UT Austin has more graduates working at Silicon Valley than most Ivy League schools.
According to a recent analysis by HiringSolved, an online recruiting company, UT places top five on the list of alma maters hired by Silicon Valley companies. This analysis was based on the number of new hires from the top 25 tech companies in the past year.
“We cross the internet for information about people and we created profiles so that recruiters can use them,” said Jeremy Roberts, HiringSolved’s vice president of customer experience. “We have about 400 million profiles. What we looked at was people who listed those companies as their employer within the last year and what universities they came from.”
Computer science senior Ricardo Delfin, who will be an intern at Google this summer, said UT made the list because of the computer science department’s relatively large size and high quality classes.
“We have award winners in the department,” Delfin said. “Our department in quite a couple of rankings was ranked above Harvard (University’s Computer Science) department.”
Delfin, who has interned at Microsoft and Twitter, said Silicon Valley companies look for applicants who can adapt to different programming languages.
“They expect you to be able … to design a system or solve a problem in an abstract way and turn that into code in any form,” Delfin said. “They also generally expect you to be able to pick up new knowledge and new programming languages really quickly.”
Frank Long, a computer science and finance senior, interned at Google last summer and will return for a full-time position after graduation.
Long said there is a misconception that many students have in putting too much focus on GPA and less on personal projects and making connections.
“Think about how you set yourself apart,” Long said. “It’s not going to be by getting six points higher on that test than the other kid … All these companies are on campus recruiting all the time, it just blows my mind that people would be like ‘I can’t make it, I have to do homework.’”
Computer science senior Taylor Kline was an intern at Salesforce last summer. Although he received an internship offer from Google, he chose to intern at the BHW group, a local Austin company, this summer.
Kline said students should try seeking jobs through resources outside of UT.
“My happiest friends are those who found jobs through unique routes,” Kline said. “There are companies who can’t afford to bring recruiters (to UT) who are looking, especially local Austin companies … I have so many friends who have fallen for the hype of going to Facebook or Google, and they find out that the work is so boring.”
