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How Can College Students Make the Most of Recruiting Events?

Step 1: Show up.

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Answer by Makinde Adeagbo, founder of /dev/color, former engineer and manager at Pinterest, Dropbox, and Facebook:

Show Up. To my surprise, lots of people just don’t show up. Or they show up to just one event on campus. If you want to work at a company, show up to every event it has on campus. The recruiter will remember you, and that will matter when it comes to decision time.

Get feedback. As you go through the process, ask for feedback. Even if the company declines you. A lot of recruiters will be honest about the areas in which they want to see you improve. That’s super helpful. They are giving you the playbook for what to learn to get the job next time.

Don’t let rejection get you down. It’ll happen. Oh my, it’s happened so much to me. I did an internship at Microsoft, then got rejected the next year, then got another offer the year after that! I’ve probably done seven-plus interviews at Google and gotten rejected more times than I’ve gotten offers. It’ll happen. Get that feedback and send your résumé to five more companies.

Get to know the people at the events. It’ll be really hard for you to get much useful context about the company culture from the reps there. I’d say the best way is to just get to know the reps. If they seem like people you’d like to work with, that’s a good sign.

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