Blog: Winter Career Fair at UCLA
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Winter Career Fair at UCLA - Thursday, January 8, 2009
Today I was down at UCLA recruiting students at the Winter Engineering and Technical Fair. This was my second time recruiting at a career fair, my first being in October of last year.
This time around, the fair spanned a single day instead of two, and there were fewer students and companies that showed up. Nonetheless, I talked to more CS students than I did last time, and I got 4 or 5 good leads.
This time around, management wanted us to pre-screen candidates on the spot, rather than us doing phone-screens later. So I spent several minutes per candidate drilling them on programming, design, and data structures, and having them write simple code. This wasn't too conventional for a career fair, so I'm sure the students were a little put off, or at the very least surprised, but I do see the merit in risking scaring students in order to narrow down the candidates of interest. Since I'm convening with management tomorrow to review resumes, it also means that we can contact students as early as next week with an offer to fly them up for an on-site interview. I don't know of another company that moves so quickly in its hiring process.
As customary, last night I surprised Priscilla at her house, since only her parents knew I was coming. Her dad's 70th birthday is tomorrow, so last night we sang happy birthday and had some chocolate cake. We had dinner at my (parents') house tonight, and my mom gave me more food to take home. I didn't anticipate otherwise. ;)
This time around, the fair spanned a single day instead of two, and there were fewer students and companies that showed up. Nonetheless, I talked to more CS students than I did last time, and I got 4 or 5 good leads.
This time around, management wanted us to pre-screen candidates on the spot, rather than us doing phone-screens later. So I spent several minutes per candidate drilling them on programming, design, and data structures, and having them write simple code. This wasn't too conventional for a career fair, so I'm sure the students were a little put off, or at the very least surprised, but I do see the merit in risking scaring students in order to narrow down the candidates of interest. Since I'm convening with management tomorrow to review resumes, it also means that we can contact students as early as next week with an offer to fly them up for an on-site interview. I don't know of another company that moves so quickly in its hiring process.
As customary, last night I surprised Priscilla at her house, since only her parents knew I was coming. Her dad's 70th birthday is tomorrow, so last night we sang happy birthday and had some chocolate cake. We had dinner at my (parents') house tonight, and my mom gave me more food to take home. I didn't anticipate otherwise. ;)