Hiring From The Other Side Of The Table

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vincentvalentine is trying to pull together some resources to help younger graduates feel better about finding jobs and more confident about the things that they do! This is a(n) small LOL RIGHT essay I've pulled together to help share my own experiences with interviewing and hiring. I hope it helps someone!

The information here is a lot about me and my experiences. I come across as a really grumpy asshole. But guess what! That's who is interviewing you. I don't come to work to make BFFs, I come to get shit done. I recruit in the same way. Lots of other people do too. Here's the list of ~secret~ things we're really looking for, and how you can make even a grumpy buttface like me want to bring you into my company. SPOILER: They're not so secret.

Some Information On Interviewing From The Other Side Of The Table, or:
What Too Much Of Sev's Job Has Become and How You Can Hopefully Make My Life Easier When I'm Hiring.

About My Field
First off, you should know who I am academically and what I do industrially; every field hires a little bit differently, although I think general tips will help you no matter where you're looking for a job. I have a Chemical Engineering degree from Case Western Reserve University*, and I am getting a Masters in Polymer Science from the University of Akron* - two very, very different fields (and I could tell you all about getting a graduate degree part-time but that would turn this essay into a novel. Conclusion: DON'T). I did very well in school; I have high GPAs for both my degrees.

I currently work as a process engineer in the polymer field, for the research department of a major international tire company*. This means I have access to and responsibility for various projects starting from the research side (benchtop chemistry, vague ideas, scientific method) and following all the way up into the plant (production, implementation, scale-up). I'm a chemical engineer by trade, but since I've been here I've done hardcore chemistry; I've done a three-year stint as a part-time analytical department employee; I'm transitioning into a more intense focus on materials science. I've spent days doing work a monkey could do, and I've had moments where I feel like no one else in the world could have gotten the same results I did. My job is interesting, it's challenging, it's demanding: it is different every single day, and I am constantly being asked to pull miracles out of my ass, except on days where everything breaks and I go home early. I absolutely adore my job, even on days that I absolutely loathe it. I belong in this field.

I'm employed specifically by Central Research, and I hire mostly for Research. I work very closely with another department, which hires engineering BS and MS candidates, and works much more closely with the plant on scale-up and product development; I've collected resumes for them as well.

*It should be obvious, but for the record, I am not (currently) speaking as any kind of official representative from any of these places. This is my own opinion from my own experience.

About My Experience
So what exactly qualifies me to talk about interviewing and hiring? Obviously every workplace is different, and everyone's experience is different too. But I have 8 years of experience at screening resumes for a couple different managers: at my first job, I screened incoming co-op resumes for my boss. At my current job, I've been part of the on-site interviewing process for 7 years, interviewing PhDs and MS candidates; I've been working career fairs for ~5 years, talking to candidates and collecting/screening resumes (full-time from BS to PhD as well as interns and co-ops); I've been sent on recruiting trips, where I screen resumes, visit colleges, and interview candidates one-on-one, for about 3 years now. Hopefully at some point this year I'll be embarking on a couple more trips to hire another chemical engineer and a materials scientist; I'll probably attend two more career fairs before the year ends as well, to collect resumes and find a co-op.

I'm not a manager; I'm not HR. I don't actually make the final decisions as to who gets hired (although everyone in Research does have a small amount of say in the process). I'm not the person who will stamp your resume and sign your papers. I don't hire in that sense. What I am, though: I am the person who decides which resumes are on the top of the pile on management's desk; I'm the one who marks special names with a star so that my boss knows to spend some time on them. I'm your first impression of the company, and I'm the one who takes our first impression of you and passes it up the food chain. I'm an early step in the screening process. I don't have the authority to hire you myself just on my own, but I do have the authority to decide whether or not you are worth a closer look.

When I first started interviewing, I worked with experienced managers to get a better understanding of what things we were looking for. I always meet with my boss before I go out on a recruiting trip or a career fair so that I know exactly what he wants me to find. So I always have to remember that I'm not just working on my own, either; my personal impressions and professional opinions are part of it, sure, but they're one part of a bigger picture. I'm part of an organization. The people I pick need to mesh with that.

It's a big responsibility, and the people that I do pass on with highlights and stars and notes reflect on me. I can't just star any resume that meets basic qualifications, I can't just highlight somebody I think 'deserves a chance', and I can't just mark people who were fun to talk to. I'm acting as a representative of a very demanding and selective department, and I need to keep in mind that I am choosing my own future co-workers. My boss' central piece of advice for me is actually: "You may someday be in charge of this person; what kind of people do you want working under you in your department?"

