Wesley Reed | Honors Experiences
This past December, I was offered a great opportunity to travel to San Francisco, California to visit with several companies. We visited Macy’s Technology, Cisco, Intuit, Google, Splunk and Trōv. Of all of the companies we visited, I enjoyed Cisco and Google the most. What really set Cisco and Google apart was they seemed less interested in marketing their company to us and getting us to come work for them, and more interested in developing us as professionals.
At Cisco, we had a panel discussion with several recent hires and speed mentoring sessions with four different individuals who have been at Cisco for many years. Throughout these discussions we talked a lot about what it’s like to apply for a job, how to impress a recruiter, how to make sure you represent your personal brand in the best way possible, talked about some tips for performing in your job after you’re hired. These discussions were very informative and answered a lot of questions I had about what comes next after college, and some I didn’t even know I had. That being said, I do wish there would have been a little bit of “here’s why you should come work at Cisco” in the conversation.
At Google, we did talk a little about the programs Google offers for their employees, but most memorable part of the experience was when one of the people hosting us took us through several mock interview questions to help prepare us for future interviews with any company. Google struck a nice balance of “here’s why you should come work at Google” and giving us tips on how to interview even if we don’t choose to apply to Google.
Intuit’s presentation was very focused on what Intuit does as a company, and what benefits they offer to their employees. It was really cool to see all of the things that they are working on and to hear what they value as a company. They spoke a lot about work/life balance and how the company values the time employees spend outside of work, both recreationally and helping the community. Like Google and Cisco, it was great to hear that they value us as individuals and want to make sure we are growing professionally.
Both Macy’s Technology and Splunk seemed a little unprepared to host us. Macy’s Technology had a recruiter speak to us for about 20 minutes, walked us around their rooftop space and one floor of the building, then sent us on our way. Overall, not a very impressive experience. Similarly, Splunk gave us a short walk about a floor of the building and let us have a panel discussion with a few employees who didn’t have any talking points prepared and seemed surprised when we didn’t really know how to get the conversation started.
The last company we visited, Trōv, was very unique because it is a small startup company. Our host there talked about what it is the company does, and how they are utilizing modern technology such as Azure DevOps to enhance their product and delivery of their product. It was very cool to see how tools we are learning about in our classes are being applied in the real world. We also got to speak with the CEO of Trōv about being an entrepreneur and coming up with an idea, then making that idea a reality and marketing it.
In addition to visiting the companies, we also had lots of time to explore the bay area and visit tourist attractions such as the Computer History Museum, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Muir Woods, the Intuit Museum, the San Francisco Cable Car Museum, and many other places.