The Job Search Begins: Highlights from Employer Info Sessions

Yesterday, co-op students in Stream 4 officially start applying for jobs through the university's internal job postings, JobMine. After exerting all efforts to perfect our resumes during the past weeks, it is finally time to put our skills to the test and apply to internships for the next term. Throughout September and October, companies big and small host employer information sessions around campus where they speak about their company and what projects they have been working on, to give students a deeper understanding about whether or not the company will be a good fit for them. Having been to a few sessions this week, here are some features from the talks, as well as some tips related to attending sessions.

Highlights
This past week, I attended information sessions for Facebook, Google, and BlackBerry. Each one had a slightly different setup; Facebook held a talk about security in computer network systems, Google discussed its Waterloo office and projects that they are working on, and BlackBerry mainly organized a networking session with recruiters from various departments.

The first information session that I attended was for Facebook. Much of the presentation went over my head as it was very advanced and technical. However, the presenters concluded with information about Facebook itself and available job/internship opportunities. At the end, I had the opportunity to speak with one of the recruiters; although I found out that Facebook mostly only hires students with a lot of experience (e.g. upper-years), it was through the recruiter that I found about Facebook U, a special internship-type program for first-year students. Unfortunately, the program is only available in the summer so I am unable to apply, but nonetheless it was great to find out about the opportunity.

Next, I attended an information session from Google, as I had been introduced to our campus recruiter from the CSSI team! The presentation was given by Steve Woods, Engineering Director of Google Canada. One of the interesting parts was about why Google chose Waterloo to set up its first Engineering office in Canada and how the company has worked with so many start-ups coming out of the University of Waterloo; I find it so exciting that Waterloo has fostered such a culture of technology engineering and entrepreneurship. We also learned about the many community initiatives that Google contributes to - many of these projects involve sparking children's interest and supporting underrepresented people in engineering. I thought it was fantastic that every Google is so active in encouraging younger generations to explore technology. In terms of internship opportunities, Google offers the Engineering Practicum Internship for first and second-year students, which unfortunately I am also unable to apply for this year, but I am definitely going to apply next summer!

The last information session I went to was for BlackBerry, which is based right out of Waterloo. Their session focused on a networking fair setup, with stations for various job departments to speak to recruiters and a display of current/new BlackBerry products. One of the exciting aspects of the session was having the opportunity to test out the unreleased BlackBerry Passport! The most interesting feature of the Passport is its full QWERTY keyboard with touch functionality. I feel that this feature is very innovative because it combined the traditional Blackberry keyboard with increased user-friendliness by allowing users to use the keyboard to control applications instead of touching the screen. It was fantastic to be able to try out and learn more about Passport.

The BlackBerry Passport, soon to be released.

I really enjoyed the networking fair because I got to speak one-on-one with different BlackBerry employees: a Campus Ambassador who'd done two co-op terms with the company gave us a lot of insight into what her role was during her internships, and one of the recruiters for Software Development answered many of our questions about first-year co-op students and internship opportunities, which was very helpful. It was great to find out that BlackBerry has several internships tailored for first-year students in Winter 2015, which I am definitely considering applying for.

Tips
From attending these few sessions, here are some suggestions that I've gathered about making the most out of employer presentations (wherever they may happen):

• Come prepared with questions: If you have specific questions that you'd like to ask the employer about, there will definitely be people there who can answer them and it is a lot easier to talk in-depth to recruiters in person than through email.
• Talk to employees: Whether it's during or after sessions, talk with people from the company. Even if you don't have any questions, employees offer a lot of perspective and more details on what it's like to work at the company.
• Bring your resume: This one applies more to non-co-op students, but if you bring a copy of your resume to a session, there will be recruiters taking them in or employees who can pass on your resume directly to one.
• Attend many different sessions: Each session that I've gone to so far has offered something different, not just in terms of company but also in content; even if you're not interested in a position at a company, the sessions are a great way to learn more about how they are contributing to the tech industry in general and you may be surprised at how the company fits with what you're looking for. 

Employer information sessions are very beneficial to find out about a company and what they're up to from people who have actually experienced working there. I have only gone to three so far, and I've already learned a lot more specifics than you could find out on their websites. In my opinion, these sessions are very useful and I'll definitely be going to a few more in the coming weeks.

The First Week: Initial Thoughts

The first week of classes has finished up at Waterloo! After a fun and exciting orientation week where we got used to living in residence and met lots of new people, this week introduced us to the academic aspect of university life. From lectures to labs, we are slowly but surely making the transition from cramped high school classrooms to capacious lecture halls.

This week was definitely much more relaxed than I'm anticipating the rest of the term, because many tutorials were cancelled and so the days felt a lot shorter than they are supposed to be. With also fewer-than-normal assignments and studying for the week, this week has been a good transition week from orientation to the full engineering workload. To be honest, I am somewhat intimidated by the impending work; even after completing the International Baccalaureate program in high school, I feel that engineering will have a heavier workload, with the added pressures of living on my own and balancing school with extracurricular activities. 