Our company takes hiring very seriously. When interviewing for a position, we bring in 3-5 candidates for an all-day on-site interview. Each candidate gets a full day with us. They start by giving us a presentation on their thesis work (or previous project work). They then interview with each manager, as well as each department (chemists, analytical, engineers, materials), and are rated by each manager individually and by each group as consensus. They then have to attend and excel at a Problem Solving Session, where they are given a technical question about their area of expertise and are expected to walk through its solution in a group setting. (For engineers, it might be a question about a reactor, or about a separation.) Each candidate is rated on each part, and we make an offer(s) to the highest-rated candidate(s). Many times if our top choices turn us down or don't work out we will start searching again rather than hire a candidate who has been deemed partially unacceptable.

These 3-5 candidates are chosen from a pool that reflects on days and days of work: resumes screened from online submissions to ads or our website, resumes starred from a career fair collection day, candidates selected from campus interviews. The amount of time we invest in this process is massive: it's its own job in addition to all my other responsibilities. I really, really do not have time to fuck around on it. We are intense and in-depth in our hiring because we want to hire the perfect person for our organization, hands-down. We want to do it right the first time. No one wants to compromise. So that's what you're getting into.

What I'm About To Tell You
Keep in mind that my experiences come from a technical field - industrial research and development; engineering, science, and the like - and while I think the general advice is good for everyone, it may also be helpful to learn more about your specific field in order to help yourself stand out. A lot of hiring is knowing what you want to do. I mean it. Obviously you can't create the magical perfect job for yourself - who can? - but so much about doing well at career fairs and interviews is about knowing what you want to do and what the people who are doing it expect of you.

(For example: I was helping a friend who has a lot of programming and graphics experience design her resume. We had gotten a lot of the wordings and phrasings to be kick-ass awesome, but she was very concerned about the appearance of the resume: she wanted color, and graphics, and trendy arrangements of text boxes. In my field, this sort of thing can reflect negatively upon you: you're too flashy, you're looking for attention, you're trying to distract your interviewer from something on your resume; you're not serious about it. But in her field, she explained, the appearance of your resume was partially a resume in itself, because it was a way to express your design creds. Something I would have noted as frivolous and unprofessional was actually a huge positive in her field. So: know your target audience!)

So the information that I have is all about how to be hired as a bright young engineer or scientist looking to go into a technical field (here I mean traditionally, industrially technical - a typical engineering or scientific job; I don't mean to imply that other fields are less 'technical', just that this is a job in which your degree of study is directly and physically applicable) and looking to develop a career, not just a job (someone looking to stay in the field for a long time, ideally permanently, with the desire to move up our ladders).

What I Get Told To Look For
Depending on where you are in your career, it may be too late for you to control some of these things. But you should be aware of what a recruiter wants to know about you right off the bat.

• GPA. Yeah, sorry, everyone, but we definitely look at GPA. I understand and fully admit that a student's GPA is not always necessarily a representation of how smart they are or how good of an employee they would be. However, please let me defend GPA for a second. My field is very technical. I work in Research, in which a fundamental understanding of your field is absolutely essential to being able to perform your job; I work hand-in-hand with scale-up and production, where one small mistake can easily cost millions of dollars and could also potentially lead to safety incidents, accidents, or even explosions. (I am not joking; I am not exaggerating.) I don't mean to imply that students with lower GPAs cannot do this work - that because you didn't understand Calculus, or you had trouble with Separations, or O-Chem, or Electromagnetics, you can never work safely as an engineer: that's absolutely false. I am simply pointing out one of the reasons we consider GPA: my personal field is one of theoretical intelligence precision.
  
  What I am trying to say is this: my field does not have a very large tolerance for …developing or teaching fresh graduates. The company is very highly invested in developing their employees - shit, they have paid for 5+ years of graduate school for me - but we do not have the time or the room or the inclination to fill in holes for new hires. In this field, we expect new hires to come in and hit the ground running, to be able to offer valuable thoughts and work and insight from the very beginning - to be able to understand and comprehend the basics even as we train you in the details. In Research, we just don't have room to hire someone who needs a lot of coaching and development on their fundamentals. There is a little more leeway on the production side, since more of their work is practical/applied and less is theoretical, but in general the tendency still applies. Industrial engineering - mechanical, chemical, electrical, all of them - is just really, really complicated.
  
  Unfortunately, we are not a great field for you if you struggled through some of your classes. GPA can be a good indicator of this. I'll talk a little bit more about GPA throughout this piece; I just want everyone to be aware, going into this, that GPA is one of our big +/- flags.
  
  As a very general rule, I'll look at anything that's a 3.0/4 or above; I know that my boss and most managers prefer a GPA of 3.5/4 or above. This applies to both undergrad and graduate degrees.
  
