Recent alumni on interviewing, job hunting, and why we shouldn’t be afraid of AI (yet)

In a wild job market, what’s it really like to be taking early career positions in tech? This March, two recent alumni from Northeastern in Silicon Valley reconnected with the campus to share their insight with current students. Akanksha Singh and Vy Thai both graduated in 2022 and have successfully been working as software engineers.

Akanksha, who earned her MS in Information Systems from the College of Engineering, is now at Microsoft where she works within the Bing search team with a focus on music and entertainment queries. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology and worked as a data analyst before she decided to study for her master’s.

Vy is a Double Husky, having first earned her bachelor’s at Northeastern’s Boston campus in International Affairs and Political Science. She decided to pivot to Computer Science through the Align program from the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, and earned her MSCS at the Silicon Valley campus. She is now working at the ed-tech company Clever, where she is currently focused on the dashboard and member portal for international audiences.

The two shared their advice for students who are about to graduate and begin pursuing full-time work. Jie Yin, a current MS in Information Systems, Bridge student, moderated.

Prep for interviews by thinking like a software engineer

Although both acknowledged that practicing on LeetCode is essential for nailing technical interviews, they encouraged students to think in an interdisciplinary way. Akanksha has noticed that object-oriented programming is a big topic these days. “If you have a chance to read through the details of object-oriented programming, I recommend it,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of design questions in interviews, so that’s something you can prepare for.”

Vy agreed. “Try to think of the big picture of how to design a software system, because as a software engineer you have to communicate with a lot of different people and teams.”

Always keep your job hunt running

To land good internships during your time as a student, and a good full-time role afterwards, treat your job hunt like an ongoing project. Akanksha thinks that staying active on LinkedIn is the best way to be proactive about a job search. That way, when you see a promising job, you can see if you can find someone in your network to refer you.

And try to hit a high target for the numbers of applications you’re submitting. “The more you apply, the more chances you will get,” says Vy.

And they encouraged students to start their search early: the large tech companies will begin posting positions for new graduates beginning as soon as September. “A lot of my friends missed their deadlines because they were preparing first and then applying,” said Akanksha. “Apply first, then keep preparing.”

In the face of changing technology, stay adaptable and willing to adopt new approaches

And of course, along with the normal stress of job hunting, people entering the tech workforce now have to contend with the unknowns of new advancements in artificial intelligence. But the alumni don’t think that the end of the human engineer is upon us.

“Resilience to change will be important,” said Vy. “Most software companies these days are very agile. Keep an agile mindset, don’t trust the textbook, and always strive for improved processes. If something sounds flashy, does it really apply to our current use case? As an engineer, you should think about it rather than just chasing the next big thing.”

“People are talking now about ChatGPT, but there are a few other things than ChatGPT right now, like Bing search and GitHub Copilot. And it’s actually a very useful thing,” says Akanksha. “Right now when I’m writing code, I don’t write the complete code. If you know the logic, you type [the framework] and it gives you the small snippets of code. You make your changes and you move forward. So the code which I used to write in three hours, it’s decreased my time to one hour now. The logic is still yours, but it is helping you write those things.”

“It saves you time. It will never replace a human being, but it will help you to a very good extent. There’s a possibility that where there was five people required, now there are three people required because efficiency has increased. But overall, at this current rate, the way that AI is developing is to help the user.”