That being said, there are also many things that surprised me about university class; they aren't as different from high school as I'd previously thought. Although the class sizes are much larger and professors definitely have a different teaching style than high school teachers, most lectures utilize interactive components such as examples to demonstrate topics. Moreover, professors are generally very open to stopping lectures to answer questions. A common misconception is that university is all about sitting through lectures and taking notes; in actuality, during labs and tutorials we have many opportunities to apply our knowledge to example problems and hands-on work, in order to practice what we learned in our lectures. This ensures that if we have any questions about the work, we are able to speak to teaching assistants and get help right away.

All in all, the first week of classes has been a great start to the term ahead. I hope to continue keeping the momentum of the week going and stay on top of everything, become accustomed to classes, and join clubs/student design teams at Clubs Fair next week! University life has been a big but exciting change, and I'm looking forward to whatever opportunities come next.

Why I Chose Computer Engineering at University of Waterloo

As school at the University of Waterloo officially started this past week, I thought it'd be a fantastic opportunity to talk about my reasons for choosing both my program and my school.

Why I Chose Computer Engineering

For me, deciding on what university program I wanted to pursue fell between Computer Engineering (CE) and Computer Science (CS) from the beginning. Initially, I was only sure that I wanted to work with software, and I didn't really know what the distinction between the two programs was. After doing a little research, I came across several key differences between the two fields:

• CS focuses more on understanding theory, while CE focuses more on applying knowledge to build things
• CS involves writing programs for computers, while CE involves integrating software and hardware components of computer systems
• CS students take mostly only math and programming courses, while CE students also take physics and circuits (and even chemistry during first year)

Computer Engineering and Computer Science are very similar fields, and lead to similar careers. In terms of university program though, they vary in workload (CE has a heavier workload) and elective options (CS students choose elective in first year, while CE students only get electives starting second year). In the end, I chose CE because I felt that it would give me a better all-around understanding of computers and technology. CS focuses on software, which in my opinion, requires a lot of initiative to progress in coding skills and work on personal projects. Thus, I thought that by taking Computer Engineering, I could learn more about programming myself while also gaining a better understanding about hardware, which I've had minimal exposure to. Most importantly, I felt that engineering was the right choice because I enjoy hands-on application to create relevant and innovative projects using what I know, and that is largely what engineering is about.

Why I Chose Waterloo

One of the main features of Engineering at the University of Waterloo is its Co-operative Education (Co-op) Program, in which students work at internships throughout their years at university. While many other universities across Canada offer similar work experiences, the University of Waterloo is unique in that students start co-op during their first year. This has its perks and drawbacks, based on personal opinion. The biggest advantage is that students graduate with two years of work experience, and work experience is often regarded much more significantly by employers than education. However, students don't have a lot of experience when they start applying for jobs; hence, they may not find the most relevant jobs to their field.

All factors considered, co-op was the main reason I ended up choosing Waterloo. I feel that being able to gain work experience would be much more advantageous, particularly in upper years. Furthermore, being able to work with a variety of different employers during each co-op term means that I will gain a lot of insight into what different positions and what it is like to actually work in them; this will be very helpful in figuring out what exactly I want to do within Computer Engineering by the time I graduate.

In the end, Computer Engineering at Waterloo was the right choice for me because it fit the most with what I was looking for in a university education. UWaterloo is one of the most innovative universities in Canada, and I am looking forward to exploring the innovation of Computer Engineering through not only the program itself, but wherever my future degree will take me.

CSSI Days 20/21: Summer Picnic and Goodbyes

The last Friday of CSSI was filled with many moments of laughter as we enjoyed our last day at the Seattle office and then joined in on a Google summer picnic. In the morning, we had some free time, so we took advantage of the shuffleboard and foosball tables until lunchtime.

We were lucky enough that our final day at Google coincided with Google's annual Summer Picnic! We, along with summer interns and Google engineers, were invited to Vasa Park to enjoy an afternoon of food and fun. I think the pictures speak for themselves:  

We had an amazing afternoon at the picnic; it was the perfect way to enjoy our last day in Seattle. Later, we headed to University Village a final time for some post-birthday crepes (as my actual birthday had been spent madly coding!). It was the first time I'd ever had a crepe, and it was fantastic.

Finally, to end off the night, we finished watching The Internship! It felt fitting to watch the movie after CSSI as the next step for us is (hopefully) an internship at Google, but we laughed at how funny they depicted the whole internship process.

Next was when the goodbyes and sadness began, as many people were leaving early in the morning the following day; many hugs and best wishes were exchanged. Carrying over into the next morning, having to bid farewell to new friends whom we'd just spent so much time with over the past three weeks, it was sad to think that it would be a long time before we'd see each other again. Not only was CSSI itself incredible, but we were able to meet so many amazing and talented people along the way, from fellow CSSIers to the many Google interns, instructors, and other employees who helped us throughout the program. While I've taken all the new experience and knowledge that I have gained with me, the people are what I will miss the most about CSSI. I can only hope that we will meet again someday!

CSSI Day 19: Final Presentations and Graduation!

