hi my name is mary and today we're going to talk about how to get a job as a college student so i'm
going to split this off into two sections the first is on campus or near campus employment
and the next is internship and postgrad um second thing i just want to prime us with
is that there are specific there's specific knowledge that you can know per vertical
that you might be recruiting for so whether that's technology management whether that's suite whether
it's consulting whether it's banking or whether that's venture capital which is what i do um
and i'm actually going to produce videos in the future that talk about those verticals in more
details but for now this is the primer video for all of that and the last thing i want to start
us off with before we jump into things is that philosophically i'm a big believer that getting a
job in college is not the only reason that you're going to college in fact the thing that you're
trying to get in your life is figure out a sense of who you are what you want to do and especially
what you find meaningful such that you actually want to do it and you will find that a lot of
people who go into you know college knowing that i want to be a doctor or i want to be a consultant
and they come out and they do those things will have a enormous midlife crisis where they will
waste a lot of emotion and they will realize they have wasted a lot of energy pursuing what
other people wanted them to be and not actually having understanding of who they are that is just
some philosophical primer but now we're going to jump into the actual contents of this video
okay so we're going to begin with two general tips the first is when people say that networking is
important this is true but there are categories of people in which networking with them is actually
not that important and then i think categories of people that people often forget about but are
actually really important to network with so in terms of what is actually not very important so
people often go for for example professionals in that field who actually do not have decision
making power over you being hired for example let's say you meet an engineer who's been working
for five years at google or you meet a vp who is at this bank that you want to work at there is
a really really good chance that they are not at all involved in the hiring process they might be
useful in getting referral if you're really close with them and they are definitely useful in terms
of asking them and trying to figure out whether you would actually like working at that company
but as a whole that is a category that i find a lot of college students spend a lot of time
in and does not help with your recruiting process in terms of two categories of people that actually
really help in terms of networking the first is people who have just gone through it so for
example let's say you have some friends who are a semester or a year or two years older than you who
have gone through the recruiting process or are now interning or working at the company that you
want to work at those people are super useful because they are the most relevant they have the
most up-to-date information on how they actually did what they did and so meeting them through
whatever social activities or pre-professional activities that you can and picking their brain
is the best source of information when it comes to this stuff the second group of people are people
who are actually decision makers at companies you want to work at so whether that is getting
to know the co-founder of a startup that you want to work out or whether that is for example uh
like getting to know recruiters who work at the company that you want to work at they might not
be decision makers in terms of who's actually going to get the internship but they probably are
decision makers and that they can say no to you or that they can provide information on when the
portal is open and other very very useful stuff you might know a decision maker at a really big
company like if you happen to be connected to them but that's probably not the case for most
people which is why i recommend these other two categories as important categories to network with
the second general tip is that if you think about categories that are verticals that you want to
recruit for so i would consider like consulting or banking or software engineering product management
venture capital um as large verticals that you might be interested in i would pick recruiting
up to two of them max maybe one maybe two probably not more and that is because they all have
very specialized knowledge and very specialized recruiting processes that run on certain timelines
such that you are worse off being mediocre at a lot of things you are much better off being great
at literally anything so that's a tactical piece of advice and like i said in future videos i'm
going to tackle those verticals or at least some of those verticals that i was involved in
which include product and venture capital more specifically so if you're interested in those
subscribe to see those videos so we're going to begin with how to get a job on or near campus if
you are only interested in internships or postgrad slash full-time opportunities i would just skip to
the next section anyways okay on-campus employment so first every school that i've heard of at least
has a centralized database that you can filter by the parameters you're interested in including how
many hours that job entails whether it counts for work study whether it's on campus what department
is a part of etc through this centralized portal that i'm sure someone at your school can help you
find the next type of employment opportunity on campus that i think is quite common is
teaching or research opportunities with a class now the way to be involved with that is first
again you can look through your centralized database those are often posted there second
i would make sure that you are on the mailing list for these classes before during and after you take
them and to actually read them so very commonly after a class you might see an email that says