  And, one final note: GPA is very important for new graduates; it counts less the longer you've been out of school. It definitely still counts - I would say that there's a point at about 7-10 years after graduation where GPA becomes less important than the other work experience you have on the resume, if the work experience is relevant/related. So for anyone who has maybe been out of school for a while and is out of work, or is contemplating a career change - I don't want to leave you out; you're in a tough spot! - the rules become a little different. If I'm looking to hire an engineer with 10-20 years of experience building new pilot plant operations from the ground up (which I've been a part of), their GPA becomes less relevant overall. It depends entirely on the position and the experience in question.
• Experience. This is also known as the 'vicious circle' of hiring: we look for experience on a resume, but it's hard to get experience when you have no degree and no experience; so how do you get experience when you don't have experience, so that you can get a job? (How many more times can I use the word experience? stay tuned)
  
  First of all, if you have an engineering or scientific graduate degree, the work you've done for your thesis often counts as experience. No, it definitely isn't like working a job (and oh, god, how I wish there were more PhD candidates who had also worked a bit in industry - when I see one I grab at them like a vulture), but your 1-2 years (MS) or 4-5 years (PhD) of thesis research should show us that you are systematic, that you know how to innovate and problem-solve, that you know how to collaborate and communicate, and that you're well-versed in your fundamentals.
  
  If you are an undergrad - okay, full stop: if you are still an undergrad, and you have the opportunity to do an internship or a co-op, please do. Seeing co-op experience is a huge, huge positive for your resume. Internships are almost as good - internships often are only a summer job, which means you don't have a long time to do significant work, whereas a co-op is often multiple semesters'-worth of time; we prefer co-ops but also like internships. I have another essay entirely that I could write about interning and co-oping and how it should be fucking required in today's industrial job markets, but I will not. Suffice to say, this is great experience to have and you should highlight it on your resume.
  
  If it's too late for that, here are some things to think about. What I am looking for - this is important - is experience relevant to your field. For example: it's much more important to me if you did some undergrad research for a professor, or if you were a TA for one of your classes, or if you did an extra project in your lab class or for AIChE, than it is to see that you worked at Taco Bell part-time for a summer. I'm not saying experience holding a paying job isn't good - more on that in a bit - but there are lots of things that can count as 'experience' on a resume if you've been an active undergraduate.
• A pulse. This sounds silly, but one of the pieces of advice I get the most often is "look for a qualified engineer with a pulse." Technical qualifications aren't enough to make you a great employee and an ideal co-worker. Even a student with a perfect GPA can fall short if they don't know how to communicate and collaborate; if they can't problem-solve or trouble-shoot on the fly; if they can't work with a team and build trust; if they can't innovate and create solutions; if they can't plan and organize and prioritize. These all sound like useless business buzzwords, right? Well, I just pulled them all off of my personal performance evaluation form for this year.
  
  After all of my rambling about how important GPA is in this field, maybe this is surprising. But: it does matter. It all matters. Just as a wonderful personal drive isn't always enough to make up for a low GPA, a great GPA isn't always enough if you don't have the right attitude and work ethic: you have to be a fit for the workplace as well as the work. Think of it this way: for me, and my boss, and my coworkers, we are all in this for our career: the long haul. We don't want to bring in someone who's a bad fit with the organization, who doesn't make us smile in the mornings, who doesn't help us out when shit is tough; we definitely don't want to bring in a 'genius' who doesn't know how to organize her projects or express his ideas (this has definitely happened!).

We look for a lot of other things when we're hiring, but these are the very first things I look for, on your resume and in you as a person. This is the foundation on which you build up my awesome - or not-so-close - impression of you and your skills.

Resume Screening
I could seriously write an entire book on resumes. I'm going to try not to. Instead I want to make a couple central points about what I look for when I'm screening resumes, to make you aware of ways to construct your own. (If anyone wants to read my novel about creating a resume, let me know, because I have one.)

Start out with this: on your resume, space is representative of the time I'm going to spend on it. You should give the most space to the things that are the most important, most relevant. Resume space is real estate; use it wisely.

• Your resume should be neatly organized, easy to read, and clear. It should not have typos. I should be able to hit all of the main points in a glance and a matter of seconds.
• If English is not your first language and you are applying for English-speaking jobs with an English resume, I highly recommend having it proofread by a native-speaker if possible. (We hire many people whose English is not perfect; it's just easier to understand a well-written and proofread resume, and the more questions I have to ask about your piece of paper, the less time we have to talk about you.)
• For new graduates, most of us prefer a one page resume. Acceptable reasons to have a two-page resume:
  • You have separate Masters and PhD projects and thus have to describe two different fields.
  • You have a lot of papers, publications, patents, and/or presentations that you've done as part of a graduate degree while working on your thesis.
  • You have a significant amount of experience in your field - multiple jobs, or the same job held for a while with different responsibilities.
  Not acceptable reasons to have a two-page resume:
  • You've tl;dr'ed every responsibility you've ever held to make yourself look more awesome
  • You can't concisely describe what you have done / do
  • You spend a lot of time talking about yourself and explaining how *your* work is *special* and *more challenging*
  A two-page resume isn't, like, going to KILL you or your chances, but please make sure that second page is warranted. We can read inflated egos or desperation between the lines.
• Please put your GPA on there. If it isn't there, I'm going to ask you what it is. If you aren't there to ask, I'm probably going to set your resume aside.


