An Unconventional Path to Finding the Right Job

Sushanth Bhaskarabhatla, C’12

My experience finding my job was a bit unique and less straightforward compared to that of many of my peers, so I thought it would be worth sharing to other students as an anecdote.

Though many of my friends received job offers through OCR during their senior year, I did not formally go through OCR since I was working on my own start-up at the time. It turned out to be very useful, though, for me to attend the Penn Engineering Career Fair (open to College students), where I met folks from AppNexus and other tech companies. Later, I had two phone interviews with them in September of my senior year and then put the process on hold. Once I finished working on my start up a few months ago, I got back in touch with the folks from AppNexus that I met.

Sending one thoughtful email re-establishing that connection and describing my experience over the past year and why I was interested in their company had a much stronger impact than dozens of resumes I was dropping at the time. I want to thank Career Services because the initial Career Fair helped me laid the seeds of a job offer that I did not receive until over a year later.

I am now a Technical Account Manager at AppNexus, where I work with 3rd party developers to make apps for our clients in the advertising industry to use. The work combines both business and technical aspects in an exciting and growing start-up and industry. I never would have found this opportunity, however, if I had beelined for what I thought at the moment was the right job.

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The Coming Summer Internship Season

What will you be doing next summer?

Will you have a summer internship? If so, where and in what city? Will you be traveling or will you be doing research?

I know, I know, it’s the last thing you all probably want to think about right now.

However, I’m here to tell you that you may want to consider it sooner rather than later. Why?

Because when classes resume, almost every student will be thinking about it and they will be coming into our office.

I’ve seen it many times over the years.

Come January all the students rush over to see the counselors to get their resumes reviewed and talk about their plans for the summer and our office gets packed.

There are no appointments left, walk-ins are booked, and resume reviews will take several days due to the large volume.

But besides that, another good reason to think about it now is that the sooner you decide, the less stressed you will feel.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, the end of the year is roaring by. It’s a fact of life that time passes much too quickly.

First come the reading days, then finals, followed by the holidays. Then all of a sudden, it will be 2013 (and ideally we will have all survived the Mayan apocalypse!)

I would recommend making an appointment before you leave for break. Even just coming for a walk-in, dropping off your resume, or writing a quick email if you have a question because when the semester starts again in January, you will have a lot more to think about besides what you will be doing over the summer. Therefore, it would be best to start to ponder your options now and have a relaxing break.

If you’re not sure what to do, the best option would be to attend the summer on-campus recruiting orientation. If you are doing OCR, this will answer all of your questions.

This workshop will help you learn about using On-Campus Recruiting to apply and interview for summer internships, as well as the PennLink system.

The next live workshop is on Tuesday, December 4th. It will be held from noon to 1pm in Steinberg-Dietrich Room 1201.

While many employers use the on-campus recruiting system to hire juniors (so that they can extend full-time offers afterward), it is best if you know what to expect if you’ll be utilizing OCR.

If you can’t make it, you can also view the online OCR orientation for internship recruiting for spring 2013 at the following link:

http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/recruiting/Spring2013/player.html

Additionally, our office is open until December 21st.

In the meantime, good luck on your finals and have a great holiday season!