Students Speak: What Professors Can Do To Help Students in the Job Search Process
Casey Fenster
Many students hope to pursue a career in industry after graduation. I recently graduated from Virginia Tech with a major in Computational Modeling and Data Analytics and minors in Computer Science and Statistics. In August, I will begin as a Data Analytics Consultant for CapTech in its Richmond, Virginia headquarters. Reflecting on this journey allowed me to identify numerous opportunities for faculty input during the job application process. While most faculty have only worked in academia, their experiences, networks, and platforms can be valuable tools for students. I consistently received emails from administrators with job postings but would have appreciated guidance from professors on tasks like writing a cover letter, building a resume, or responding to interview questions. From this rudimentary starting point, I devised 11 tips for faculty to help students make the transition from academia to industry.
Know the recruiting timeline
Students would benefit from faculty awareness of the general recruiting timeline for relevant careers to their subject. The investment banking cycle happens the summer before senior year, consulting occurs late summer into early fall, and software engineering and other tech roles recruit in the fall. To find out a specific cycle, look up application due dates for a major company in that industry (e.g., Google or Apple for software engineering) because smaller companies follow suit.
Leverage your colloquium
Bringing in successful and relevant industry speakers is an effective way to engage and peak student interest. It doesn’t have to be expensive either; alumni and local employees are great sources. One memorable speaker for me was Cory Jez, a Virginia Tech alum and former data analyst for the Utah Jazz. His talk sparked my interest in sports analytics and introduced me to the Sports Data Analytics Club. I was also fortunate enough to have two former prominent data scientists at GE Aviation as my Capstone professors (shoutout to Fred Faltin and Angie Patterson). Their storytelling was one of my favorite aspects of the class. What is the optimal number of flights before replacing a part to minimize cost and maximize safety? Or, from talking with Jez, how do you guard Steph Curry? Students don’t often get exposed to these types of questions in a classroom. Learning about various careers and subindustries from speakers opens a whole new set of doors for potential career options and interests.
Help with resumes
I know a resume seems a long way from the classroom experience, but hear me out on this.
When it came time for me to build a resume, I didn’t know Career Services existed. I found templates on the internet and went from there. I later uncovered the value of Career Services. It seemed as if the classroom and Career Services worlds operated separately. A simple referral would have saved me a lot of time and energy. If you want to do more, you could help a student with the language on their resume. For example, a student would benefit from your insight about how to phrase technical expertise in a single bullet point. It doesn’t take too much of a time investment from the faculty member but will yield rich dividends for the student. It’s a small thing that really counts.
Assign messy problems
Professors can supply students with valuable training by giving non-uniform, messy problems. I was frequently given complete surveys and neatly arranged and labeled datasets as Excel files in class. This was, by design, to make the problem-solving component easier. That’s the part that professors cared about and graded meticulously. After all, creating insights is what produces output, and that’s what students are graded on. When I had to tackle real-world problems in my internship and Capstone project, I found the 80/20 rule—80% of the work was data wrangling and the other 20% was creating insights—was true. I was not prepared for this. Datasets are never clean. Missing data is a huge problem in the world of data science. I recommend professors give students unclean data or problems that don’t work out to equal whole numbers. They never do in industry. With these experiences, students can discuss those problems or projects to set them apart in an interview.
Emphasize process rather than solution
In interviews, companies care more about your thought process (i.e., how you arrived at your answer) than the actual answer. In one consulting interview I was asked “How many golf balls can fit in a 747?” In another for JPMorgan Chase, I was asked “How many Chase bank transactions are there every day?” They didn’t expect me to get the answer right. They wanted to know how I thought through it. If I would have said 50,000 to the first question, that would have been detrimental to my interview. They wanted to hear me ask “Are there seats in the plane?” and “Are we filling the cockpit and the cabin?” before calculating the volume. My thought process was the gold mine there. In the classroom, have students talk out their solutions often. It will not only help them when they face a similar problem later, but also it will help them realize if and where they went wrong.
Encourage your students to get an early start
In industry, real-world experiences matter exponentially more than class projects. Professors can encourage sophomores and especially juniors to seek internships. I felt as if internships were underemphasized. Yet when I arrived at the full-time interview process, companies only wanted to hear about my internship because those projects and experiences were much more dynamic and mimicked scenarios I was likely to face at that company. My internship as a Logistics Engineer at Volvo Group taught me technical and soft skills, such as building a database in SQL with real-time supply chain data, developing a live dashboard to eliminate 30 minutes of daily manpower, and learning how to hold an efficient meeting. As you might imagine, these experiences were worth far more than building the Tower of Hanoi in my Java class. But that class had its benefits too.
Every class counts
Many students fail to recognize the importance of theory-based courses like Abstract Algebra and Discrete Mathematics. However, these types of courses are all about taking theorems, proofs, and definitions and putting them together to give a logical flow to your thought process. This is especially helpful for interview questions that start with “Tell me how you would solve this problem.” When students are doubting the relevance and significance of these courses, let them know the value of logical thinking they are gaining.
Talk about your experiences more
Students are interested in your career path, whether or not it is restricted to academia. If students have a tangible example of a possible route, it gets them thinking. Maybe they find out about a grad school that has a specialized program of interest or learn about a company in a location where they want to live. You never know. Oversharing is better than under-sharing in this case.
Allow students to use your network
During the stressful job application period, establish yourself as approachable, even to students not enrolled in your classes. Students often feel uncomfortable reaching out to professors they aren’t familiar with. As a faculty member, you have made a lot of professional connections in academia and industry throughout your career. If a student expresses interest in a topic in which you have a connection, offer to put them in touch. It could be another professor, former student, friend, or previous colleague.
Emphasize networking calls
Leading up to my recruiting cycle, I had calls with alumni at various companies where I wanted to work. Those employees later notified HR when I applied to look at my application. This stamp of approval is especially important in this day and age of automated resume screenings. Again, referring to Career Services is a good route to go here. To take it a step further, faculty providing guidelines for how to find people in the field to call, how to compose an email, and what questions to ask would be incredibly valuable. LinkedIn is hands down the best way to find people. I searched the company I was interested in learning more about, filtered by Virginia Tech alumni, connected with those people, and then sent them an email to ask for a 15-minute phone call to learn more about their role at their company. You may have a colleague you could suggest for a call. The goal is for the student to gain some knowledge and practice, not necessarily to land that particular job.
Normalize rejection
Talk about your own rejection. I received plenty of emails from companies saying some variation of “we are considering other candidates at this time.” Those emails are painful, but inevitable. Many undergraduates have not yet experienced that magnitude of rejection, particularly after three rounds of interviewing. Most companies that I applied to either never acknowledged me or rejected me. I’d argue that the former is more demoralizing. Analogously, I didn’t score a 96 on every test I took. Stress that it’s possible to rebound from a low grade. Detail a time when you did. Success in the interview process favors those who are comfortable with being uncomfortable.
I hope these ideas offer practical ways professors can aid their students through the stressful job search. Keep in mind this process simultaneously takes place during the rigorous senior year fall semester (and even overflows into the spring). This list may seem overwhelming, so I recommend choosing two of these tips to incorporate this fall and then expanding your reach in the spring. Adjusting your focus just a little bit might give you and your students a fresh perspective on course content and their future plans.
Casey Fenster is a 2022 graduate of Virginia Tech. He majored in Computational Modeling and Data Analytics and minored in Computer Science and Statistics. He will begin as a Data Analytics Consultant for CapTech in its Richmond, Virginia headquarters in August.