How to Look for a Job

Basically, don't be like me. (Please hire me though.)

As a first-year college student, I obviously don’t know much about anything. Just on Friday I learned that we have to buy our own Scantrons, and that I needed one for the midterm that day. And clearly I can’t keep to a schedule, because this is only the second blog and I’ve already been two days late on a post. (If we assume a linear trend and extrapolate that over the course of a few months, within the next few posts I'll be a week late, and if it's a week late, does that mean it'll technically be on time for the Saturday posting date?) It seems that all we freshman know how to do is let everyone know about all the AP and IB classes we took in high school and casually proclaim to the world our plans to pursue a quadruple major and graduate 5 years early.

Like any other arrogant incoming college kid, I didn’t initially set out to fix this, because I didn’t see it as a problem. But during the Freshman Edge summer program, we had to attend a certain number of college-readiness workshops to fulfill a requirement for the university studies class we had to take. Naturally, I only went to these at first because I was going to get credit for it. As I attended each one, though, I realized how ill-prepared I was for the real world, and started seriously getting involved with the services offered at the Division of Career Pathways here on campus.

Fortunately, I also learned how nice people can be about helping you with finding direction in your career. Faculty and volunteers alike were encouraging and happy to show me the ropes with Handshake, LinkedIn, and résumé building. I suppose part of that is because I'm a first year. They always say some form of the good old "It's good to start early!" line. It also might have had to do with the fact that I've always had a round face, so I sometimes look like a little kid. And everyone wants to help a little kid, right? My only worry is that I don't know if employers would want to hire someone who looks like they just learned how to write their name with a crayon.

What did I learn? Well, for one, I finally came to grips with the hard truth that nobody cares about your long laundry list of extracurriculars and menial accomplishments from high school. What people do want is that you do things with purpose, and that you actually care about the stuff you do. That’s something you read off of a PrepScholar article in your desperate rush to fill out your college applications and skim over dismissively with the “Okay, but what do they really want?” mentality, a mistake that too many people make, myself included. I saw it everywhere but didn’t believe it until I kept going to workshops and seeing for myself what the job application process – which, in many ways, is what the college application process is preparing you for – was really like.

Of course, that's an awfully cynical generalization. Plenty of people who apply to college really are passionate about what they do, and admissions officers see the genuine potential that those individuals have to become successful during and after their time at the college in question. Quite plainly, I just wasn’t one of those people back then. At least, not to that degree.

(Side note to readers that are/will be applying to college: Stay off College Confidential and similar sites. If you haven’t already noticed, it’s mostly just people that want to humble brag about their accomplishments under the guise of asking if they have a chance at getting into XYZ college, thinking that it’s obvious that they will get in and seeking validation from the envy of others. These people almost never end up where they want to be.)

I digress.

So, after a few months of doing the whole "building your personal brand" thing (going to workshops, crafting my LinkedIn/Handshake profiles, searching for internships, polishing my résumé, putting stuff in GitHub repositories, etc.), it was time to go to the career fair, which was this Thursday.

By then I'd known for a while that I didn't realistically stand a chance at landing any sort of technical internship, but I'd figured it was at least worth getting the experience. So I went, dressed in the same formal clothing I wore when I took my LinkedIn profile picture, except I wore slacks and dress shoes instead of pajama pants and flip-flops because, unlike in a head shot profile photo, you can actually see my legs in real life.

There were quite a few things that didn't go particularly well. For one, this was the general career fair; I'd already missed the STEM career fair that was the week before, and there weren't a lot of tech companies present. I was on a time crunch since I had to do homework that morning and print my résumé, so it was already almost 12:00 when I got there, and I had class at 1:00. I'd also sprained my ankle that Monday, so my foot was so swollen that it barely fit in the dress shoe, and it hurt just to walk around.

