As graduation approaches, many Texas A&M seniors are preparing themselves to enter the workforce.
According to a survey taken by the A&M Career Center, 54 percent of Aggies graduate with career offers. Those who are not pursuing further education will soon begin their first full-time jobs, which they have been working toward since starting their education.
A&M offers a variety of resources for Aggies in search of a job through the Career Center, which includes HireAggies, advising and both spring and fall semester career fairs.
“Career Center’s mission is to promote career learning and development, empowering all Aggies to realize their potential and establishing Texas A&M University as a preferred source of talent,” the website reads.
Pursuing a future in highway design engineering, civil engineering senior Mary Visconti said she was excited to accept an offer to work for Jacobs Engineering Group in Austin.
“I actually interned there for the past two summers,” Visconti said. “I found out about the job because I interned at the Texas Department of Transportation, and I had a coworker recommend me to one of the girls that work at Jacobs. We got lunch and just talked about a potential internship, and then I later applied that fall.”
To juniors who will soon begin the job search process, Visconti said she recommends they take advantage of career fairs.
“Also, it’s helpful to join organizations that are in their major and make connections through that, because there’s people that have internships and whatnot that will actually recommend you to their company,” Visconti said. “I would say the biggest thing is making connections wherever you can find them, even if it’s just your classmates, and then get really good at just going to the career fairs, being in their face, keep talking to them, kind of not taking no for an answer.”
Computer engineering senior Suvedh Srikanth said he plans to move to Seattle next month to start his first job as a software engineer at Microsoft.
“I’ll be working on an internal distributed systems app in Microsoft Azure, which is a cloud computing service,” Srikanth said. “A good friend of mine spoke about her positive experiences at the company and gave me an interview referral, which convinced them to interview me for a summer internship position. I got the offer, and at the end of the summer after I completed my internship, I managed to receive a return offer for full time.”
For juniors pursuing careers in technology, or engineering jobs in general, Srikanth said it is essential to actually attend class.
“You can’t start your job if you don’t graduate, and you can’t get an offer if the company thinks you don’t know your stuff,” Srikanth said.
Another factor to remember, Srikanth said, is to utilize the Aggie Network.
“LinkedIn is your friend,” Srikanth said. “You can look up companies you’re interested in and filter employees by university. When I was applying, I DM’d plenty of Aggie alumni who were happy to put me in touch with company recruiters.”
Srikanth said getting a job post-graduation is ultimately a numbers game.
“My junior year, I got seven internship offers after applying to about 250 companies,” Srikanth said. “If you don’t think you’re the cream of the crop, simply apply to every company under the sun. That includes online, on LinkedIn and at career fairs.”
Lastly, Srikanth urges applicants to update their resumes and use resources A&M offers to get it up to standard.
“Get two of your peers in your field to review it, as well as any TAMU resume services you can find,” Srikanth said.