Uw Engineering Networking Night - Advice from alumni

>> [Background music] >> Joan: As soon as you can, start talking to a lot of people about all the options that are actually available to you. I think a lot of time in academia, we get so focused on learning the skill or the concept or something like that, then we think that there's only one path available to us. And the sooner that you can start thinking about all these other different things -- they may not be things you want to pursue right out of undergrad, but it may help you think about how you want your career to develop in the long term. >> Doug H: Do everything they can to get some hands-on experience, while they're going to school. Whether it's in summer opportunities to volunteer, opportunity to be an aid, an assistant, a technician, any opportunity to actually get out in the field -- in the areas they think they want to work -- is going to serve them well. >> Doug B: You want to stand out from the crowd. And to do that you really have to become an expert in something, where you're the go-to guy, where people can say OK, if I want an answer, he's the person or she's the person who can get that answer for me. >> Mark H: Get an internship, no matter what. We've hired a couple people that have done internships for 2, 3 years with us, and we love that. We hired one gal out of college actually as an E2 position just because she had so much experience with us and we knew her capabilities and she knew how to work with us. It was great. Everybody's smart, and if you get an engineering degree you've proven you're smart, you can do the math, you can do all the calculations. We want people who can communicate and that have some experience at least and can understand work flow and how to cooperate in the workplace. >> Joan: Things potentially will go wrong as you translate from books into the practical side of things. But, just dont give up about it and, again, if you're always willing to try to admit what went wrong, try to identify the problem and fix it, you're totally on your way to success. [Laughs] >> Doug H: In those summers after I left, I had an opportunity to work at the NASA Spacecraft Center in Houston. I got to climb around in space suits, I came very close to being one of the mission specialist astronauts... >> Doug B: Well some of the most interesting stuff I did was when I was in Saudi Arabia. Even though you don't typically think of water when you think of Saudi Arabia, the fact that they don't have a whole lot means they were really interested in figuring out how they can make use of what little they did have. Just being in a different culture, different climate, was something that I wouldn't have gotten if I hadn't had that opportunity to go over there. >> Mark H: About 3 or 4 years ago, I was invited to become an owner in the company, so I had stock. We've recently become all employee owned, so I was an owner and was bought out just recently. But it was a good thing. >> Joan: When I got my first job after undergrad, I hadn't actually had any experience in that field at all. But because I had an engineering degree, that was actually one of the things they were searching resumes for automatically, and so that got my foot in the door. And I think that they realized that I would be able to accomplish the things that they needed me to accomplish just because of the training that we have as engineers. >> [Background music]