Rice and grind: the hustle of securing a job offer

By Aisha Khemani     12/3/24 10:35pm

Resumes, rejections and pressure can feel like a constant throughout one’s time in university, from sophomores hunting for internships to seniors aiming to secure a full-time offer.

Emily Pena, a mechanical engineering major, said she knows this struggle. She recently received a job offer with RTX, a company specializing in aerospace, defense and engine development.

“The whole job market right now is a little scary and nerve-wracking,” Pena, a Hanszen College senior, said. “There’s a lot of companies going through rebranding, and they’re unsure of their scope. If it’s government work, there are a lot of policies up in the air, so a lot of work feels iffy.”

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Pena said she believes that having a broad range of interests can make it easier to secure an offer compared to focusing on a more specialized industry.

“If you’re someone that’s really open with a lot of interests, like if you’re trying to go into oil, there’s a lot of opportunity there. But I think the more specialized you want to get, the harder it becomes,” Pena said. “I know some of my friends who are trying to go into aerospace, like working on propulsion systems, and it’s really hard to get into those really niche roles without having prior internship experience at these companies.” 

Pena, a first-generation college student, said the recruiting process initially felt intimidating, as it was her first time communicating with corporate officials. 

“I think of them as being on such a big pedestal, so when I’m trying to interview, it’s like, ‘Oh, am I really capable of this?’,” Pena said. “But overcoming that and knowing [that] I’m actually very educated helps. I know they want to see that I can talk about highly technical concepts at a variety of levels, show my problem-solving skills and highlight the right things on my resume for the job description.”

Pena also said that she believes minorities face unique challenges in securing opportunities.

“The Society of Women Engineers and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers are great resources,” Pena said. “I also know that the [Center for] Career Development helps place alumni, trying to connect students with those who have similar backgrounds and demographics.” 

Pena said these resources were crucial for her success as she navigated the complex recruiting timeline for engineers.

“It’s just a matter of whether you’re doing the right things at the right time,” Pena said. “It’s knowing the game, understanding when recruiting season starts and reaching out to the proper people. I didn’t really understand how it all worked until later on.”

Katherine Yue, a managerial economics and business major, recently secured an internship at Shell Global as a finance analyst for the upcoming summer. However, she said getting the position was extremely stressful.

“Consulting is something that has a really strict recruiting timeline, and it’s really hard to get experience since they are mainly looking for juniors,” Yue, a Will Rice College sophomore,  said. “So, something that a lot of people turn to are these corporate roles.” 

“For that, you apply to like 50 [companies] and won’t even hear back from 40. Then you get a bunch of rejections,” Yue said. “You put in a lot of effort trying to apply to all these roles, and you won’t even hear back from one. I guess it’s kind of disheartening because you don’t know how to make any progress, and you don’t know what went wrong or how to improve.”

Yue also said she believes that students often don’t get to explore different roles in the business world and are pushed into consulting or investment banking early on.

“There are so many different roles, but since they’re all looking for you in this specific timeframe, you have to commit to one and hope that it’s something that you like,” Yue said. “You really don’t get time to explore the different types of business roles.” 

Yue said she found the emphasis on networking and coffee chats to be the hardest part of the process.

“For me, having a short conversation with someone who probably doesn’t have power over hiring is hard,” Yue said. “It’s really hard to imagine that talking to them will make a big difference, but there’s so much pressure to do 40 or 50 [coffee chats], since both consulting and finance are very network-based.”

Sarah Luan, a computer science major, said she is currently trying to secure a software engineer position after her return offer in technology consulting was pushed back to early 2026.

“To be very honest, I don’t like coding that much, so during my junior year summer, I tried tech consulting at PwC,” Luan, a Jones College senior, said. “A lot of consulting firms pushed back start dates for those who received return offers, and I would prefer to start earlier.”Luan said that her start date’s delay has made her consider roles in software engineering.

“I would probably have a gap year which is not bad, but a lot of people are telling me not to give up on software engineering, like what you do in school is not what you do in the workplace, so I want to give it another chance,” Luan said.

Luan said that while she has a job secured, making the switch back to recruiting for software engineering has been stressful due to her lack of experience in the field. 

“In comparison, to a lot of the other computer science majors at Rice, I’m not the strongest applicant and having to prepare for software interviews is very difficult,” Luan said.

Above all, students said that recruitment is a constant presence. Even though Yue was able to secure an internship for this summer, she said she continues to feel stressed about her junior-year internship.

“Recruiting for next summer has already started, and I just accepted a role for this summer,” Yue said. “It feels like so many people are doing so much, and everyone always seems to be doing more than you. It’s just like this never-ending process.”

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