hey there's a ta opportunity a teaching assistant opportunity for the next semester uh you can apply
here and then finally you can actually go to the professors themselves and ask if they have any
teaching assistant opportunities course decision opportunities or perhaps research opportunities
that you can be a part of you just need to get a little bit comfortable talking to your professors
which is actually always a good thing finally there are local jobs in the area that are less
pre-professional but you might also want to be involved in whether that's babysitting for people
who live nearby or dog sitting or dog walking or things like that there are apps for this there are
also local newsletters and sometimes these are featured in these centralized databases as well
a couple things i want to warn you about is one watch out for scams so try to validate you know
that these are real jobs and other safe jobs and the second is as an international student
you cannot do off-campus employment including any of these near campus jobs i know some friends who
just get paid under the table and i think that's fine if that's the decision you want to make but
personally i look at the risk between the minor risk between i get caught and then the major
consequence of not being allowed into the country in the future and that's just something that i am
not willing to do so that's something i want to warn international students about in particular
okay so now we're going to talk about internships as well as post-grad
full-time opportunities the first thing i want to emphasize is i think people should sign up for
every email list that they think is remotely relevant and actually read through them every
single day they'll read through them quickly so for example if you're studying computer science
at harvard we had like the harvard computer science association women in computer science
like all of these clubs i just signed up for all of their email list and i would quickly read
through them every day i actually got my junior internship this way and you will be so surprised
how many opportunities are missed because people don't read their emails very much
also one thing to note for international students is you have a lot of flexibility when it comes
to internships because you can use your cpt very broadly at any company your visas actually become
more restrictive over time so definitely take while you are an undergrad or while you're a
student the opportunity to explore in this first session we are going to talk about startups which
by the way is a really fantastic way to build experience because startups always need people
and they really like or often like college students so i would say that the most
highest hit rate method for getting a job particularly a startup is what i call doing a
pre-project slash sending really aggressive emails um what i mean by this so a pre-project is when
you take work that you would be doing for them anyways and demonstrate that you can do it by
doing essentially mini project and sending it off to the right person so for example um when i tried
to get internship at a marketing firm i looked at their website as a this was actually when i
was a senior in high school but this would apply to college students too i looked at their website
i wrote essentially a list of things that i would change and demonstrated how i would market their
site better doing a little bit of work and then i sent it off to the ceo and i got hired there or
another example is let's say you are a you want to get a product rule maybe for startup you say
hmm i've evaluated the market here's some of the research i've done here's a product that i think
would really resonate with your audience send it off to the right person another thing i did is i
took a bd role by the way all of these are true examples i tried to get a business development
internship and essentially i tried to research as much as i could about this company then i
wrote down a strategic plan of what they could do for the next six months and i sent it off
to the right person now that is a pre-project i also call it an aggressive email because that's
a pretty aggressive email to receive but people find it very impressive and they tend to respond
to it or at least listen to it because clearly you've put in the effort now how do you actually
get to the right person actually to be honest i can make a whole video about this but one of
the best ways to be involved with startups on your campus is there's with all likelihood an
entrepreneurship center either on your campus or somewhere near your campus there's a community
of entrepreneursh people that's not a word um and they will have a directory of companies often with
contacts that you can contact directly or you can find them on linkedin and contact them that
this way with your pre-project slash aggressive email i'm also going to link a medium article down
below which is how i first heard about this in high school the title is something along the lines
of like how to get a job you're not qualified for um but yeah that was super useful it's not
my idea but it has worked like three times in my life okay so now we're going to talk about
how you can get an internship or a full-time job at a large company unfortunately the pre-project
idea works really well for startups so it works very poorly for big companies because they can't
recruit like that like that's not disciplined um so the first thing that i would recommend you do
is compile a list of programs that you qualify for as well as their application dates or just compile
a list if you're looking at full-time roles of full-time roles and their application dates
in terms of internships a lot of big companies actually have programs targeted towards specific
years so for example at least when i was around like google had a freshman sophomore program
palantir had a software program um deloitte had a freshman program for certain people
um goldman takes sophomore onward or something along those lines to get the most up-to-date
