My overall impression of the hiring process in my industry is a bit hazy. First of all, I recently changed my industry from software engineering to more of a UI/UX field. I am still researching and slowly learning about the process from online resources and LinkedIn connections. It is a quite difficult transition as I have been always trying to prepare to be a software engineer. Furthermore, from my current knowledge of the hiring process for tech companies, I am familiar with only the selection part, not so much of the negotiation and contract agreement parts. There are lots of YouTube videos and Reddit communities that provide great insight into getting hired and advice on to-do’s and not-to-do’s. For my prior software engineering preparation, I would say the book titled ‘How to Crack the Coding Interview’ was very helpful in getting me ready for the two past internship positions which were more coding focused. The greatest help, however, came from direct talk and reaching out to the actual people in the industry and seeing what they want from new workers. I wish Notre Dame provided more resources in terms of hiring preparation. I do appreciate how they bring people from Google to campus and hold talks on resume and interviews. I wish there were more electives and workshops that would expose students to different fields of computer science and technology. Other schools have minors or tracks in UI/UX and I wish there would be something similar. Furthermore, the curriculum does catch up towards the senior year, but it comes at a slow start in the beginning and hard for freshmen to get internships compared to other schools like MIT and Stanford. For example, although Ramzi allowed me to take Fund Comp as a freshman because I already took AP Comp Sci and knew I was going to be dedicated to this field, the dean did not let me. The number of electives are pretty limited as well. I understand that the CS program at Notre Dame is not big as others, but I wish this would be something the college improved upon. (Also, I am still confused why engineers cannot do a CDT minor with track in UI/UX.) Anyways, I am satisfied with the hiring process from what I know from my prior experience. I do wish companies would directly let us know that we failed rather not telling us at all. I am still confused about the negotiation part as I am not well experienced in that. Also, the way I was raised was to just accept what I am offered, rather than asking for more. This will be something I will need to work on. Overall, I would say its efficient. It is not completely based on meritocracy and some people still get in through connections or affirmative actions but companies seem to hire the right people most of the time. Going back to the start of my freshman year, I would tell my younger self to not to depend on the school as much. Grades for discrete mathematics or logic design do not matter as much. Its more of the projects and the skills I can show to the recruiters.
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