Tag Archives: Google

HBA Company Field Trip Takes Students to San Francisco

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HBA Company Field Trip Takes Students to San Francisco

Written by Michelle Zhang

This past weekend, BHP students traveled to San Francisco, California to tour tech giants Google, Facebook, and Adobe, and to see the sights. Despite the gloomy clouds and uncharacteristically rainy days, students enjoyed visiting company campuses, hearing from alumni panels, and taking in the laid-back California scene.

Visiting the Facebook office.

The first company visit was to Facebook, where they received a warm welcome from BHP and Plan II alumna Surveen Singh and were given a comprehensive tour of the Facebook campus. Designed by Disneyland engineers, the campus was illuminated by vibrant, colorful walls and typographic signs showing off the various restaurants and amenities available to employees (including a dentistry, barbershop, and dry cleaners!). Students were particularly excited to spend a few minutes in the arcade, stocked full of old-school games such as Street Fighter and Dance Dance Revolution. The tour concluded with an alumni meet-and-greet at the Sweet Shop, where students and BHP graduates chatted over plates of smores cupcakes and lemon poppyseed bars.

The group outside of the Google office.

Next on the list was Google, where alumna Elyse May provided a quick walk-around tour of the Googleplex campus. Immediately hit by the scent of the food trucks parked outside, students continued through the fields of lawn chairs and volleyball courts — all painted Google primary colors, of course — and past such eccentricities as a large-scale model of a dinosaur skeleton. Back in the building, an alumni panel greeted students and answered questions ranging from undergraduate degree focuses to work culture.

Last on the company visits was Adobe, where students got to see the clean, modern architectural layout of the offices and amenities. The tour showed off Adobe’s recreation center, which featured ping-pong tables and large television screens, as well as its affordable and delicious cafeteria. Students spent some time at the earthquake-proof skybridge, peering out over the San Francisco landscape, before heading into the employee panel full of representatives from departments ranging from HR to finance. After the panel, students munched on some light appetizers and networked at tables with the employees on the panel, getting to ask some more in-depth questions about their experiences at Adobe.

Students in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Afterwards, students headed off into the city on their own that Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Popular destinations included the Golden Gate Bridge, Haight-Ashbury district, Ghiradelli Square, and Chinatown. For dinner, students met up at Firenze by Night in Little Italy to enjoy a five-course meal with various BHP alumni working in the area.

Come Sunday, students left the vibrant Bay Area to head back home, now dreaming of summer internships in sunny San Francisco on the creative campuses of Facebook, Google, and Adobe. Thanks to HBA Financial Committee for putting on a great CFT!

Alumni Spotlight: Tera Highbarger Hogan, Class of 2004

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Alumni Spotlight: Tera Highbarger Hogan, Class of 2004

TeraTera Highbarger Hogan, BHP 2004, is the incoming chair of the BHP Advisory Board. Tera is currently a Staffing/Recruiting Manager for Google, based out of their Austin office. Before joining Google, Tera was a management consultant at Accenture for many years and worked for Novotus, both in the area of program management.

Why did you decide to get involved through serving on the BHP Advisory Board and do you have any goals for your time as chair of the advisory board?

I really enjoyed my time in BHP and valued the programs that BHP offered. As an alum I want to be a part of making sure our great base of alumni is doing what it can to support the program. During my term, I will look for ways that alumni can provide more support and help to the program and how we can raise the profile of the program nationally. I would love to see more out-of-state applicants and more diversity of in-state applicants.

You had many roles at Accenture and stayed there for eight years. What did you most enjoy about working for Accenture and how did you develop professionally during that time?

What I enjoyed most about my time at Accenture was getting to see a variety of types of work and clients. I was exposed to a breadth and depth of businesses early on in my career. I was also fortunate to have a lot of client relationships at senior levels, especially considering how early I was in my career. Each project was different than the one before. I had to come in and learn a new area, identify what the clients’ needs were and be able to deliver on those. Throughout my experience at Accenture, I built my client relationship and program management skills and ensured that the clients’ needs were met.

You spent the majority of your career in program management and then switched to recruiting. What prompted that change?

I loved my time at Accenture and wouldn’t change that for anything. It was a great place to start my career. I had been doing the same thing for a while though, and I was interested in other types of work and in being in a business, instead of just being a consultant for one. I was also looking to get off the road and spend more time in Austin. I decided to take a job with Novotus, a recruiting firm where I was still leveraging the program management and client relationship management skills I had built.

I have always been most interested in the people side of business. When I was working for Accenture, I enjoyed career development with my staff and recruiting activities, so I was drawn in by these parallels and the opportunity to spend more focus on people.

What are the challenges of recruiting and staffing for a company the size of Google?

The volume, scale and complexity of Google is a challenge in everything we do. Google is looking to hire the best of the best for each and every role. There is such a variety of things at which people excel and for which they could be a good fit. Matching people with their perfect dream job, not just the next job, is our goal.

My teams are focused on passive candidates – people who haven’t applied, but that we have gone out and found because they are the best in their field. We get in touch with them and get to know them, to find out what they are interested in pursuing. We find out what they are passionate about and what their goals are to see if we can make that happen for them at Google.

Google has long been considered one of the best and most fun places to work. How do you sell your recruits on working there and what do you enjoy about working there?

We sell our recruits more on the work they will be doing. The fun is certainly a piece of it, but what they are most interested in is working on cool, challenging projects and how they can really change the world by what they will be working on. It is a fun, laid back environment to work in with free meals on campus, scooters – all those fun things. We work hard, but we also have fun.

As a recruiter, what advice do you have for students interviewing for jobs and internships?

