Jane definitely having open mindset for learning is huge coming

into any new job um so that’s definitely great um I actually had a different experience

though because before every internship that I’ve had I also emailed my manager

explicitly asking like what should I read about before starting and they’ve all said like nothing don’t do anything

don’t worry about it but I still like wanted to go into my first day feeling

confident and so something that I did and reminder you don’t have to do this

but I took on coding projects through extracurriculars um because I also didn’t study computer

science as my major so I just wanted to basically practice software development during school before the internship

started and so more importantly than any technical skills I think that helped me build confidence and learn how to manage

stress and like bigger scopes of projects before going into both internships and my current new grad role

thank you um and Alexander what about you

yeah similar to Michelle I emailed my manager before I started asking you know

um what do I need to know before I start and the answer was nothing don’t worry don’t stress about it you’ll be fine

um but I still found it useful to you know brush up on some of the fundamental fundamentals and so I’d ask questions

like what is your team’s Tech stack look like you know what open source Frameworks or programming languages do you primarily

work with them and I just make sure that you know I was refreshed on the basics of these

um another thing that I found super useful when when you know preparing for a new role was to try to schedule some

sort of Social Hour meet and greet with the team that I was about to work for

um I did that before one of my internships was able to you know go into the office um about a week before I started just

meet the entire team and I think that helped me break the ice a lot better for the first week of my internship

that’s so much fun well knowing that it sounds like most of you got the answer of you know there’s

nothing you need to do before day one there’s no like books you need to read

um you know was there something looking back that you wish you knew before day one that you know now and maybe

Alexander will will stick with you

yeah let’s see um I think

not in terms of you know technically not knowing or knowing

um certain parts of of How It’s like working in your team’s code base I think for people who have never interned

before or have never you know um had a new grad position I’ll say that

it’s very different working in a code base at a company as opposed to working in code bases when you’re doing projects

at University um it’s just a whole different Beast you’re dealing with an entirely different skill and complexity and and

it’s okay to you know not not know everything that you’re working within

um but sort of more related to working from the pandemic I uh I’m in kind of a unique position in

that I was an intern before the pandemic and I started working full-time during the pandemics so I sort of got to see

both sides of starting at a company um from the same coin

um it’s I’ll call out that it’s definitely harder to onboard onto a team virtually you know no matter which team

or company you end up working for there’s just a lot more friction and reaching out for help uh you know if you

have questions but you have a lot more of in your first weeks at a company it’s a lot harder for you to like sort of

overcome the friction of reaching out for help whenever you do have a question as opposed to if you were sitting right next to your mentor and you know they

were right there and you could just ask them a question um so you know a lot of a lot of your

first couple of weeks is going to be you sort of getting more comfortable with asking questions at a more rapid Pace

than maybe you think you should um and uh in general just take advantage

of opportunities to socialize with your team members some onboarding cohort because first couple of weeks you kind

of set the Rhythm for the first six months of your internship or your new role

thank you thank you um Michelle what about you

um definitely agree with a lot of what Alexander said the first two weeks do kind of set the pace for

um weeks and months after that um yeah some things that I wish I knew

before day one going back to the theme of No Stress uh I wish I knew that I

wouldn’t be expected to write code on day one that was sort of my goal both in my new grad world because I was

converted from intern and when I started the internship at gem um the first time I thought it would be

a race to set up my computer but that led to issues setting up my computer because I was just rushing through this

at a process trying to get to code as fast as possible so I would say just take your time chat with as many people

as possible because like building relationships will ultimately help you a lot more in the long run than jumping

into technical tasks right away awesome and Jane what about you

I 100 agree with that uh I think

we prefer our company we optimistically

hope that they can um or like a new hire in whether you’re

an intern or your grad we have like a super simple simple simple task maybe it’s like removing a comment or

something just to get you familiar with the code process like optimistically end

of the week you can get that in and it’s not even a big bummer if you don’t um because it’s more important to