Most critically, I didn't come prepared. I didn't even know what companies would be there, so I had to spend some time limping around to manually look for tech companies. The first booth I went to was for Ultimate Software, which seemed right up my alley because of my coding and web development knowledge. I proceeded to approach one of the representatives there and stutter to come up with a question, ending up saying something like "Hey... what's up?" to her while she internally rolled her eyes and said that they didn't take résumés as I feebly held mine up. I kind of gave her an awkward wave and mumbled some parting words, completely embarrassed about what had just happened.

Now, a lot of that was in my head. It probably wasn't as bad as it seemed to me, but it was still pretty demoralizing, despite the fact that I went in knowing that in reality nobody wants a freshman. And despite that, my opening line was still "Hi, I'm Sam Bondoc, a freshman majoring in computer engineering." On top of having a baby face that said "I have no idea what I'm doing," I was outright telling them that I really had no idea what I was doing.

I ran into Karol Johansen, Associate Director at the UCI Division of Career Pathways, whom I'd met several times for résumé consultation and various workshops. Now, I'm usually a pretty outgoing person, often to the dismay of my friends as I'm walking with them and yell super cheesy jokes to random passersby. But, in my dampened spirits from the interaction with the Ultimate Software representative, when Karol asked if I needed anything, I nervously replied "Actually... I don't know what to do."

Her colleague that was with her literally said "Awww, that's so sweet!"

Karol told me that it was a numbers game and that I should just get to as many companies that interested me as possible. She also reassured me that I had a good résumé and that the personality that I had was something that companies always love to have and actively look for in their applicants. I was skeptical that anyone would want to hire an annoying freshman who makes jokes like "What is an energy necklace made of? Joules!" to random people on the street, but I was thankful for the morale boost and took her advice into consideration while heading to the Fujitsu booth.

This time, the person took my résumé! Success! Then I realized... I had just given someone the only copy of my résumé that I had. In a mild panic I went back to Karol and asked her what I should do, and internally facepalmed when she said that I should go and print more résumés. It was at that moment I knew for sure: it was going to be a long time before I would get an internship, much less a job.

After speeding back to the library on my scooter and printing out the copies I needed, I came back and looked for one more company to get in line for, since I only had about 20 minutes before my physics lab on the other side of campus.

I went to the CalAmp booth and spoke to one of the representatives. This time, I was prepared; I told her all about my interests, my programming background, involvement in research, and how it all tied back to the company's mission of connecting the world through telematics. Most importantly, I didn't open with "Hey there, I'm a freshman." I felt confident, and instead of my thoughts being clouded like they had been in my rush to get to the fair on time, my over-analytical thought processes started to kick in again. I noticed that when I was talking to her, she was nodding her head, alternating between eye contact and reading my résumé with a positive look on her face. She seemed impressed. That ignited a spark of hope inside that told me that I wasn't going to be totally worthless at life.

Then she said that she was the HR person and that she wasn't the best person to talk to about technical stuff, gesturing towards the other guy who had a huge line waiting to speak with him. I stood in line for a while, my ankle throbbing from putting weight on it while it was stuffed in a tight shoe for so long, and eventually bailed because I had to get to class. At that point I was just extremely frustrated and completely over the whole career fair thing.

But as I zoomed across Ring Road on my trusty steed, I thought about everything that had just happened at the career fair and realized that while I hadn't landed an internship position or interview as I'd hoped, I still fulfilled the original objective of going, which was to gain experience for the future. And I had definitely learned a lot: bring multiple copies of your résumé, don't say you're a freshman, and prepare, prepare, prepare. I've still got a long way to go, but it's reassuring to know that I'm improving.

There's still one thing that probably won't be changing, and it's the fact that I look like a little kid who can barely tie his shoe, much less debug data structure-processing algorithms, engineer Moore's law-defying nanotransistors, or demonstrate any of the skills that recruiters are looking for. But that's also what'll surprise them. ∎

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Too Many Thoughts: How to Look for a Job

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