>> My name's Olivia and I graduate from Pomona in 2014 and I work
as a technological consultant at a mid-sized software company.
I actually really like my office environment.
That -- I feel like I really did well there especially because I --
as I said, I had an internship before and I worked in a very different kind of office.
And I actually think at my internship I enjoyed the work I was doing more
because I was doing more development side stuff.
I was really working with, you know, with a variety of programming languages
and at this job, I really work with the same set of tools day after day.
But this is a smaller company where, on my first day on the job, you know,
one of the office manager took me around and introduced me to every single person.
And since, I have seen her do that with several other new hires.
I would say going to the career fairs is great especially if you want a job in tech.
Going into the Harvey Mudd Career Fair is absolutely necessary
because you can actually snag same-day interviews in some cases.
Most of them are very open to interviewing anyone.
You don't need to meet baseline qualifications to just get an interview.
And that was a great thing too.
So the semester prior to that, I had walked into the career fair as it was closing up.
I wasn't even planning to attend.
I just kind of walked by because I was going to my tutoring job and I saw it was happening.
So I walked in, they were closing up and I chatted up a guy at one of the tables
for a company called Athenahealth, which does healthcare record software.
And I was just asking, it's like, "OK, what kind training would you recommend?
What do you look for in someone you're considering hiring?"
And he was like, "I'll tell you what, instead of asking that,
why don't you just come in for an interview?"
I want to give those cliche words that you know everyone likes to make fun of,
which is that you really should study what you love.
And that's not to say that you should go into something with no consideration
for what you're going to do after college.
But if you're study something that maybe isn't what you really want to study
because you're worried about career prospects and maybe you can't afford
to not have the promise of a career, still really go out of your way
to take classes in the areas you want to.