um on board your laptop your any knowledge about the

product that you want to learn um and I don’t think I specified earlier

when I actually sent my email to my manager he also said don’t do anything

um so yeah I think I can honestly only just repeat the fact that you really it’s best to just enter

your first day um with an open mind don’t be afraid to ask questions uh

I don’t think anyone really expects someone who joins a company on the first day to know anything at all

um You probably don’t know much about the company’s process you probably don’t know much about the company’s product

and this is a great opportunity for you to ask all those questions and

about building relationships um I think I could totally feel

um certain uh I guess difficulties with the past two years I know connecting

with others may not be as easy as perhaps like being in an office and looking over your shoulder and be like

hey what’s your name how are you doing um definitely more friction when you’re online so I would say

reach out to your teammates schedule a one-on-one uh and really you know just

like break the ice get to know them maybe a little bit more personally uh

whatever you would feel more comfortable with because in the end these are people that

uh for the time at that company

I love that and you’re right relationships are are so critical as you really start to establish yourself so

with that um I mean you kind of answer this question but maybe we’ll turn it back over to Alexander like how did you

approach building relationships like knowing that they are so important like how did you approach building those

maybe with your team and maybe with other new grads or like peers at your company

yeah so there are a couple different strategies that you can use um of course this first one will depend

on which company you you end up onboarding to but most companies are pretty similar in that they’re often

structured activities in the first few weeks of onboarding um to let you get to know either your

recruiters or your onboarding cohort better um I would also encourage you and you

know the first couple of days you know maybe arrive five minutes early to your onboarding meetings and that gives you

someone structured time just to talk with people other people who arrive early who are probably there for the same reason

um aside from that there are lots of opportunities even virtually to get to know your team or other people at the

company um better you can attend social hours if your team has it or if they don’t have it you can propose it and Lead it

um you could attend trivia nights you could do online game sessions or icebreakers you

know you can try to convince your manager to do icebreakers during stand-up or during the first five

minutes of retro that can often be a good a good way to just slowly get to

know your team members a bit better um and yeah I just want to reiterate the most important part here which is don’t

be afraid to take the initiative to organize something yourself um you know either for your team or for

other members of your onboarding cohort um I’m still chatting weekly with some of the people that I started with even

you know over a year later that’s amazing no and so exciting just

to see how those relationships are gonna continue over the years um and continue to like help you and

your career continue to grow uh well let’s talk a little bit about

this like virtual and hybrid work um with many employers transitioning to

Virtual or like a hybrid model how have you managed your work and again like

continuing to build those relationships maybe with your manager and your Mentor or your team

um and archet let’s let’s kick it over to you yeah so the two biggest insights that I

think really helped me with this were that one was that like people like really love talking to new people

especially like new grads and the second is that people really like talking about things that they’ve built

um so like based on that um you know if uh I was ever like you know

like working and I like you know it was using like some kind of you know tool or like piece of code that like someone

else uh made and I had some questions about it I didn’t like hesitate to set up like you know like a 10-15 minute

phone call um and like reach out to people um like paying them um asking them about this and I found

out that like you know 90 of the time uh even more than that they were willing to help and um you know after that phone

call you would have like you know one more work relationship there so I thought that that was like a really

great way to go out like go out go about building like new relationships uh with co-workers

and then um the other thing that my company did was we recently had a work from San

Francisco event so um everyone in like all the North American Engineers were invited to work

in San Francisco for one week and I think that was also you know a great like a social opportunity because you

really got to get a feel of like the work culture um I’m like a virtual employee right now

so I didn’t really have a feel of it as well until um like you know that event and I got to

meet all of my co-workers and teammates and um I think that that was a great

experience as well thank you um Alexander you’ve already talked a lot

about like building relationships but anything maybe specifically for like that long-term virtual and hybrid model

that you found helpful yeah I want to give a huge plus one to what Archer said

um I mean none of us need to explain how um how much different it is to interact

with people over Zoom or virtual meetings as opposed to in person

um but as to what oxygen says if you’re working for a company that’s mostly uh

remote and you get the opportunity to go in in person and meet your co-workers or meet some other people at the company

