Originally posted by Homer LeMar:
...the people at the career center at my school, they dont seem to allow you the opportunity to talk to companies whose qualifications you dont match exactly (been my experience at least).
You want me to go down there? Cuz I will!
These people are
WRONG.
I would seriously push them on this. I felt like the number of companies available through the university placement office was more than I could ever reach on my own. And that was my single biggest factor in getting good results.
Your placement office should not be making this call,
you should insist that they
at least ask these recruiters whether they will consider bending their requirements to interview you. Like I mentioned before, nearly all of the recruiters were happy to interview me when I got past the placement office's filter process.
The filter is there to keep out the truly undesirables, the fine arts majors looking to interview with NASA
. The companies come to the universities with the lure of a well-filtered candidate pool. But you are not what these companies want to filter out.
From the business world, I can tell you I'd rather work with someone with your background, and a SCJP, than someone with a CS degree and only 1 semester of
Java doing academic projects.
One other thought: you should know what you
don't bring to the table. When you get into an interview with a company that is primarily looking at CS majors, be prepared for the questions regarding the tyes of classes you didn't take.... database theory, OO analysis and design, operating systems, data structures/algorithms, ... If you've read up on those types of topics, you can put at ease the recruiter that's on the
fence about your major.
alright, enough out of me. Good luck on your search.
-- Jon