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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Information Technology (IT)

They are talking about this topic: Experience & Credentials

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
Internships and other forms of practical experience, such as working at a college IT desk or building a program in the candidate's spare time, are highly sought after in new hires.

Employer Quote Region
"Employer 1: The advice I give to students all the time is, 'Do what you're learning in school while you're in school. There are always resources that you have, there are always places to work: IT partners, help desks, etc. Seek out all of these experiences and opportunities while you're going through the program. Don't wait until the end and then say: Well, I'm going to go work somewhere and figure out the trends or whatever. No. Go do something now. Start an open source project. Do something on your own.' Times are completely changed in the last ten years. You can pretty much do anything with just your PC and an internet connection. You can start a business. I mean, the possibilities are endless, but you have to want to do that. So clubs, organizations on campus, there's a lot of opportunities. But it's really just doing now what your career is going to be when you graduate. Start that early. There's no reason you can't do that while you're in school.

Employer 2: I'm going to agree with you one hundred percent there. Because—and some of you who look at applicants might agree or disagree with me—but I'd say that your four-year degree is great and everything, but if I saw that you created this program online that thousands of people use while you're in college, in your spare time, that's awesome. And I think if there's one piece of advice for students it's to be more involved. Whether that's finding a project to do or doing freelance work or even volunteering to help work with collating in other projects. That's a big one. And I think if—I'm not sure how flexible a lot of these IT programs are—but if these programs were really open to recognizing that sort of contribution and can reward the students for doing those kind of programs, I think that'd be great."		 Central
"Basically, we're talking about the students getting experience. If we interview somebody, and they're still in college, we realize that they might need a little light on the real world experience and stuff. But the person that comes in with those experiences and you talk to them and they're like, 'Oh, yeah, we ran into this while I was doing this project and this and this...' Then, that's just much more attractive to us because it shows they actually took the initiative to apply their degree. It's not just about learning or getting your four-year degree; it's about actually doing something with it. It's about actually taking that and making a contribution." Central
"Employer 1: Internships are another thing that we look for. If they've done internships at another telecom provider, then that takes them up a notch in our assessment. And they can usually speak about what they did there, what problems they ran into, the products they used, and what they had to deal with. That's invaluable to us if they walk in with those experiences.

Employer 2: And it demonstrates desire. It demonstrates their curiosity to know more about this field. Even if they made less money there or didn't make any money in that internship...versus doing something like driving a truck where they could have made a lot more money.

Employer 3: It also shows us that they're translating their book smarts into meaningful contributions. Translating that into experience or striving to move forward."		 Central