and definitely take it um if most people at the company are mostly working remotely

you’ll just feel this huge boost of energy as you go in and interact with people in person

um which is also really powerful for building uh relationships and growing

stronger with the people that are on your team more elsewhere at the company um

also just echo in terms of you know you doing your work and and building new

connections um it can definitely seem scary to reach out to people who you don’t know for

help with a project um just remember that you’re all working for the same company you’re all part of

the same team you’re all advancing the goals of the company and so you know it’s a good thing that you’re reaching

out to them for for help with your project and they’ll be more than happy to help you along

thank you thank you so much well let’s talk a little bit about

y’all’s current role um what are the most uh what are you most proud of in your current role and

Geo like what why don’t we hear from you first um yeah sure

most proud of is uh working outside of my comfort zone um so I focus pretty

heavily on web development in college and now I’m doing full stack Game Dev for my full-time job

um so I’m about as unprepared as possible for the work I’m doing but I’m pretty good at learning on the fly so I

suppose the thing I’m most proud of is Having the courage and willingness to

try something completely different and having the foundation necessary to ramp up relatively quickly

thank you um and Michelle what about you

um well Jim organize a hackathon week recently and um I haven’t been in this

new grad role for very long only about one and a half months um but I’m really really proud of the um hackathon

projects that my team and I managed to build so I somehow convinced um two other Engineers a product manager and a

designer to build like what turned out to be an extremely exciting feature um for our customers and the whole

company now is like pushing me to like ship it um so that is not turning into my full-time project and I’m really proud

of it because um we called out that socializing has gotten a bit harder since covid and I’m

like a quieter person and so I managed to convince these people to join me on my mission to build this like cool

feature so definitely very excited about that that is really exciting and what what a

proud moment especially like being able to make an impact so soon after joining

uh Jane what about you yeah I think for me what I’m most proud

of proving to myself uh that I could kind of take ownership of the projects that I

was given um in the beginning I guess I had been working on certain like small future

work but um I think as time went on like I was able to handle end-to-end projects and

kind of be like the go-to person for that it was really daunting at first because people would be coming to me

with a bunch of questions and I would be give me a minute at first uh but through

time and through practice you kind of get used to that and like now like you can have more and more

impact as you get more experience and kind of own more things yeah

yeah well on the flip side what has been

so far yeah I think on the opposite Spectrum I was

facing kind of like more and more responsibility that maybe initially I

maybe wasn’t as confident that I could kind of uh I guess

execute um but that was very much a mental barrier I was putting on myself

um overcoming those very uncomfortable feelings with something that took time

and process for me um but I definitely had a supportive Bunch

both on my team and just kind of like other co-workers on separate teams being

able to kind of talk through these feelings I did have a mentor from one of

the or if we have Rock clubs the company version of a club

at ERG yeah um I had inventors I would talk to her a

lot about these feelings and all these people definitely helped me overcome um these uh challenges I was facing and it

really gave me more confidence to um take on those responsibilities that I

was given yeah that mentorship or a lot of companies are putting together more and

more resources as some of these are really similar challenges that we all face and even when just changing

companies even you know after we’re we’ve started our very first position and we can still run into these things

so great great skills to learn and it’s amazing to have people like a mentor to

go to Archer what about you what has been um a challenge that you have faced and what

have you learned from it yeah I think the main challenge in

software engineering especially for like intern and new grad roles is just like uh basically being thrown head first

into like a code base that um you know like little about um because like you know you might have

had like previous internships you know previous experiences but you find out that each company does things like you

know completely differently and it can be uh it can be a challenge to like get

accustomed to that and um you know learn uh how different companies do this and

I’d say that like based on that like one recommendation that I would have for

like uh people applying this year is like to do uh build like a very like diverse portfolio of like uh projects

um you know whatever chance you get um to work on like you know completely new technologies that you’ve you know never

um never like um you know don’t be afraid about it and like go ahead and try it because

um like those skills you build like you know working on the software engineering projects um they really like help you

out when you um join a new company and um you’re basically doing you know a similar type of work but only with a

much larger code base I love that anyone else want to share like a

challenge um and then we’re going to move on to some of the questions from the Q a

