Dr. Grossman:
A major that sounds like you used to be a CS major, failed out, and picked this instead, is a bad thing. Examples: Computer Information System, Internet Management, (yadda) (and presumably my major, too- although I was never a CS major because I only realized that I wanted to be one in my sophomore year, which was too late to switch.)
Work experience is a big plus (duh)
Interview question: "how have you handled failure?" (My answer: with more research, more man-hours, and terrible coffee.)
There are 15 people here, including all presenters.
Bruce Mueller is next up: his job is to pimp the CMC.
"I've hired thousands."
"Always put the company name and job title in your resume."
(Mueller speaks in an assertive and aggressive manner.)
"More and more companies are using lunches and dinners as part of the interview process." This is part of pimping the CMC's workshops- some of which I think are useful! (I'm sorry, but any CS company that tries this will go out of business from lack of interested talent. Who cares about which fork you use if you use the wrong method?)
"Research has been done on this." i.e. on the 30 second rule of meeting people and forming an impression. (Show me the citation and I'll believe you.)
"How many hours have you spent studying? And it all comes down to a resume and thirty seconds. I know, it's not fair." (Do you also know that it's dumb? And perpetuated by HR flacks?)
Grossman introduces Paula Laurent, a nice black lady who looks more or less my age- she used to work at TransUnion and is now in for her Masters and PhD (?) at DePaul. Rocking! She explains the Google interview process (which I more or less knew because of Dmitry and Roman, but which is good to have a refresher on): preliminary contact, 3hr coding interview over the phone, then 2 in-person interviews (they fly you in!)
Mantas talks about his employer, Backstop Solutions. www.backstopsolutions.com
60 ppl work there, 20 of which are developers. They've been around 8yr, and the company is worth several million.
"The many things you can do to instantly fail yourself from an interview."
Backstop employees need to be good at teamwork and seem like they will be friends with the people at the shop. They get 100s of resumes for every open spot. "Everyone in the company looks at resumes."
"If you lie or exaggerate on your resume, we will tell other companies about it." (How? Why bother?)
Learn about B-tree vs. binary tree if you want to work at Backstop. Also, write your own recursive list.
"The majority of people who come in [to interview] can't code to save their life."
"If you put C on your resume, you should be able to outline malloc during your interview."
Mantas laughed at himself a little and called his talk "super depressing." But it really wasn't... it was informative, though.
In 4-6 mo new employees at backstop are considered "trained." (and therefore they don't want to fire anyone- that's a huge loss of investment!)
They're hiring >5 people and expect to get ~500 resumes at the career fair. Last time, they followed up on 4 and hired none.
"If you're good, we'll hire you" seems to be the theme (and the unspoken second part of that is "but practically no one is 'good' ")
When it comes to resumes, Mantas says, "we're going to tear upas many as possible as quickly as we can."
Ori talks about working at Orbitz. Orbitz employs about 800-1000 people, he says. He met with them at a Fall career fair, was offered a job in November for after graduation... Orbits likes lots of lead time, he says.
Coding competitions = win; they make you stand out. Check out bit.ly/orbitz2010 for some awesomeness. (This link appears to be broken. Did I copy it wrong?)
ACM helped me, he says. It was a launching point, a meeting people place, a way to interact with faculty.
In the last 6 months, Orbitz hired 5 IIT grads. This implies that they might be willing to hire more.
Orbitz is casual dress, ori says, and people tend to leave at 5pm. There's a focus on pacing and not having big all-night last-minute pushes.
There are 21 ppl here, including 7 event organizers/presenters.
Vinny works at CME! (Mercantile exchange) He brought swag- fancy pens and fancy keychains.
vinny.badrinathan@cmegroup.com
"I write a lot of tools for myself."
"If you're good, we'll hire you."
Dr. Grossman discusses the structure of learning CS. When it comes to specific skills, he says, "There are too many and they change too often," (which all the presenters agree with) so IIT teaches none of them; only "basics" which don't change so much and are nececcary for understanding.
If a professor wants to add a course, he says, first they have to "tie it to a top ten university." Meetings sometimes include arguing about whether a university is in the top ten. "If they're doing it, we'll do it." (I wish he hadn't implied that the IIT undergrad studies committee does no original research - or local or IIT-specific situational research.
Dr. Grossman says that you shoudl look forward to a 50-70 hr workweek, and enjoy what you do. "Who is that kid? He's living here!" is the goal, he says. (He seems a little manic...)
Walk-on presenter Josh Haycraft of InStep Software (IIT CS '06) jhaycraft@instepsoftware.com
4 IIT grads were hired at InStep this year.
Instep has 50 employees in the US and 50 spread through China.
They write software which energy companies use- tracking and predicting generator lifespan, etc. Lots of databases.
Dr. Evens offers her services as a resume checker. evens@iit.edu
Dr. Grossman offers his services as a resume checker (but on a strictly limited basis) grossman@iit.edu