Top 10 Mistakes Waterloo Co-ops Make When Deciding Where to Work

At Xtreme Labs, I headed the recruitment team that built an amazing flywheel of an internship program. At its peak, we hired 65 interns per term from the University of Waterloo. We routinely received more engineering resumes than our juggernaut peers at Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Square, Apple, Yelp, etc. In 2014 (one year after Pivotal acquired Xtreme), we received a 100% acceptance rate for our 25 engineering intern offers. And we didn’t play games. We went for the best candidates we could find – those that had offers at other prestigious firms. Some interns came back to Xtreme every co-op term they had until they graduated. Senior executives at some of those other companies actually called me to ask how we did it.

The internship program was a key pipeline and asset for our company. Interns at Xtreme were a strategic asset and they contributed to top priority projects. 30% of our full time staff were former interns in our program.

An Xtreme endorsement in the form of an “Excellent” or “Outstanding” rating (the top two grades on the standardized Waterloo internship review) grew to become coveted assets for Waterloo grads. They were strong signals to other employers and to us. Our explicit company goal was to make Xtreme Labs a great place at which to work and learn.

Today, when people seek advice on “Where should I work?” (for an internship or full time position), I always reply with the same three questions:

1. Where will you learn the most?
2. Where will you be surrounded by the smartest people you can find?
3. Where will you have impact?

As I start to hire interns for my own new company (with hopes of replicating Xtreme level success), I wanted to share some advice for those entering the difficult and confusing intern and co-op market.

That is, I advise you to watch out for these 10 common mistakes.

1. Worrying about your title. Your title is irrelevant. You can put whatever you want on your resume or LinkedIn. If your co-op company calls you “Elf Monarch” and you develop backend software, you can say you were a “Software Developer.” I recognize that your job title is printed on your Waterloo co-op transcript, but it only has impact (minimal impact, at that) for your other co-op jobs. It’s never used post-graduation.
2. Wanting to work at a big company. Big companies have the somewhat inaccurate allure of offering mentorship and guidance. I do not say inaccurate in the sense that big companies will not offer those things. I only mean that smaller companies may actually provide greater mentorship and guidance. At small companies, you work on lean teams that offer great mentorship and you accept the risk that your team might make mistakes. Learning from mistakes is the best guidance that exists in life.
3. Negotiating your compensation. Companies should offer market-level salaries in accordance with the Waterloo guidelines. If they do not provide your salary in your offer, feel free to ask. But any amount within the guidelines should be acceptable. You need enough money to get by, but the biggest returns you will get from your internship are in the form of your personal growth and experience. Period.
4. Being afraid to ask questions. Your interview and offer period are your opportunities to find out about the people, the company, the products, etc. If you receive an offer, the company wants you to join. It benefits the company to answer all of your questions to the fullest extent possible. Use that.
5. Worrying about doing something uncomfortable or unfamiliar for four months. If you don’t stretch yourself during your internship, when are you going to learn new things? Being uncomfortable in your new role should be a requirement, not a concern.
6. Misunderstanding the purpose of an internship. Sure, an internship can be a resume builder. But its more so for trying new things and gathering information so that you can decide what you want to do when you leave college or university.
7. Not learning something new (biasing toward the familiar). New is risky and rewarding. Everyone has a different risk preference. Some executives aim for roles that are 70% familiar and 30% new. Interns naturally do many new things by virtue of entering the work force and they should not be afraid to do 100% new things.
8. Choosing the safe company. Choosing an uninspired company without significant growth potential doesn’t put you into an opportunity that will stretch you. If you don’t stretch, you won’t learn.
9. Not doing your homework on the company or the people at the company. You should absolutely research the company, its leadership, and the people you will be working with. Are they exceptional? Could they be role models? Will you learn from them?
10. Being imprinted into working the wrong way. Working at slow-moving large companies may bias you into thinking that’s just the way the corporate world works. My career expectations should adhere to this model. In fact, leading companies (big or small, old or new) should move quickly and continuously push outwards the production possibility frontier. Experiencing such momentum first hand is most important in the first set of roles you take.

P.S. Xtreme Labs hired interns from many universities (University of Toronto, Queen’s, Ryerson, McMaster, etc.) – this post concentrates on Waterloo because the co-op program requires students to focus on their work terms more than other schools. The advice, however, is general.