It’s Saturday night, October 21st of last year. I’m at the San Francisco International Airport, dressed in my black USC crewneck, about to leave the Bay Area after USC beat Berkeley in a nail-biter of a football game. “Fight on!” I hear at least five times throughout my short 45-minute airport journey. Welcome to the Trojan Family.
One of USC’s selling points is the Trojan Family. The Trojan Family is the professional network of alumni that students are connected to by simply being a student attending USC. Within Viterbi, professional experience is an integral building block that allows students to apply their knowledge in a professional environment. Additionally, professional experience is crucial as an aid for students to decide whether a particular sector within their discipline is the right fit for them. The Trojan Family is a large presence in the engineering industry, with Viterbi graduates spreading to every corner of every engineering sector. Combined with the uplifting and supportive community that Viterbi fosters among students, reaching out to recent graduates and upperclassmen who students have befriended or even been mentored by is an excellent way for exploring students to gain insights into different companies from the firsthand accounts of their recently graduated peers. I’ve personally reached out to several graduates who decided to go down all sorts of different paths following their graduation. Some decided to attend graduate school elsewhere, while others decided to go into industry immediately after graduation. It is incredibly useful to hear about their experiences because I get to weigh the pros and cons of going down one path or the other. With that being said, however, it is still equally, if not more, important to find professional opportunities for yourself during your undergraduate years.
There are several ways that Viterbi ensures this. One way that Viterbi provides students with professional opportunities is through the Viterbi Career Connections, VCC, a branch of the USC Viterbi Admission and Student Engagement office. VCC hosts several events each week, ranging from company panels and information sessions to internship- and job-searching talks. These events allow students to engage directly with company representatives and hear about exactly what these companies are looking for in their applicants. These events also serve as an excellent way for students to get their foot in the door by handing out their resumes to employers. Additionally, by far the most important events organized by VCC are the fall and spring Viterbi Career Fairs. The career fair, hosted on Trousdale, the street that runs through the heart of campus, invites hundreds of companies, each of which get to set up their own individual booth, to speak to and recruit Viterbi students. Students prepare for the career fair by polishing their resumes and dressing in their business casual attire to set a good first impression. Oftentimes, a student’s first conversation with an employer at the career fair serves as a first interview, and sometimes, students land their internship on the spot. The Viterbi Career Fair was exactly the way I was offered my internship with Gilbane Building Company this past summer. It is the perfect opportunity to cast a wide net to companies who are looking to hire motivated and prepared candidates like the ones found all across Viterbi.
Overall, the opportunities that USC, primarily through Viterbi, are endless. The professional network of alumni that students have access to for simply being a USC student is incredible. And who knows, maybe instead of just a “Fight on!” you’ll get a “Hey, we enjoyed getting to know you. We’d love to recruit another fellow Trojan to the team!”