• If for whatever reason you're still in school - maybe you're looking for a co-op/internship - please put either your expected year of graduation or your current year in your degree. We won't take sophomores as co-ops because they haven't yet had the relevant coursework they need, for example, and it's disappointing to everyone when I've been talking to you for 5 minutes and then find out you're not eligible.
• List additional work that you might have done during the obtaining of your degree. For example: I have minors in English and Photography. You can bet your ass that they are on my resume. They may not seem relevant to engineering, but they broadened my education - I have a pulse, see - and taught me how to balance a diverse workload.
• "Relevant Coursework" listed with education - I am torn on this. Personally I feel that your relevant coursework becomes irrelevant the second you step into the field: all Chem-E degree programs have Thermodynamics and Reactions and Separations; all Polymer Science programs have PolyThermo and Characterization and that awful metal coordination class that I hated. However, I can see the validity in mentioning courses if:
  • You maybe don't yet have any hands-on/relevant experience and want to express what you've studied
  • You took a sequence or concentration in your degree that you want to mention or point out
  • Much of your course consisted of electives (my personal graduate program is like this)
  • You want to highlight special work done in one or two of the courses - a particularly challenging lab course, or a senior design project
• Awards and Organizations: okay.
  • Awards are great to mention because they make you look awesome! They stop being worth mentioning when they start to crowd out the other information on your resume. It's great if you got Employee Of The Month or a department award, but if you spend four lines on those and only one on your undergrad research project, I'm going to be sad. If you do list an award, let me know what it's for - I have no idea what the Seventhe P. Dragomire Award For Excellence is at your school.
  • Organizations are something to be wary about. I personally have a major distaste for any organization where you simply buy a membership - for example, there's no professional difference between "invited to join Golden Key" and "member of Golden Key" (the only difference is about $100; your academic credentials are the same no matter which way you go!). If you're a member of an organization, make sure you mention why I should care: "Vice-President of campus ACS chapter", "won third place in local Chem-E Car Competition for AIChE", etc. Remember that these things are competing for my attention. Make them count.
• Spend the most space on the items that are the most important. Like I said above: I'm much more interested in your relevant experience, although I want to see all of your experience. For example, let's say you worked at Taco Bell every summer through school, and then your senior year you joined your professor's research group to work on a project. If you are applying for a job from me, I will be much more interested in your experiences with research: what you looked at, how, what field, what your responsibilities were. This is directly relevant to the field you're going into. Give it appropriate room.
• That isn't to say that Taco Bell isn't important to have on there - it's also valuable to show that you've held a paying job before, no matter how outside your field it is, because it shows you understand the basics of Job Holding 101 (be on time. follow dress code. don't steal. don't be an asshat.) and that's a good thing for a new hire. Here's what you need to do: make irrelevant/random experience relevant to me. Don't spend a lot of space talking about how you learned to make the perfect taco and how awesome your ground beef is. Here's how you spin it: "Followed quality guidelines; adhered to strict order delivery timeframes; developed leadership and interpersonal skills." Or something similar. Tell me how what you learned at Taco Bell is going to make you a better employee for me. It's definitely possible, with every single job.


• Relevant work doesn't have to be directly applicable work. Maybe I'm hiring someone to run a polymerization reactor - that doesn't mean I'm only going to be looking at candidates who have previously run a polymerization reactor. What I'm looking for is someone with a good grasp on engineering and polymerization fundamentals and some experience at learning new equipment, safely operating in an industrial environment, and working in a lab with a team. Don't feel limited by your experience.
• A related point: If your experience is in a different field than mine, I may not know why "improved H+ transport coefficient in silsesquioxane oligomeric suspension membrane" is a great thing. Try as best you can to balance between technical language and terms someone unfamiliar with your field can understand. Don't feel like you have to go super general, though - you're in a technical field! Be proud, but be accessible.
• A skill set can also be a good thing to include on a resume. Computer programs you're familiar with, any second languages you speak or have studied, things that may not come up in other categories but could highlight you as a stand-out employee.
• Personality things like "interests" are reeeaaaalllllly iffy - that will depend entirely on the recruiter you speak to. A few will find it entertaining; most will find it harmless; some will find it unprofessional. (I legitimately once interviewed someone who had "I like anime and Japan" on their resume. I was torn halfway between "cool story bro" and "this company is Japanese-owned; I'm not hiring a fangirl", so there you go - even things you think are fun and cute can come across awkwardly.) If you really feel like having your personal touch on the resume is highly important to you, I won't tell you to leave it off. All I'll say is I'm pretty sure no one ever actually got a job because "knitting" or "baseball" was on their resume. Also: it's space you could use for more valuable stuff.

