How To Impress Employers at Infosessions

Top tech talent knows that industry recruiters often bring a stack of pre-negotiated offers to university infosessions, so that they can snag programmers and UX designers who really stand out. Instead of spending valuable time validating a particularly promising candidate’s skillset through a protracted series of interviews, it’s often more efficient to simply give the individual an offer right then and there. Internal studies at Google have shown that experienced recruiters can usually tell if a programmer has ‘what it takes’ just from how they act at infosessions: the insightful questions they ask, the stickers on their laptop, and how they comport themselves in general.

Top tech talent knows that industry recruiters often bring a stack of pre-negotiated offers to university infosessions, so that they can snag programmers and UX designers who really stand out. Instead of spending valuable time validating a particularly promising candidate’s skillset through a protracted series of interviews, it’s often more efficient to simply give the individual an offer right then and there. Internal studies at Google have shown that experienced recruiters can usually tell if a programmer has ‘what it takes’ just from how they act at infosessions: the insightful questions they ask, the stickers on their laptop, and how they comport themselves in general.

Here are some of tips for optimizing your infosession performance:

• Ask questions to get a feel for the company’s culture. For example, I always start off by asking “do you have a mandatory drug test?”.

• Make sure that the recruiters know you’re passionate about the company by crying.

• Don’t be that awkward guy who goes up for more pizza while the presenter is providing valuable information about the company’s agile development cycle. Instead, demonstrate your ability to amortize I/O costs via bulk loading: bring a whole box of pizza back to your seat. Protip: “free swag” t-shirts make great face rags, so grab a handful.

• Stay focused by minimizing distractions. I typically wear my Bose QuietComfort noise cancelling headphones during the presentation. This way I retain more information from the PowerPoint, which really impresses the recruiters during the networking session. Follow me on Spotify to check out my special “Let’s Do This Infosession” playlist.

• Getting invited to the ‘after-infosession’ is critical. During the networking session, ask the recruiters what hotel they’re staying at, and make sure that they know that you ‘know a guy’. Without fail, someone will slip a wax-sealed envelope under your door at midnight, the coveted invitation to an another, more exclusive networking event.

If you follow these simple tips and brush up on your data structures, you’ll soon be literally drowning in offers, like everyone else. If these tips don’t work out for you, you probably need to get your MEng.