Some Perspective on Choosing a Career by Brendan Leach 10

Some Perspective on Choosing a Career by Brendan Leach ’10

Brendan graduated with an Honors Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He now works for Proctor and Gamble in the Technical Design & Prototyping group, and he has already visited Clarkson as a recruiter

I wanted to take the time to give some perspective on choosing a career. I was recently up at this past falls Career Fair and was fortunate to meet some of you, but as I continued the recruiting process I saw quite a few people in a similar position that I was in not all that long ago. One thing that stood out specifically to me was there was one candidate that we were interesting in recruiting so I reached out to the potential candidate to see if he/she had applied and to answer any questions they may have. The response I got was that the candidate had received a really good offer from company XYZ and was no longer interested in pursuing P&G. While this is great that the person had a job offer that they are excited about, looking back at my experience I would very strongly urge you not to jump at your first offer.

Procter and Gamble was the first offer that I received and I received it before even starting my senior year. It was very tempting to just accept it and focus on Senior Year without frantically searching for a job on top of class work and my Honors Thesis. However, I still went to the career fair and ended up going on 4 more interviews. Looking back this was one of the best decisions I made even though I ended up at P&G anyways.

First and most importantly, we are not exposed to what is available in industry and thus we cannot know what we want to do or what we like if we do not even know what exists. Going to the career fair and talking to various recruiters allows you to see what various opportunities there are and how work life balance in each industry varies.

Secondly it is a great networking tool, it starts to help you build contacts within various industries that may either help you with which ever job you do take or if for some reason something does not work out with the job you take, you already have an open door somewhere else. Every offer I rejected told me to keep in touch and if I am thinking of change think of them. In today’s world who you know is almost as important as what you know.

Third it gives you something to compare your “great offer” against. You could compare it to other people, but everyone is different. I know plenty of people who got different offers for the same position within the same company. So you do not really know what is best for you until you personally see what is out there and what companies are will to give you. Also it gives you a bargaining chip if you’re on the fence between two companies. I had 3 offers raise my starting salary and signing bonus to try to compete with some of my other offers.

Lastly, some interviews give you an opportunity to travel to the HQ for an interview. This is an awesome opportunity because you get to see the a facilities and the area which really gives you a good sense of the culture at a company and how high tech they may be and generally is company paid. So at the very least you get a short little vacation to a city you might not have considered before but upon visiting it might change your mind.

One last comment: I really cannot stress enough how important it is to use the career fair to your advantage. It is unlikely that you will have another opportunity with such a variety of industries and companies in one location to be able to go up and openly talk to recruiters about the company and potential opportunities face to face. Also you will be interviewing for the rest of your life, so the more interviews you get under your belt now the better off you will be in the long run. So again don’t just settle on your first offer and cruise through senior year. Do your due diligence to yourself and your career now and it will pay off in the long run.