I use the resume as a pre-impression of you. Your GPA, experience level, education, and the overall imprint basically tell me whether or not I am going to be expending my own vital energy on you as a candidate or if I'm going to give you the fake smile and the 'thank you'.

Job Fairs, Campus Interviewing, and Throwing Your Resume Into The Ether
So, a lot of people throw around the word "networking" - but I'm not really sure it means what people think it means. I feel like a lot of undergraduates, a lot of new graduates, a lot of job candidates: I feel like there's this impression that there's some kind of secret knowing-people club, and once you get in - maybe by "knowing" the right number of people? - you're golden. Personally, I think this is hugely false. If you think that just by joining organizations and/or collecting business cards you're going to land yourself a job, you are in for a very big surprise.

I have very rarely seen anyone get hired in this entire company based solely on somebody that they knew. And the one time that it happened, it was a huge mistake, and the person ended up getting fired. So please be wary of what you expect from "networking" - I think it's different than most people think, and it's definitely a lot more complicated and complex.

Networking just isn't done like that anymore. Some of it is a fear of liability: if I recommend you for a position and you hire in and proceed to suck at it, how responsible am I? How liable am I? If I recommend you for a position and you get it and then later show me favoritism, did we just cross lines of business ethics? It sounds silly, but these are real legitimate concerns. Some of it is just the increased connectivity of the world: it's really easy to send your resume out to 100 people, now. Is that a real contact? Is that a 'network'? Some of it is just the increased intensity of the job market, the incredible level of competition that's out there now; many companies and managers are more likely to hire based on skills, qualifications, and attitude rather than "you know so-and-so" or "you paid a fee to join this organization".

The kind of networking that I, personally, think matters is less "networking" and more… availability, interest, attention. It's about getting involved in your field. If I'm doing undergraduate research in a field that's interesting to me, maybe I'll be the one my professor thinks of when a company approaches him asking for good co-op candidates - but the things that will get me that co-op are that I'm a good student doing extra work due to self-motivation, not simply that I "know the professor". The professor "knows" many students. What specific thing made him think of me? The fact that I am going above and beyond.

Networking in this current age is more about putting yourself in a good position - giving yourself the chance to succeed. Afterwards, though, you have to earn that success. It definitely does not come without trying. I have to earn that co-op offer, and then I actually have to earn the co-op through my phone interview - and then if I want it to count for anything, I have to kick butt at that co-op to earn experience, credentials and professional references.

Connections alone do not lead to jobs. Knowing people alone does not lead to getting hired. Effective expression of qualifications, genuine interest in the position, and taking advantage of opportunities - these things can all be successful for you, and it's much more efficient and better for you if you put your efforts there.

Career fairs are a great opportunity to get in touch with companies that are hiring. Most colleges and universities also open career fairs to alumni as well, so if you've already graduated, don't write them off - get in touch with your school's career office or Alumni Association and check it out. They're a little bit of work - I'll talk about that a little more below - but they can be well worth it. I actually ended up in this job because of a conversation I had with my current boss at a career fair; it's part of the reason they send me to so many.

Other things to look for are companies visiting your school to do on-site interviews. When I travel to do interviews, it's usually a two-day set-up: we give a presentation about the company and about our work the night before, and have a sort of group discussion; then the next day we schedule one-on-one interviews with interested candidates. This is usually done well in advance, so we've already had a chance to look over resumes and research and thesis work, which makes for a much more interesting interview. Again, get in touch with your career office, and keep track of companies who are visiting your campus.

How do we choose schools to visit? We look for strong programs in the departments we are interested in: chemistry, chemical engineering, materials or polymer science. Our employees are usually aware of which colleges have the strongest and most effective programs in these disciplines, and which ones are putting out interesting publications and relevant work; when we schedule our recruiting trips, we usually focus on the top few schools in each discipline. If you're curious, do a google search and check out the different kinds of ranking systems. For career fairs, we tend to stay local: we hit the technical universities in our area.

If you're farther away from school, there are other places to look. I know my company also accepts resumes that are submitted online, so if you are aware of local businesses who do work in your field, check their websites. We submit our open positions to Chemical and Engineering News (C&E), also, if we are having trouble filling a spot.

In whatever way, the point is, to find opportunities you have to make opportunities - you have to be active with your degree and in your field. Active and proactive.

Conversational Interviewing and First Impressions
Career events at your university are amazing ways to get out and hook up with business who are collecting resumes - but it isn't in the "networking" sense: your chance here is to make an impression on me, make a connection, let me know what makes you a unique candidate and why you and this opening that I have are an awesome fit; it is not to collect my business card and then email me exactly three days afterwards 'inquiring' about the 'open position' and hoping that I can 'recommend you.' I don't do the hiring, and if I didn't put a star on your resume immediately after talking to you, I don't remember who you are and the fact that your email is in my Inbox is actually probably pissing me off, because it's a Tuesday morning and some asshole made the coffee at half strength again and I'm about to go shoot all of the back shift. I don't want some kid sucking up to me when I am trying to stop homicidal urges. Can you tell I have a grudge against the term 'networking'? God, I've networked enough; go away already. This is a really bitter opening to this section. Let me try again.

