How To Land A Job At A Top Utah Tech Company
It starts with strong performance, quality internship experience, and volunteer work.
In just a few weeks, the next classes of college seniors will walk across commencement stages at University of Utah, BYU, and other state colleges to receive degrees, gain alumni status, and enter the working world. As a Utah Ute myself, I’d like to say congratulations to the Class of 2017! Now it’s time to get to work.
Luckily for these new grads, they’re graduating in a region that Forbes recently named a top tech mecca and Entrepreneur ranked as the top startup destination outside of San Francisco or New York.
As a native Utahn and tech founder in Silicon Slopes, I’m not that surprised that Salt Lake City is finally getting the national recognition it deserves. People here tend to be very prone to entrepreneurial thinking. It’s an environment with a highly educated community where a significant percentage of the workforce speaks multiple languages — in fact, Utah has the highest percentage of foreign-language speakers in America, and this adds to our unique worldview and innovative thinking. Utah has a vibrant tech community with plenty of opportunities in diverse industries, especially for STEM graduates. Not to mention, our cost of living and quality of life here is fantastic.
So, now that I’ve made the case for staying in Silicon Slopes and furthering Utah’s tech scene, how exactly do you land a job at a top Utah tech company? Here are a few things we look for.
Strong Performance
We’re surrounded by top-ranked tech universities, so the opportunities for STEM graduates are endless. Thousands of startups in need of engineers and developers call Utah home, not to mention large tech companies — including Adobe, Microsoft and Ebay — have opened offices in the region.
To show off your smarts, demonstrate practical applications of your academic knowledge. Sure, high GPAs are great, but what you can do with what you’ve learned is arguably more important. If you have certifications relevant to the industry or job you want to work in, it’s helpful to show that domain expertise on your resume and expand upon it in your interview.
Also, some of our best people start exercising their interest in STEM skills through personal pursuits or passion projects. If you’ve created something by yourself and for yourself, that’s compelling as long as it demonstrated domain knowledge and personal initiative.
Quality Internship Experience
Our definition of “quality” is important to understand what we’re looking for. If you spent a summer coding the back end of a mobile app for a startup we’ve never heard of, that’s incredible. That’s very valuable hands-on experience. We’re most interested in what you took away from the experience and the type of work you did while you were an intern. You don’t have to have a long list of unicorns on your resume to show off your specific technology knowledge.
Volunteer Work
The family-friendly atmosphere in Utah and the large number of service minded citizens contributes to a culture that places a high importance on giving back. If there’s an organization you spend time volunteering with or a specific cause to which you’re donating your STEM skills, include this on your resume. It shows maturity and is well-respected in the Silicon Slopes startup scene.
As a shameless plug, Finicity is hiring tech graduates who are passionate about re-imagining the financial experiences that improve people’s lives. I look forward to seeing the impact the Class of 2017 makes on Silicon Slopes in the years to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steve Smith is the chairman, CEO and co-founder of Finicity, a leading financial data aggregator enabling innovation in the fintech industry. Steve holds a B.S. in finance from the University of Utah.
