“Do cool things that matter,” was senior software engineer Shawn Willden’s motto for Weber State University students interested in joining Google for an internship and a possible lifetime career.
WSU students got the opportunity on March 5 to hear from Weber State’s own alumni, Willden, who has worked for IBM and now Google.
Willden gave insight, tips and helped students prepare for future internships and career opportunities at Google.
Google is a popular place to intern, with such perks as interns earning approximately $6,000 a month and the opportunity to land a career at Google.
An internship at Google looks good on anyone’s resume, giving interns a step up above applicants for other well-known companies.
Workers at Google have “the life” according to Willden.
“What I enjoy most is the openness and the lack of hierarchy,” said Willden.
Not only do employees have free food available all day long, but some locations have indoor slides, as well as scooters and bikes you can ride around.
According to Willden, Google’s mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This causes him and other Google employees to ask themselves daily, “How can we make the most impact on the world?”
“Google is unlike any other company,” said Willden “It’s the people. It’s uniformly awesome, and we construct products that are helpful to millions of people.”
Students got Google swag, a view into the Google world and ideas on how to interview for jobs at the company. The rest of the time was spent getting questions answered by Willden.
“It shows how easy or difficult it can be, but more importantly it’s up to the person applying, not so much the difficult standards set by the company, “ said WSU student Aurhthor Scheel, majoring in ISNT. “It’s a realistic display of what you would expect when working there and they don’t try to pretty it up.”
Duwayne Miller, also majoring in ISNT, enjoyed the time Willden was willing to give to students.
“It sounds like a great company with its perks and I couldn’t believe how much they pay for their internships. It’s encouraging that a company like that does so much for their employees,” said Miller.