Today was an exciting day, as we all got to share this past week's work with Googlers at the Seattle office. After three days of working hard on coding, Kristen, Emmi, and I are excited to introduce Telephone, an interactive game designed to test your memory and facilitate communication between both old and new friends! Modeled after the traditional party game Telephone (or Broken Telephone as we know it in Canada), players in a game pass along messages that they receive, trying to send the same final message as the initial one. 

Telephone's homepage; the telephones display their functions when hovered over
(which you can experience by taking a look at the game!)

You can check out the game here: http://telephone-2014.appspot.com. To test out gameplay by yourself, you can open the application in multiple tabs and play as players with different names. Or, even better, invite your friends to check out the game together!

I am really happy with how our game turned out; starting off CSSI with no programming experience and having only three days to code the entire program, I am proud of our team for working so well together and I learned so much during the process. From the beginning, I knew Javascript the least well and so I was hoping that we wouldn't need to use it at all. However, ironically I ended up writing all of the Javascript in the program (and there was a lot of it!); throughout the process, I gained a lot of experience with connecting the server and browser through writing code where Javascript and Python communicated each other. While Telephone is still in a very basic state - we hope to implement features such as password-protected games and sending messages through audio recordings - I think that we were able to accomplish a lot within a short amount of time and I really hope to add some additional features in the future.

After presentations, we had a closing party where our game won the award for Best Design! On top of everything, the party turned out to be a graduation ceremony, complete with graduation caps, certificates, and even a book scholarship! After the hard work of the week, it was fun to relax and celebrate our learning and projects. For the rest of the day, we hung out and took advantage of the shuffleboard and foosball tables some more, relishing one of the final days at the Google offices.

I can't believe that tomorrow is the last day of CSSI already! We'll be celebrating at a picnic with Google engineers; it's sure to be a fantastic way to cap off what has been the most amazing three weeks ever.

CSSI Day 18: Birthday Magic?

Do you believe in birthday magic? I think I might after the magic that was today. I woke up this morning with only one goal in mind: finish our project at a reasonable hour today. After the results of yesterday's work, I wasn't very optimistic about this goal, but I was determined to enjoy my birthday and not let the stress get to me. By some source of magic or another, we were able to solve all of the problems from the day before and a few more by the end of the day, finishing our game! 

My team worked fantastically well today, supporting each other when necessary and otherwise each working on our own components. Because of the way we coordinated it, there weren't many problems with concatenating our separate coding together, which has been a relief throughout this entire process. Today, I was really happy that I was able to reinforce and learn more about Javascript, my least familiar programming language, while coding and debugging our application. I handled a lot of data transfer between server-side event handlers and browser-side Javascript functions today, meaning that I got to code quite a bit in both languages.

After lunch, we had a presentation about how to deliver presentations effectively (ahead of our final project presentations tomorrow)! After discussing some tips about engaging presentations, we broke off into smaller groups to practice speaking in front of an audience. I can still remember when the very thought of public speaking was a nightmare to me; over the years, however, I've grown in becoming more comfortable talking to crowds. Regardless, the practice that we did was really beneficial because I got a lot of feedback into things that sometimes I didn't even realize I was doing. I felt that the workshop really helped us get ready for our presentations tomorrow.

Then, I was presented with a cake and card from the CSSI team! It was so lovely of them and I felt so grateful to be able to celebrate my birthday at Google, with all my fellow CSSIers. 

Cake! Two candles to represent 18? Why not.

As if there wasn't enough icing on the aforementioned cake, we also found out today that our team won the scavenger hunt from Seattle Saturday! The prize was an awesome bag filled with various Google goodies:

Fruits of our scavenger hunt labour = excitement!

All in all, my 18th birthday ranks high up in the list of "most awesome birthdays"; after all, just being here at CSSI for the past weeks have been an amazing experience that I will never forget. It's hard to believe that we'll be back home in less than three days... However, first off it's time for final presentations on our projects tomorrow. I'm really interested in seeing what everyone came up with, as well as debuting our finished game! 

CSSI Day 17: Project Progress and Mock Interviews

Once again, today started off quite well with a lot of debugging and working out problems with our user interface. Additionally, we were able to get started on the design aspect of our application! This was fun because I really enjoy graphic design as a hobby and all three of us in my team got excited to make our web pages look fantastic with CSS and Javascript. However, we still have a few major problems that we need to solve before continuing with our coding, and we are all racking our brains and the Internet in search of answers.

After lunch, we had mock technical interviews with actual Google interviewers! I enjoyed the session very much, because we got to experience the atmosphere and content of real Google interviews; it was great to hear a lot of feedback and tips from our interviewer, who was very kind and answered a lot of questions. In the end, through having an afternoon of mock interviews I feel better prepared for problem-solving and working with code during future interviews. 

The updates are fairly short this week as we slave away at our final project, but I hope that by presentation time we'll have a working demo to share. As we head into tomorrow, I feel very focused and I know that my team will be banding together well; we are all hoping for the best and I know we'll be doing our best to make it happen.