Project 2: Job Interview Process Response

The most important part of the job interview process guide that we outlined is the interview procurement stage. This seems to be the stage that takes up most of people’s time and which causes the most stress. This was especially a big issue for me the fall of my junior year. For some reason I felt a pressure to get an offer for an internship before Christmas, and so I spent much of my free time scouring all the resources I could think of looking for internships and applying to internships. This was a very disheartening process as, after a solid month or so of this, I had very little to show for it as no company had contacted me for an interview. Eventually, however, I began to get some emails and phone calls about interviews and soon landed a job. The key thing I took away from all of this is to be patient. If you cast out enough nets, then one is bound to catch something. And while you may get stressed out when you don’t hear back from a company right away, that’s not a cause for alarm. Many companies I applied to took weeks or more before I heard back, which is understandable considering how many applications some of the bigger companies must get. In retrospect, I should have had more confidence in myself so that I could spend the semester being more relaxed, rather than being in a constant state of worry that I would not be able to find an internship. Another part of the job interview process guide which I think is important is the last section. Once you accept an offer, it is not ethical to continue to pursue other positions. This is an issue which can cause a moral conundrum for many students. They get an offer that expires soon and accept it in the fear that they won’t get something else. However, there is still that nagging desire to see if you can land your dream job, or get a better offer. In this situation, it is important to stick to your morals and keep the agreement you made in accepting your other offer.

I think that colleges should adjust their curriculum to better prepare students for the job interview process. However, I don’t think these classes should be geared towards teaching about how to interview or how apply for jobs. Rather I think colleges should adjust their curriculum, particularly Notre Dame, to give students a chance to start building practical skills earlier in their college career. Through my experience in computer science at Notre Dame, I felt that the curriculum was too slow in terms of learning relevant information. As computer scientists, we didn’t really learn about the science of coding until sophomore year, which makes it very hard to try and get internships in the computer science industry when you have almost no experience with it. It would make more sense to me to have at least a class freshman year where students can learn some concrete skills for their major that they can continue to develop on their own so that they can be better prepared for the interview process at an earlier stage in their college career.