version of this information i would google it and i would also talk to people who are again just a
few years older than you or like a semester older than you who have gone through this process before
now to emphasize how important this is it depends a little bit on the industry but for example
in consulting and banking first-year analysts of people who just graduated from your school
will actually pull resumes so you knowing them very very valuable for figuring out what they're
looking for um when it comes to tech that's not the case and so it's a little bit less uh
of a tie however the people who have just gone through it can tell you a lot about for example
what fairs are really important like if you're a woman in cs grace hopper is an amazing way to
get interviews and then get internships and get jobs um that's something that being friends with
people who have just gone through this will really really help you with okay so now we're going to go
from sort of most likely to get your job to least likely to get you a job but still all very very
valid ways so the easiest way to get a job or the most likely way is if you apply directly through
your school's portal and that is because they have direct relationships with those companies such
as those companies have explicitly thought to themselves we want to hire people from this school
another top top way of getting a job is getting a referral from someone who currently works there
for example in tech you can get friends or other people who have a referral link who by the way get
often get a bonus for referring you successfully to send you a referral code and that's a really
great thing to ask for if you're friends with these people if you don't feel comfortable asking
i would also recommend joining facebook groups where for example women in cs hangout because
at the end of the summer they will often or the beginning of fall they will often
offer referral codes to the first few people who sign up so that's another great way to
get referral codes and or referrals and those really really do help with your application
the next thing that's pretty helpful is career fairs you should ask again people who are just
a couple years older than you a little bit older than you which career fairs are more relevant than
others but what you will need to do in preparation for a career fair is first have printed versions
of your resumes that you are willing and able to hand out to recruiters while you're there
sometimes i've seen them star it and so they actually end up starring in the application system
as well that this is someone through talking to you that they should flag another important thing
to do before a career fair is practice in front of a mirror the questions that you are going to be
asked which is essentially tell me about yourself be able to talk about the projects you've done
or the experience that you have or the academic experiences that you've had in a really succinct
way because you are going to ask get asked this a ton at career fairs now something to note overall
is the timing of all this matters and knowing the timing of all this matters so for example
when i was recruiting for big tech companies they would recruit the fall for summer internships and
full-time roles for consulting they would also recruit in the fall for startups they
recruit in the spring for summer interns and for banking especially if you're a woman they recruit
sophomore year for junior internships you can see why getting the timing on the stuff is important
now finally the last thing i would recommend which is still helpful but i would say
is the lowest probability in helping you is set up linkedin and google job notifications based on the
parameters that you're looking for so for example you say i'm interested in an internship for this
summer or i'm interested in a full-time role at in software engineering in this city and you will get
an email on whatever basis you want maybe on a weekly basis with all the new jobs that are
available and you can just submit your resume or other things that you may need this is definitely
the easiest thing to do but also sort of the least likelihood of helping you because you are a fresh
cold person in their pipeline and you're going to have to convince them all the way through which
happens all the time but i do recommend the other things first because you really have an
advantage as a college student if you go through the pipelines that are already prepared for you
so now we're going to talk through three things i want to note in particular if you're applying
to internships full-time opportunities as a college student the first thing i just want
to know strategically is that return offers are a lot easier to get than initial jobs and that's
because let's say for a return offer let's say they give 50 of a 50 person class a return offer
versus with jobs for the first applying for the first time you might be one of
a thousand applicants so you can see where probabilistically that's harder another thing
to note is that when you get your return offer that is actually the best time to negotiate
various parts of your salary or your vacation time etc um just something to keep in mind
next thing we're going to talk through my strategy if i was to do it all over again
so this by the way is going to come from a very privileged position and i do want to
note that but if i were to do it all over again i recommend to people younger than me who are
in privileged positions that i would spend a lot of time exploring i know as a freshman when you
see someone who's like working at this big name company you're like wow i want to do that too
but trust me you can work for the rest of your life you have much less opportunity to
be a college student and to explore and to have a lot of fun so if i was through it all over again
as a freshman i would do whack stuff and then as a sophomore i would do wax stuff
and then in junior year i would get serious about finding a job and then hopefully that
would convert into a full-time role but you even if you don't feel comfortable kind of doing and