I have a good one yeah yeah um this is not as relevant to people who

are doing internships um but it will happen to people starting new grad and that is learning how to

deal with unexpected change as an example this past summer I was

hosting an intern and I was super excited for it spent a lot of time you

know over a month working on the intern project making sure that it was bulletproof specked out you know all

ready to go and then the week before the intern starts I find out that one of our partner teams built a feature that

invalidated half of the intern project and so you know I had to turn around on the dime scramble in order to get

something that was you know good by the time the interns start which

um was a not something that I had anticipated happening and and B was a

large change to have to deal with um so you know

just learning how to deal with unexpected stress in general is a useful skill to have

um especially when you’re working virtually because it is harder to communicate with people around you which

means that they’re is a higher chance the communication breakdowns will happen under the team that you rely on is going

to develop the future that they just forgot to tell you about you know some virus come across somewhere

um so just you know being able to Center yourself take a deep breath think

I’ll be able to figure this out and then get to work on something is a

super useful skill to have yes thank you no if there’s anything

we’ve learned from the last couple of years it’s change is inevitable and we’re gonna have to Pivot probably 10

more times before things even out but let’s let’s dive into some of these q a

questions we’ve got some good ones um so Geo I’ve got one for you to start off with but anyone else feel free to

chime in and we’re just going to get through as many of them as we can until we hit some breakout sessions uh so Geo

you mentioned that you were not necessarily full and knowledgeable at your role when you were hired for it

what kind of qualities or strategies did you use when you were applying for that position

um yeah so it’s I think my position was a little bit unique in that um I was

also a converted intern like going into full-time um so the team that I was on during my

internship just didn’t exist anymore like they completed their mission and that’s they were done

um so they had to find me a new team so it was between web development and

um game development and so I met with my manager and he was like so what do you want to do and I was like I I don’t know

I just want to solve fun problems so he’s like okay game development it is um but I guess to answer your question

about like it’s basically like how how do you tackle something that you have no or

little experience in right um I guess if you can manage to set

expectations early and then just like if you have the fundamentals you’ll generally be able to ramp on ramp up

pretty quickly and then just set expectations early like communicate with your manager or your interviewer you’ll

be like hey I have I know the Cs fundamentals like if you give me a shot I can I can ramp up really quickly on

this no I I love that and a couple of the things that I’ve heard from you all

today is um like archit mentioned diversifying your project work or your

portfolio as much as you can like take advantage of all the different projects that you can do those hackathons

personal projects to really be able to touch as many pieces um so that that’s another great way

um and then and then like you said being able to like have a conversation with a recruiter and and reading that job

description seeing what are the pieces that they say are necessary and like

highlighting highlighting your skills um let’s see so what for for any of you

uh what would be the most effective way to contact a recruiter or employer I know like Michelle you said that you did

some just like emailing out um how did you all kind of connect with recruiters

just yeah emailing I think is the best way I I think this is a good time to call out we were talking about events

earlier I didn’t go to a single career fair or like networking event with recruiters at all during undergrad and

things turned out okay I’m very grateful for that um just because of like communicating virtually

um mostly through email but also summer careers will share their phone numbers um and Linkedin in mail can also

sometimes be useful but other times won’t get your response so it’s a kind of a mixed bag would recommend just

trying everything how did you find like what recruiter to

email or an email address to use well some companies will share a generic

like jobs at the company name um on their jobs page

um and then if I had any sort of mutual connection with the recruiter at a company I was

interested in I would sort of Leverage that to reach out through Linkedin email um because that’ll kind of give you an

an intro without being so like um like distant I guess

yeah were there um and again anyone else feel free to jump in as well were there

any messages that helped get more responses than others or any kind of

tips you would have when like they reach out what should they say

um the one successful cold email that I sent out I shared that I can bake a

carrot cake and they responded to that so just I guess sharing aspects of your personality and hobbies could help you

