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ChBE alumni help prepare recruitment process

Workshops aim to connect students with industry professionals from our alumni network.

alumni workshop

Every year before the Fall Career Expo, the Rice Alumni Committee, in partnership with AIChE, SPE, and ChBE GSA, puts on a series of career workshops to prepare students for the internship and job recruitment process. These workshops aim to connect students with industry professionals from our alumni network.

The alumni use their own career experience to help guide the students through the job interview process. This year was notably different from past workshop series due to Covid-19. All workshops were performed utilizing the Zoom video-conferencing application.
 
The career workshops kicked off with a fishbowl interview. This interview is so named because a volunteer plays the role of the interviewee while an alum plays the role of the interviewer. Attendees of this event watch the interview from an “audience” perspective.  The interviewer and interviewee are thus in a “fishbowl” for all to watch their interactions.

Fishbowl interviews provide an example to the students of what to expect when talking to companies. Given that most interviews this year will be done virtually, the Zoom format was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate this practice and point out some of the differences one can expect from in-person interviews. ChBE Alum Will Kasper conducted this year’s fishbowl interview.  Will has extensive experience working as a process design engineer and a facilities planner. AICHE co-president Jonathan Bloom took the stage as the mock interviewee. Following the interview, both gave feedback on what to expect in interviews and took questions from the students on how best to prepare.
     
Once the mock interview concluded, the Alumni Committee hosted a career panel, with chemical engineering alumni from a host of fields. Our panel consisted of Vikram Murali who has experience at Air Liquide as a process engineer and as a market development manager for Visionary Fiber Technologies, Mason Daumas, a development project manager at EDP Renewables, Dr. Matt Mistilis, a drug development scientist at the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, Daniela Chona, a consultant from BCG with previous experience at Exxon, and Chuck Hewell, president of CLH Consulting. The panelists shared their personal career journeys and insights into their fields. They answered questions ranging from skills needed in their industries to favorite podcasts.
 
The second part of our Fall Mentoring Event was resume reviews. Students signed up for 15-minute time slots to meet with alumni volunteers to review the students’ resumes. The alumni and students were placed in Zoom breakout rooms for one-on-one sessions where they reviewed the student’s resume in detail. This format allows students to receive comments on their resumes from engineers who have experience in reviewing/assessing resumes as part of their jobs.

The venue is a relaxed, open exchange of comments and questions which has proven to be quite helpful to the student.
In the days following the resume review, students were given the opportunity to practice the skills they observed in the fishbowl interview by participating in mock interviews. Companies will have behavioral interviews for entry-level jobs that test an applicant’s knowledge, leadership, and work ethic. In these 30-minute sessions, students answered common interview questions posed to them by alumni. These one-on-one sessions gave students real-time feedback on their performance in an interview.  Using that feedback they should be able to better prepare themselves for an interview. 

The ChBE Alumni Committee also launched its first mentorship program. This program’s goal is to connect alumni with students, based on the student’s interests. The Rice AIChE chapter and the ChBE GSA are also involved in this program.

Our primary goal of the mentorship program is to help students learn more about the world of chemical engineering and to provide support for young students as they transition into the professional world. We believe this will greatly benefit the students as well as be rewarding to the alumni mentors. After a virtual kick-off event where the students were able to meet potential mentors, mentor-mentee pairings were made based on student preferences.

The program has been active for a few months with mentees reaching out to their mentors to discuss their interests in the industry and what to look forward to.

Courtesy of the ChBE Alumni Committee