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Engineers in Energy share career fair insights

Career fair season can be stressful for engineering students. Check out this advice from former students currently on the ExxonMobil recruiting team for making those quick career-fair interviews count.

You are here: Home / Internship experience / Engineers in Energy share career fair insights

September 1, 2023 By: Guest Blogger

Interested in attending a career fair?

Did you know the SEC Career Fair is the largest student-run career fair in the nation? Our engineering students can seek internships, co-ops and full-time positions from over 500 companies.

SEC Career Fair
The SEC Career Fair with hundreds of students and booths

I graduated from Texas A&M University in the fall of 2019. Early in 2020, I started working with ExxonMobil.

I used my petroleum engineering degree during my time as a reservoir engineer for our North Dakota “Bakken” asset. We focused on forecasting production, optimizing completion designs and economics. Coincidentally, my senior design project within petroleum engineering was to evaluate the Bakken asset.

Headshot of Phoebe Ho-Stone

Fast forward to today, and I have joined our low carbon solutions group. I am now working on CO2 sequestration. The fundamentals of subsurface characteristics, injection well design, pressures and temperatures remain relevant to my degree. It is exciting to work on low carbon projects. However, the energy transition at scale is a massive undertaking, and we’re going to need the ideas, energy and talent of students like you.

As engineering students, career fair season can be very stressful. As a member of the ExxonMobil recruiting team, here’s my advice:

  • Practice articulating your experiences in a clear manner – we know you’ve accomplished great things at your internships, class projects, etc. Think about how to distill it down to something easily digestible by someone who may not have the background. Help us understand the key contributions you made and how they impacted the broader team/project.
  • Research the company before approaching the career fair booth – even if it’s reading about the company online while you’re in line at the career fair. Knowing about the company ahead of time and asking specific questions is a much better use of your and the recruiter’s time. Just think of how many “What does your company do” questions one career fair recruiter gets in a day. More specific questions would make those career fair booth discussions much more interesting for both of you.

During my time at ExxonMobil, I have worked as an instrumentation and controls engineer, electrical engineer and served as an engineering supervisor in our Product Solutions company. Now, I work as an automation projects advisor.

I believe there is a misconception that the most important skills we get from our engineering degrees are technical. In reality, the soft skills we learn from navigating our college careers prepare us the most for our full-time careers.

Headshot of Ibk Eweje

In the process of successfully getting an engineering degree, students need to learn discipline, hard work, collaboration with peers, clear communication in presentation and conflict resolution. These are important life lessons that are applicable to any industry, and true mastery of these skills strongly correlates to career success.

At the beginning of my career, I thought I needed to work hard to always be the smartest person in the room, and my sole focus was trying to outwork everyone else so I could look “better” than them. It took some life lessons and self-reflection to realize I didn’t need to be the smartest person in the room but could learn how to bring the ideas of experts together and be the facilitator of great ideas instead of the generator.

ExxonMobil is one of the 500+ companies attending the Fall 2023 Student Engineers’ Council Career Fair. Please visit the SEC website for more information and to view the schedule. 

Headshot of Phoebe Ho-Stone

Guest Blogger: Former Student, Phoebe Ho-Stone ’19

Petroleum Engineering

Low Carbon Solutions Development Planner at ExxonMobil

Headshot of Ibk Eweje

Guest Blogger: Former Student, Ibk Eweje ’13

Electrical Engineering

Automation Projects Advisor at ExxonMobil

If you found this blog post interesting, you may consider reading “How I broke into an industry I knew nothing about” and “3 steps to land an internship.”

Topics: Internship experience, Student life

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