Writing 02: What are your thoughts about the hiring industry?

I have mixed feelings about the hiring industry personally. On one hand, I like the fact that Computer Science positions offer technical interviews and other forms of practical testing for hiring. On the other, I feel that most of my prior schoolwork has been a waste of time now that I am applying for jobs. While GPA is an important component of the application process, many of my prior classes, especially university requirements, do not seem to translate to practical, on-the-job skills.

The hiring process in my view has both good and bad aspects. I don't really enjoy the process of networking and discussing my qualities as a candidate. I would rather just show off my skills in a technical evaluation and have the employer deem if I have the ability to perform the job. I find the other aspects of the interview process to be rather artificial and somewhat fake, especially for a position such as an SDE. Of course, conversational skills and persuasion are good for positions such as being a sales representative or business executive. However, for software engineering, I feel that technical skills and knowledge is much more valuable.

Regarding my preparation for the hiring process, I feel that I took a different route than many of my peers due to my study abroad experiences. Rather than use the summers before junior and senior year for internships, I spent them in Japan studying at language schools. Also, due to the number of classes I needed to take in order to study both Japanese and CS, I had no time to participate in research. I feel like these choices, while allowing me to possibly work in Japan in the future, have put me at a competitive disadvantage compared to my classmates.

I think that there should be a distinction between academia-focused universities and job-focused trade schools. I think the core curriculum of most universities isn't really useful for the majority of technical-focused students. For example, I think that classes such as Moreau, FYS, and university requirements (particularly history, theology, and literature) would serve STEM students much better if they were to be replaced with classes about career building, team-based work, and research.

If I could give advice to my younger self, I would tell them to do more research and personal projects rather than focus on school work. From my perspective, once you get your first job or internship, your past grades basically get thrown out the window and forgotten. Also, grades don't really translate to career skills. Research and personal projects on the other hand give you practical experience that can really bolster your resume and viability as a job candidate.

Notre Dame, in my view, severely lacks the resources and education for job searching. Sure, if you want to get a consulting job in Chicago, it's very easy for pretty much any CS major due to the numerous alumni connections there. However, in my case, I wanted to look for an internship abroad. However, Notre Dame has no resources for this both in the Career Center and at the Career Fair. Thus, I had to do my own research and attend an external career fair on my own budget. This can be very difficult as it's both a huge time and monetary investment to travel to attend a career fair such as this.