You have absolutely only one job to do as a candidate, whether it's an interview or a career fair or whatever. That job is: to make yourself stand out to me in a positive manner.

It's that easy. But I'll break it down for you.

Make Yourself Stand Out To Me
One of the most frustrating things a candidate can do when talking to me is …nothing. So many candidates simply hand me their resume and then just stand there, as if a nicely-prepared resume speaks for itself. They do this at career fairs, they do this at one-on-one interviews, and wow, is it frustrating. I am not sure how much more clear I can make this: just having a resume - just having a degree - is not enough to get you a job. There are lots of candidates out there with GPAs close to yours (maybe higher!), classes similar to yours (maybe harder!), summer jobs very much like yours (maybe more relevant!): why the hell should I look at you? Know what you are up against. You have to stand out. Give me a reason to remember you; give me a reason to put a star at the top of your resume.

>> Stand Out
What about your experience makes you unique? What about your life has made you more qualified for this position than others? What have you been through that gives you special, important, valuable skills that others may not have? These are things that you need to express to me.

Co-ops, internships, and undergrad research projects are really great experience! But remember, a lot of students these days have experience. Tell me what about yours sets you apart. Did you do an extra project? Were you extra enthusiastic about it? Were you maybe extra not enthusiastic about it and it helped guide you onto a different path? Tell me about some of your responsibilities, some ways you feel like you specifically had an effect on the things that you did.

If you don't have specific experience on your resume, you'll need to think of something that makes you stand apart - in a way that's significant to me. Stuff like "I spent a semester in England" is sweet - but it means nothing to me as an employer. Tell me what you did in England, what the study abroad taught you, how it will help you be a more awesome and kick-ass employee for my company. Highlight yourself. Tell me how it makes you a better candidate than everyone else.

If you don't have anything that's unusual on your resume, then you're still going to have to make yourself stand out. Try to express your attitude, your drive, your intelligence, your curiosity - anything you think is a unique positive quality about yourself.

The key is to know what you're up against. And what you're up against are thousands of other very qualified candidates who are hungry as hell for this position. What you're also up against is my experienced, cynical, judgmental, intelligent ass, which really doesn't want to hire someone who isn't fucking sparkly amazing. So give me something to work with.

>> Explanations, Not Excuses
I talked about GPA earlier in this piece of work, in light of fundamental understandings and a general level of academic intellectualism needed for some work. Now I want to address another part of this: what happens when you just made some mistakes? Some bad life choices? Or maybe not choices at all - maybe a family member got sick; maybe you got sick; maybe something else interfered. Maybe you failed a class for whatever reason. These things happen.

If you choose to approach these things with me, do it realistically. You don't need to tell me anything that's private, or too personal. But if you feel like you need to explain anything - a year off of school; a lower-than-usual GPA - set it in an appropriate and positive framework. If you did badly one semester but then got a 4.0 your senior year, make sure to mention that. If you struggled with something but have other positive experience to offer, mention that. The point is to tell me what you made of it. If unexpected life situations caused you trouble, did it make you better able to manage stress and demanding schedules? Did you get different experience during a time off that other candidates won't have?

The tough thing is: remember what you're up against. Unfortunately, there are a lot of lucky people in the world who get through their degrees exactly as planned, and come out on the other end with good GPAs and valuable experience. If my company is going to take a chance on you, you need to convince me why you are still a worthy candidate to look at in this field. It sounds harsh - and I definitely don't mean it personally. The problem is, I do mean it professionally. These things work against you. And if it isn't me, it'll be somebody else with a harder heart. If you come to our company with a sob story, there will be people who care and want to give you another chance - but there will be an equal number of people who want to move on to a candidate who is ready to go now.
You need to turn that mistake into a learning experience, and you still need to show how you are a better candidate for this job than everyone else. Your credentials still matter.

>> Converse With Me: Don't Just Talk, Don't Just Listen
One of the greatest ways you can make an impression on me is by engaging with me. Show some interest in the position - ask questions. What will the work be like? Can you describe an average day, or an average week? Where could I be in five years? What kind of project work do you normally get?

Here is the thing about interviewing: It goes both ways. We are interviewing you, to see if you are a good fit for our company - but at the same time, you need to be interviewing us. Is this the kind of work you're interested in? Are we the sort of company you want to work for long-term? Is this the field you want to enter? Where are you looking to be in five years?

Maybe you haven't thought about these things. Maybe all you want is *A JOB* - and right now there are plenty of people who just want a job. I understand. But one thing that definitely stands out to your recruiter is someone who has a legitimate interest in the position, an actual curiosity about the work, the company, the interviewer - someone who engages, who asks questions, who listens and then builds questions off of that. It means you're invested in yourself, and you're looking for a situation that's a good fit.

