Last month, McMaster’s Faculty of Engineering Dean, Heather Sheardown, and staff members, headed west again to Silicon Valley to visit with students and alumni currently turning their dream tech-sector careers to reality. From companies like Pinterest, AirBnB and Apple, we met with members of our Fireball Family across all industries to chat about #MacEngDreamJobs, what makes a dream job and what steps to take to achieve finding the perfect job for you.
The first stop of #MacEngDreamJobs trip was at Cisco Meraki, where we joined current Mechatronics co-op student Calvin Suen. When searching for a co-op job, Calvin suggests to, “know what you want and go for it. Be targeted in your approach for what kind of job you want to do and base your extracurriculars and academics around it to land your dream job.”
Next up was Pinterest, where we had the pleasure of chatting with alum Andrew Lutz (BEng ’11), who is currently a Front-end Software Engineer. Andrew’s career advice? “Don’t be complacent. Engineering changes and evolves. Keep learning and growing.”
Currently there are over 300 MacEng alumni working in California, with 170 in the Bay Area alone. In addition to alumni and co-op students, Silicon Valley is also home to a few of our Dean’s Advisory Board members like Nitin Chopra (Electrical Engineering ’05), Managing Director at Neotribe Ventures, Faizel Lakhani (Electrical Engineering ’93), CEO of CyberSecuriti.ai, as well as Lawrence Tse (Electrical Engineering ‘81), Executive Vice President of Central Engineering, Analog Mixed-Signal Group at Marvell.
When asked what advice Nitin had for anyone seeking their dream job, he responded with, “Don’t limit yourself to one dream job, career, discipline.”
To help guide our students down the best career path for the, we launched our #MacEngDreamJobs social contest during the trip, where current students entered to win prizes that would provide them with unique career development opportunities. Aiden, a second-year Electrical Engineering student, won a 1:1 mentorship with Faizel Lakhani.
At AirBnb, we met with Wasib Muhammad (MEngD ’11), Senior Product Manager and W Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology MEng Design alum. His advice to students? “The zig-zag path can lead to an amazing career!”
Our next stop was Apple, where we chatted with Erin Young (Materials Engineering ’99) who is currently working as a Senior Research Scientist. Erin noted that it does “feel like I have a dream job because I get to do R&D for product development, which will eventually go in the hands of millions of people – that’s a really gratifying experience.”
Our Mac Eng Connect event was held at The District in San Jose, hosted by Dean Sheardown to help bring Mac Eng Alumni and current co-op students in the area together and make meaningful connections within the Fireball Family. The top companies our alumni are currently working at in the state include Apple, Google, Facebook and University of California.
“The impact of the people in this room is undeniable,” says Dean Sheardown. “The ambition of our students, excellence of our partnerships and the amazing work of our alumni outside the MacEng bubble, there is no doubt that we are a remarkable Faculty.”
Ready to make your dreams come true? Check out these five tips from our Engineering Co-op & Career Services team!
