ExxonMobil focuses on finding the right fit

Whether you are a student or an employer, the recruiting and hiring process has a single objective: find the right fit for both the new employee and the company. To find that sweet spot, ExxonMobil actively engages the Department of Information Systems and its students.

If Margaret Needham, a security and controls advisor at ExxonMobil, could give one piece of advice to beginning information systems students, it would be this: your sophomore year is not too early to start planning for your internship, and yes, an internship is a critical part of the hiring process.

That advice is consistent with the company's approach: early investment to confirm a good fit and continued investment for employee growth.

In fact, the process of finding the right people for ExxonMobil careers starts even before student contact. The company is a member of the Department of Information Systems' Professional Advisory Board, a group representing some 25 companies that meets regularly with the department's leadership to advise on curriculum development, teaching techniques, recruiting and other topics.

The board "allows us to focus our recruiting efforts on a school that we are able to influence in terms of what sort of students they are producing," commented Joe Killalea, Program Manager, Upstream Information Technology, ExxonMobil Global Services Company, who also serves as the company's PAB representative. "We know that the sort of coursework and assignments that these students are getting mimics what's actually happening out in industry."

Hiring the whole person

For students, the hiring experience starts with Needham and her colleagues, who help them figure out what they need for career success early in their college studies and what to expect after they graduate. "There is a set of core competencies that we're looking at each time we are on campus," Needham said. "It's behavioral. We're primarily looking at their analytical skills, communications skills, creativity, ability, drive, perseverance, and how they demonstrate these attributes in different circumstances."

She wants to hear students articulate examples of occasions when they have displayed those qualities: in schoolwork, while working on teams and in leadership positions — whether that's scouts, volunteer work, church, a job or elsewhere. The idea is to determine whether there's a good overall fit with ExxonMobil. Students who lack those competencies — or cannot communicate them — will not be able to compete with other top students during the national recruitment process, Needham says.

It's a message Needham and Killalea repeat often, such as during their presentations to the Department of Information Systems Club. At the DISC meetings, companies get to know students, and students check out companies. They also work with students who reach out to them for advice. Though these talks are not formal mentoring, they do help students understand where they need to improve in order to increase their chances of getting noticed.

One hurdle that many students must get over is finding the right way to frame their strong team skills. Students receive experience working on teams for class projects, and those collaborative capabilities will be important on the job, but ExxonMobil wants to know their individual skills as well.

"We know you work in teams, but how do you work in teams? What do you do?" Needham asks them. "It can be difficult for some students to voice their personnel contributions — and we talk about it at DISC," she said. But, as Killalea quipped, "we're hiring an individual for a career," not the entire team.

The internship — and beyond

Increasingly, ExxonMobil is using its formal internship program as part of its recruiting and hiring process.

"We're placing a lot more emphasis on getting students into the internship program," Killalea said. "They get a chance to look at us, and we get to look at them."

All of the firm's IT internship decisions are made in the fall when full-time recruitment is completed.

"While the majority of our IT internships are filled with juniors/seniors, if you are a sophomore, you need to start attending career fairs and talking to companies you are interested in about an internship rather than waiting until when you are a junior or senior," Needham said. Students shouldn't worry about the courses they haven't taken yet. The student's core competencies will highlight whether or not they have the potential to perform to the company's expectations.

Within ExxonMobil, these internships are real jobs with real work, Killalea said. Interns are treated like full-time employees and are given a project that they are responsible for advancing while at the company. In addition, ExxonMobil exposes them to various parts of the business, through plant tours, speakers, etc.

That orientation process mirrors what an ExxonMobil new hire experiences. The company has a well-thought out program that helps new employees adjust to the culture, make friends and begin to develop their careers: some may not have experience working in a corporate environment, Killalea pointed out. Needham, who was hired after completing her Master of Science in Information Management degree at the W. P. Carey School, went through this comprehensive orientation program herself.

As soon as you are hired, Killalea said, you are assigned a buddy — a recently hired employee — who will help you find your way around the office and get a little bit comfortable with the city. You are also assigned a mentor, who helps you figure out career issues such as how best to work with your boss.

For their first two years, new IT employees also belong to NEON (New Employee Organization for Networking), an employee-run organization that hosts social events, facilitates networking and brings in speakers from all over the company who share their career stories, including the challenges they faced. Killalea said, "this interaction exposes the new employees to the broad range of career possibilities at ExxonMobil — areas where they might want to work." After their second year, employees segue into EXCITE (ExxonMobil Community of Information Technology Employees), another employee organization, where they continue to find help developing their careers.

As for the work itself, Killalea said that new graduates are given assignments where they have the opportunity to use their team skills, but are also given work for which they are personally responsible.

The attention to the interests and capabilities of individual employees makes an offer from ExxonMobil highly sought after by graduating students. What hopeful students need to remember, though, is that door begins to open long before the senior year — when students are still those eager, yet often tentative, sophomores.