It's the kind of thing you can't really fake, so definitely put some thought into it. Don't be afraid to say "I don't know" if you actually don't know what you want, but be sure to express some interest in the actual fucking job. We want someone who wants this job, not just any idiot with a resume.

>> Do All Of This Without Being A Jerk
I realize I've just spent 1000 paragraphs telling you to talk yourself up. Now, here's the kicker: do it without being an arrogant butthead. There is a way to sell yourself without being smarmy or conceited, and it is: actually be excited about your work, your experience, your field, yourself. If you are not excited about this degree you just got and the things you did and the work you can do with it, go to another field! There are plenty.

Make me excited about talking to you. Make me excited about giving you to my boss as a candidate and saying, "Call this one!" No one is excited about working with an asshole! Just be awesome instead.

In A Positive Manner
Another really frustrating thing a candidate can do is come up to me and say, "I see you work for [company]. You guys make tires. That's really interesting. Can you tell me a little more about that?" It doesn't help that they're doing it with a big smug fucking smile on their face, all 'hey, I looked your company up on my phone, look how ~good~ I am', but: I actually don't make tires. I work with polymerization, compounding materials, reactor design, and fundamentals. I am about as far up-stream from the tire as it is possible to be. And you could actually know that by taking 5 seconds to read the things that we have posted at our booth. Again, this is a really bitter beginning, but oh, I have so many horror stories. God.

Like I said above, you have to do all these things without being a jerk. You need to make an impression on me, and it needs to be a positive one.

Remember that I am having an exhausting day. Remember that I have probably talked to at least a dozen people (if one-on-one interviews) and potentially a hundred (at a particularly successful career fair or other event). Remember that I am also trying to sell my company, and this position, to you - but also remember that I want the absolute best feet in these shoes. Remember that it is my professional reputation that's involved when I bring in candidates. Also remember that I'm exhausted. Really.

Also remember that I am looking for an awesome future co-worker. So the positive impression you are making on me needs to be something more than "we had a great chat about a professor" or "we talked about Pittsburgh" or something like that. Connections like that are good, but superficial. I already have enough friends. Your positive impression needs to be with regards to your employability. If I walk away thinking, "That might be a good person to have on my team," you've done your job. If I walk away confused, irritated, or underwhelmed, you haven't.

So here are some really general tips on things that come across positive or negative. Have fun. I'm exhausted.

• The basics:
  • Dress code. Like it or not, there is still one that exists in the minds of hiring managers everywhere. I may not personally care that you showed up in ripped jeans, but professionally, I need to, because I've definitely heard dozens of comments about choice of clothing both at work and at interviews. It reflects poorly on you in many people's eyes. If 'expressing your personality' is that important to you, I won't tell you not to, but be aware that you are taking a risk. Look nice. Look appropriate. Look age-appropriate as well as office-appropriate. Engineering doesn't get to be classy or glamorous all that often - enjoy it while you still can, before you're covered in chemicals that smell like bread and snails (my day yesterday!).
  • Personal space. Leave me some. Enough said.
  • Be comfortable and confident. Comfortable: stop fidgeting with your clothes or your hair or your folder and focus on the conversation. Confident: You don't have to come up with 'the right answer' for every question. I'm looking to get to know more about you. If you aren't a fit for this job, do you really want the job anyway? Hint: the 'right answer' is no.
  • Be polite, be respectful, and for crying out loud, please do not hit on your interviewer.
• Like I said above, the "researching the company beforehand" is one of those things career centers recommend all the time, and I'm not sure I agree. Personally I kind of think it's one of those awkward advice things like "networking" whose meaning is changing over time. If you look my company up on the internet and find out that our work really interests you, then okay, you can come in and say, hey - this sounds cool, tell me more. But you also run the risk of coming in with the wrong impression (I hear you guys make tires), because you googled something that leads to a completely different arm of the company than the one that actually would be hiring you. Also, talking points: If you come up to me and say, hey, I see you are hiring [engineers, chemists, hairdressers], can you tell me more about what you do and what the job would be? That's a talking point! We can have a conversation about it! You can gauge the job, ask questions, express interest: all good things. So just be careful trying to impress. You aren't trying to impress. You're trying to make a connection. It's actually okay to ask.
• Honestly, in general: if you come in seeming like a know-it-all about anything, whether it be what my company does or what you think the job will be or how awesome of a fit you are or your classes or our products or whatever: if you come in thinking you know all there is to know, I am not going to be very impressed. Remember, my darling, I have been in this industry for over 7 years now. If you're a new graduate, that means I was working here before you started driving a car. If you come in really hard trying to impress me with knowledge and smarts, it is almost always going to backfire. It gives a really, really bad impression. Let your resume and your conversation speak to your intelligence; focus on the topic, on candidate and position getting to know one another.
• For the love of fuck, people, please be aware of what disciplines I am hiring for and collecting for. If our sign says Chemist, Chemical Engineer, and Materials Scientist, please don't come up to me with a Biomedical Engineering degree and ask for a job. There is nothing I can do for you. And don't spend time trying to convince me that you are in fact what I'm looking for. If you have a PhD in something else but all of your research was in polymer science, then yes, point that out. If you are a marketing major and convinced that you are going to 'solve my company's problems', or if you're a mechanical engineer but you 'took some chem-e classes', please just go away. Remember that your "couple chem-e classes" are up against someone else's entire chem-e degree. Our company actually knows what we want! We have known for dozens of years! You aren't going to convince us.

