In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a UT faculty member sought to bridge the gap between students and future employers. Jamil Hooper founded what is now Career City Limits, a week-long speaker series hosted by UT’s School of Design and Creative Technologies. 

Students and alumni from all majors heard from a range of tech pioneers in hybrid sessions this Tuesday through Friday. The school hosts the series  each semester with new and returning companies speaking. Companies in attendance this past week included Verge Aero and Electronic Arts, the studio behind video games like “The Sims” and “Madden NFL.”

“Trying to get the attention of those (professionals) can be very difficult,” said Hooper, the industry relations manager for the School of Design and Creative Technologies. “But, the sessions offer an opportunity for (students) to have access to these people for an hour and a half.”

On Wednesday, students met virtually with employees at ILM Immersive, a subsidiary of Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic. The storytelling studio, which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation in Emerging Media the prior weekend, gave a presentation on the hard and soft skills necessary for success in the virtual and mixed reality industries. 

“(Students) are hearing directly from employers things that are going to be important for them to stand out as an individual, not only for that particular organization, but for that industry,” Hooper said.

Claren Moyers (UT design, ‘21) now works on the pharmacy design team at H-E-B Digital, adapting user experience on the app. On Wednesday, Moyers and other employees gave students a step-by-step guide to applying to H-E-B’s summer internship program. In addition, employees provided insight into the realities of working at such a large company. 

“(Career City Limits) gives you more realistic expectations of what a job is actually like,” Moyers said. “It’s good to know the actual day-to-day life, what the pay is like compared to another industry and just having very realistic expectations versus winging it and realizing, ‘Wow, I really don’t like this,’ or ‘This isn’t what I thought it was going to be like.’”

Caden Clack, an arts and entertainment technologies freshman, said the sessions he attended gave him a new perspective on the jobs available to him after college.

“In a lot of these companies, I’m finding out that there are very unique and tailored roles, such as the terrain artists and designers I talked with at ILM,” Clack said. “It’s such a niche thing, but it’s a very focused talent those people have that I thought was really cool.”