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Snario

Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:37 pm


Importance of Job Experience in Co-op

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Hey, I'm in Computer Science first year and have co-op next Summer. I'm wondering will I have a hard time if I don't have any job experience? My friend stresses to me that work of any kind (even completely irrelevant to the field in which I'm applying) is very important to have, but I feel as though open-source projects would be looked at as more interesting to a potential employer.

Also how relevant are your marks? If I were to show up with a transcript of all high 90s, is that common or would employers be really impressed? 

Basically, is my friend right? Would an employer really lift someone with a years experience at a restaurant over someone else with no experience that is otherwise just as qualified?


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Tony

Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:57 pm


RE:Importance of Job Experience in Co-op

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it... depends.

If the employer is looking for a warm body to run through manual QA test scripts and fetch coffee -- they'd likely be more interested in your ability to not post questionable facebook statuses from the stress of dealing with shitty retail customers.

If the employer actually expects you to develop something technical, actual skills and relevant experience begin to matter.

Marks are important in a way that most of your peers will not have any relevant work experience when applying to that first job, and you're all taking the same courses anyway... so marks are one of the few distinguishing factors here.

Marks are also important if you aspire to work at a place such as Google -- apparently University grades are the only thing that has any kind of a correlation with long-term technical performance; so they pay attention to those numbers. Of course you'd also need to take the hard CS courses to grind out the experience needed to get through the technical interviews... it's a delicate balance.


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Dan

Mon Sep 24, 2012 11:04 pm


RE:Importance of Job Experience in Co-op

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It should also be pointed out that you probably are going to be looking at a placement with a smaller more local company for your first co-op job. Smaller companies tend to have less policies in place about hiring technical people and it can be far more dependent on the individual interviewer what is important. Having a technical interview done by an HR person can be... interesting.


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mirhagk

Tue Sep 25, 2012 6:44 am


RE:Importance of Job Experience in Co-op

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My company hired off of whether the person knew how to program at all (solve FizzBuzz) and knew English. Only 1 candidate of about 10 that applied actually had both skills. The others either were copy-paste programmers, or couldn't communicate in English.

The most important thing is to be honest IMO. If you don't know the answer to a question, just say that. Take a guess if you can, but always let them know you're guessing. The worst candidate we ever had was a phone interview where the person literally googled the answer to every question.


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Aange10

Tue Sep 25, 2012 8:02 am


RE:Importance of Job Experience in Co-op

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 (solve FizzBuzz) 

var myString : string := ""
for i : 0 .. 20
    if i mod 3 = 0 then
        myString += Fizz
    end if

    if i mod 5 = 0 then
        myString += Buzz
    end if

    if myString not= "" then
        put myString
    else
        put i
    end if

        myString := ""
end for