A lot of this is a balancing act. Be professional but engaging. Be intelligent but not arrogant. Impress, but don't try too hard. It can be difficult to know what kind of note you're hitting, I understand. If you have questions, please let me know and I'll try to elaborate more - but hopefully this shows you what's going on in my head when you're talking to me.

I Can't Get Hired, or I'm Afraid I Won't Get Hired
So I was going to write a big section on this, but I'm out of words at this point, and out of steam. But I do want to leave some general advice on how you can bring yourself to my attention positively; what sorts of things will give you a better chance at getting a job in my field?

If you are still in school:

• Get your GPA up. And I don't mean buff it with an A+ in Underwater Basket Weaving, because we'll look at your transcript eventually. If you need help in a certain area, don't be stubborn: talk to your professor. Talk to other professors. Talk to other students. Put in extra work. Sometimes this isn't enough, I understand, but if there are a lot of classes in which you end up performing poorly, it will only get harder and harder to find an industry job like mine. Do what you can, and take your classwork seriously.
• Get experience. Imagine that I am writing that in glitter text. Look for opportunities to co-op, to be an intern, to get involved in undergraduate research groups or engineering/science organizations that actually do things. Relevant experience is better than a dayjob; I understand that the choice between a paying stint at Taco Bell and an unpaid engineering internship can be a difficult one, but from this side of the table, the unpaid internship will be more valuable to you down the road. Coming out of school with more in loans isn't a bad thing if you come out armed with experience that will help to set you apart and make you a more valuable employee.
• Get involved. Getting experience is one of the things that can open doors for you; it also helps to give you a "pulse", because you'll be more used to what it's like working in an actual workplace and dealing with actual annoying coworkers (there's always one!). If you can't get experience, getting involved in projects in your department can help: volunteer to help fix that shitty heat exchanger in Chem-E Lab, or tutor a classmate, or attend a conference with a professor. If you don't want to - if you don't like your degree - why are you getting it?
• Figure out what you want to do. This is rough, another circular argument: how do you know what you want to do if you haven't done anything yet? This is why experience matters. It helps you figure out what you want and what you don't want. If you are lucky enough to have an idea of where your passion lies - maybe the giant scale and day-to-day importance of plant work thrills you; maybe you love the vague open goals of research; maybe you actually really want to move into analytical chemistry - you're going to be that much better at finding a job because you know where you want to go and you can express that passion. Recruiters hear that passion. We're looking for that passion, that interest.

If you're out of school and you're having trouble landing a job, look at your resume, and then look at this list, and try to figure out where the holes are. Is your GPA low? You may need to spend a couple years at a job, gaining experience to show that you're an intelligent and competent employee on paper, maybe you're just a bad test taker or maybe you just really hated that metal coordination class too. Lack of experience? Start looking for opportunities, and consider unpaid ones. It can be really hard to get internships once you've graduated, though, because most companies are looking for undergrads that they can a) give experience to, b) possibly hire in the future, and c) pay less. Look all around, and start making contacts - but don't just network; get involved. If you've got the top two, then spend some time thinking about your interviewing strategy, your personality, your strengths and your weaknesses. Think about how you come across. Ask a professional or a friend or a friendly professional for a mock interview, and ask them to be serious with constructive criticism. Start paying attention to where you want to go and how you want to get there, and what makes you stand out.

All of this advice can be boiled down to the following: We want to hire someone who wants to be hired by us for this specific job. We are not looking for people who want "a job", "any job". We're a puzzle piece looking for a piece that fits well, that improves us, not just any piece that's close enough. Your job is to use the interview time to determine whether or not you are a good fit, and if you are, to show me why you're the best puzzle piece out there. Because there are a lot of other puzzle pieces very similar to you, and if I don't see that tiny two-pixel difference between you and the last person I spoke to, I may throw you both into the "meh" pile.

I win at analogies forever.

Enjoy. And good luck. And if you have questions, or you want to hear the horror stories, just ask.

...Also I pick on Taco Bell a lot in this and I want to make it perfectly clear that it's just an example and I love me some shameful 3:30am TBell just like every other engineer in the world.

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