In 2012, I graduated from the University of Arkansas with a Bachelor\u2019s degree in chemical engineering and got my first job working for a chemical manufacturing company in Houston, Texas. Reflecting back on my job searching experience, it was so much easier than it is today. I had worked hard in college to make myself the ideal candidate: got a good GPA, had an internship, went to
behavioral interview prep seminars, and was heavily involved in an extracurricular club. My job searching consisted of going to a single on-campus career fair, getting 3-4 job offers, and picking the one that I thought was the best fit. Easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After graduating, I went on to spend the next 10 years at the same company. While the stability was nice, this meant that I never had to really find a new job. Sure, I did different roles within that company and I technically had to \u201capply\u201d to those positions. However, finding a new role within my existing company was much different than applying for a job at a new company. Most of the time the
\u201cinterview process\u201d consisted of my leader negotiating with the hiring manager of the role I was applying for and they would determine if I was a good fit for that role. By the time the interview process rolled around, I had a fairly good idea about the outcome, positive or negative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast forward to the present, I am in the last quarter of my computer science degree from OSU and really starting to pick-up the interview process. And let me tell you, it has been humbling, very humbling. This time around, I didn\u2019t strive to be the perfect candidate. I still made good grades, but I didn\u2019t do all the ancillary things that would have made me shine, the main one being an internship. In my opinion, internships are great for people with no work experience; you learn how to work on a professional team, lead a meeting, etc. However, I felt like I already had those soft skills from my tenure as a professional for 10 years. In addition, I didn\u2019t feel that the technical skill you learn at an internship are that extensive, certainly not something you couldn\u2019t learn on the first few months of a new job. So, for these reasons, I forwent an internship, instead choosing to finish the degree as quickly as possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To conclude this note, if I could do it all over again, I don\u2019t know that I would do anything different. After all, every minute I\u2019m in an internship is a minute I\u2019m not working full-time making twice as much money. But through this experience, I have learned that not having all the bells and whistles on the resume, even if you are an experienced hire in a related field, does make a difference to some companies. Only time will tell if I made the right choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2012, I graduated from the University of Arkansas with a Bachelor\u2019s degree in chemical engineering and got my first job working for a chemical manufacturing company in Houston, Texas. Reflecting back on my job searching experience, it was so much easier than it is today. I had worked hard in college to make myself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12802,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12802"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/mcalistn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}