stand out but it’s important to be honest about it I can’t actually make a carrot cake

so it should have said something different but yeah

I will say some of those things get me there is still some funny things that people put like at the bottom of their

resume that I still remember [Music] um so that that can be a really fun a fun connection there

um well kind of on the other side how did you guys decide that your company was the right fit for you and how did

you kind of go about figuring out that it was the right fit

I’ll just throw out there that an internship is an excellent opportunity to trial a company and see whether or

not you want to work there full time or not um I imagine there’s a lot of people who

end up returning to work full-time after like me like others in this call

um because they had a great experience because they got to see the company culture from the inside you know that I

wasn’t just all talk or all marketing that it actually existed the way it was described to be

um yeah I think um I remember someone mentioned this earlier but um a lot of times companies

have like a short like behavioral phone interview thing um and especially like if it’s with your

potential manager I think it’s a very good way to kind of figure out if you’d be a good fit for the team and the

company yeah one thing I’d like to add is

um during my interview at Rippling I remember I had like um two or three interviewers uh who had

all started out as new grads at Rippling and uh they also went ahead and gave me their emails so I had like a lot of

questions to them even during the interview and also like after I got the offer so that was like a great resource

for me um I guess like the two things that they said that convinced me the most like

engineers at the company um their roles are like very technical but they also have

um a lot of saying like the products they build and I thought that that was like you know a great experience to have

where like you know you would have a say in what you’re building um you know you were just like coding

for the sake of coding so I thought that that was really interesting and that was one of the things I prioritized

I love that I love it um and you know I I like to tell people think about what’s important to you so

I’m sure everyone on this panel had something that was slightly different important to them when joining a company

so think about that and ask those questions um you know continuing going and and

talking to recruiters and talking to Engineers do you have any advice for in-person career fairs

um how to really maybe like take advantage of them and like take advantage of the the limited time they

have in front of each company I guess another question is did any of

you go to an in-person career fair I think Jane did

hardship yeah um sorry I think I blinked a little on the

question was it just like advice on in-person Career fairies yeah advice on taking advantage of in-person career

fairs they’re huge they’re busy and so any tips you have on how they can be

successful in front of recruiters or just like strategizing yeah in general

yeah uh one thing I noticed at my career fair was that at a certain booth there

might be several people at the uh yeah just like from the company representing

so and I did notice that somewhere engineers and some were recruiters so I

would try to figure out like I would try to overhear conversations and see which one is the recruiter and kind of stand

in that line uh because I felt like if I was talking to the recruiter they might

have a little bit more power than an engineer it would because in the end an engineer is just kind of there to talk

about their experience at the company um however on the off chance that a recruiter can

can help me at least I talk to them I I actually remember I talked to this one

company and the women there happened to be the recruiter and she emailed me after the

after the I like it was really nice talking to you at the career fair like if you’re

interested um we can give you like a phone screen

um fill out your dates here so that was kind of a lucky streamlined way of me to

talking to a company um I know Career Fairs are can be a hit or miss

but I think sort of maximizing all of your opportunities is um

the best thing you can do at a career fair yeah I’ve also gone to some Career Fairs

and um I think what’s important for you personally is to know what you want to

get out of the career fair if you just you know want to

um try to get your resume out to as many uh people and companies and recruiters as possible make sure you arrive at the

career fair with like 50 copies of your resume and that you know how to talk about it in case the recruiter you know

picks up your resume you know scans through it and then asks you like tell me about this project or I didn’t know

you did carrot cake baking in your free time tell me more about that

um if you’re just more interested in listening to like stories and try to

screen the companies yourselves to see which ones you’re more interested in working out um that’s when talking to Engineers can

be more useful um but you know don’t forget to swing by the recruiter to drop off your CD at the

end um and finally depending on how busy the career fair is some booths can turn into

a zoo where you know it’s very hard to get more than 10 seconds of someone’s time but it can be useful for you to

swing back to those booths later on when it’s perhaps a little less busy and go looking for Less trafficked areas of the

career fair thank you and Michelle or Jane have

either of you attended Grace Hopper no okay but I wouldn’t

anyone here is attending Grace Hopper really fun opportunity um and continue to approach the career

fair like you would a school career fair um well I’ll open it up to the floor

anyone want to share any last tips um things they wish they knew or any

advice they want to share with our audience today before we jump into some breakout rooms

we’ll just we’ll go around um um Alexander would any last any last

tips or advice that you oh pressure fun all right I think one of

the most important skills that you can work on um if you’re in a primarily hybrid

position than it or or remote position then it’s even more important is to work on communication

um and that’s not just you know knowing how to talk to people um over Zoom but it’s also you know not

being afraid to reach out for people over text or email if you need help with a problem and follow up if they don’t

respond um not being afraid to communicate honestly about your project progress

even if you’re behind schedule you know things like that are critical for building trust with your team which when

you’re working virtually is even more important because you know people can’t check in on you as often

um building an intuition for the right level of detail depending on the person that you’re communicating with say if a

project you’re working on is delayed because of the thorny bug you would describe it very differently if you were talking with a fellow engineer than you

would if you were talking with your manager or a PM on your team um and finally building an intuition for

what other stakeholders are working with know it’s surprisingly easy as I’ve

talked about before for details to slip through the cracks in larger projects if you assume someone else knows something

or is taking care of something and they either don’t know they have to or assume that you’ve got it covered

um so building up a mental model that way is also really useful thank you Geo anything you want to share

um yeah definitely plus one to the communication thing that Alexander was saying um communication is so so

important especially now that we’re working virtually to react just to keep up the trust with your team and the

stakeholders to make sure everyone’s happy with the progress that you’re with the project that you’re working on

um and then kind of unrelated um this is uh more for like meeting with

recruiters um it’s something that was recommended to me is to send like thank you emails

or letters or like a follow-up of some sort like not a lot of people do that and like it’s it’s a very simple yet

effective way to like leave a better impression under the career

okay and then archa Jay and Michelle

um yeah I just wanted to call something out before we um finish off um I think managing time and sort of

taking care of yourself while working remotely is definitely a huge huge challenge um for example I’ll often work like a

huge number of hours one day and then a lot less the next day um I’m still sort of working through

this but some strategies that I found helpful so far um are one to plan something either for

myself or socially after work day to kind of have an end time of when like okay laptop is closed like time to log

off for the rest of the day um two just going on short like 10 minute walks after finishing a task

whether that’s like um finishing a commit or something like that just something that feel like done

just like take a break after that um and then lastly I gotten I’ve gotten into like cooking recently it’s just a

good break from electronics and like a good way to make sure you’re eating

that’s it just eating I can’t really

all righty kind of just quickly following up with that as well um I definitely feel like uh remote work

did take a toll on my day-to-day um and it was so easy to just

go into my computer and do some work because I could uh so I would also Echo

the fact that it’s good to have a barrier from work and outside work uh and yeah

I think just taking care of yourself is really important

yeah and same goes for while you’re in school too we know you all are balancing a lot take care of yourselves aren’t you

any last things before we we jump into some some breakout rooms

um I think everyone covered everything I wanted to say but um yeah I know uh recruiting is like a

stressful time so uh I guess all of you I think will be fine you know if you’re starting this early

um and you know you guys have all the tips I’m sure you’ll be fine and I wish everyone the best of luck for your new

grad and intern positions thank you well everyone can you all join

me in giving a huge round of applause and a thank you to our panelists today thank you Alexander Geo Michelle archet

and Jane it’s been so great so many Hot Tips um we are excited to take these all back

um I hope this was all helpful for you we now have an opportunity for you all to jump into some breakout rooms

um all the companies are here with us and so you can go in and talk to them

again we have OCTA gem Airbnb Rippling Dropbox and z-swift so

um you know if you head over to the sessions tab you can join those rooms

now so feel free to hop in um and ask them all your questions but thank you everyone so much for joining

today we’ll see you in those breakout rooms

thank you and you all are welcome to join those two

I’ll just stay up here and dance till everybody heads up