Do your homework on the company and be yourself during the interview. They are assessing if you are a good fit for the job as much as you are assessing if it is a job you would want. You will be doing this job 40 hours a week, at least, so you want something that is a good fit and that you will enjoy. Also, don’t stress so much, it will all work out!! It’s easy to get wrapped up in thinking this is what you will be doing forever, but that isn’t the case, and really you’re looking for the best starting point for you (which won’t be the same as everyone else).

How did BHP prepare you for the work you have been doing?

The small classes and project focus of BHP prepare you for the real world because that’s how the real world is structured. You have to work with others to solve problems. There are also many times when you will have to work with people you don’t have authority over and in school you practice that when working with peers on group projects.

What are some of your best memories from your time at UT?

Making new and lifelong friends, and spending time with those friends. Also having a flexible daily schedule, which you don’t get when you start working. I have been in a book club with some of my BHP friends who live in different cities, and even different continents, for over 10 years now. The BHP friends you make are always going to be people who understand things you are facing in your career and will be there to provide great advice and guidance, because they are probably walking down a similar career path to you, even if it is in a different industry.

BHP Management Professor to Serve as Faculty-in-Residence at Google

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BHP Management Professor to Serve as Faculty-in-Residence at Google

Ethan_BurrisManagement Professor Ethan Burris will spend three months at Google this summer as a faculty-in-residence for their People & Innovation Lab (PiLab), a part of their People Analytics group. Dr. Burris will be designing and executing research projects related to managing employee voice – ideas and feedback given by employees. He will also be working with Google to create interventions such as policies, trainings and workshops based on the data received from his research.

Google’s People Analytics group employs a number of scientists collecting data from Google employees in an effort to base HR decisions on actual employee data. Dr. Burris is only the second faculty-in-residence ever in the People Analytics group for Google. The appointment will be the first time he has been able to focus solely on a single research project since graduate school and he is really looking forward to taking a break from juggling his many faculty priorities here at UT and focusing on research for a set amount of time.

The specifics of the research Burris will be conducting are yet to be determined, but will focus around his work on employee voice. His research on the topic has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review.

Employees at Google have a more active voice than those at many other companies and one area Burris will be researching is why Google employees feel more empowered to speak up so the company doesn’t lose that culture as they continue to grow. He will also be looking into whether there are pockets of employees they don’t hear from. After he compiles and reviews the research, he will be serving in a consulting role, helping them determine how to act on the feedback they receive and what new practices they might adopt.

Burris looks forward to publishing his research and sharing more about the experience with future students in his class. BHP Senior Rachel Solomon was a student in Burris’s Organizational Behavior class and thinks his experiences at Google will be a great supplement to the curriculum. “The BHP case-based curriculum is so valuable because it shows us how to apply the somewhat abstract theories we learn in class to the working world. But when a professor incorporates his or her own experience with a company, it is even more motivating and engaging because we can ask them more specific and in-depth questions,” she said.

Internship Spotlight: Michael Valdez – BHP Junior

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Internship Spotlight: Michael Valdez – BHP Junior

BHP junior, Michael Valdez, knew beginning his freshman year that he wanted to do an internship with Google. Starting the search for an internship early paid off when Michael was offered an intern position at the Google headquarters in Mount View, California. Michaels tells how his initial plans were to continue on to law school, but after a summer in Silicon Valley, life as a Googler may prove more persuasive.

Location: Mt. View, CA

Title: BOLD (Building Opportunities in Leadership Development) Intern

What steps did you take to secure your internship?

I started the summer after my freshman year. I participated in BOLD Immersion, where Google invites college freshmen to their headquarters to meet and greets to feel you out and get to know you. I applied for the BOLD Internship that following November. This specific internship has an expedited application process; there are no essays, but a lot of interviews. I knew exactly what team I wanted to be a part of so I made sure I did a lot of research and prepared for every interview.

What were the responsibilities for this role?

I worked with the Google Grants Team, which donates AdWords to non-profit organizations. My role was to use statistics to help the team out and look at the program as a whole. I used a lot of statistics, data analysis and Excel.

Describe the culture within the organization.

Unique. The biggest part was the transparency, being open and honest with both Google users and employees. We made a dedicated effort to allow employees to be open and give feedback. There wasn’t any sort of Ivory Tower feeling. My boss worked on the ground floor. I had access to my manager and my manager’s manager. I was able to meet and have lunch with the VP and SVP of my department. There are no closed-door offices; the people were welcoming and easy to talk to.

What was most surprising or unexpected thing you experienced?

It was better than college. I honestly didn’t think any job would be better than college. Google had a college vibe with free food and transportation. Employees even call the workplace “campus.”

What advice would you offer your peers in the Honors Program about getting the most out of an internship?

It’s most important to be assertive in meeting people when you get there. I would constantly try to set up lunch and coffee appointments with people within Google. Not just recruiters, but people in other departments too. Go out and just really enjoy your experience. Don’t just get to know the people in your area and pigeon-hole yourself. Silicon Valley is especially open to that type of culture.

How did you find classes in the Business Honors Program to be applicable during your internship?

A lot of things I was doing I realized — wow, I just took a final on this six weeks ago. I used a lot of things I learned in Statistics 371H such as regression analysis, data analysis. Really just math in general was useful. Professor Kumar was awesome. He did a good job of getting that material drilled into our heads and really making sure we were ready to take on these roles.

How did this organization ensure you got the most out of your internship experience?

Google pulled out all of the stops. You’re assigned to a mentor that has nothing to do with your job, just to help integrate you into the Google community and show you around. Then you have a manager that sets your objectives and helps you with what you need to do your job. I met with my manager day-to-day and discussed my OKR objectives and key results. Interns are also grouped into a BOLD Team, which sets up classes for you to go to weekly and listen to executive speakers. There were tons of events put on for BOLD interns.

How did this internship affect or influence your future career?

Right now my major is Management Information Systems (MIS) and my original plan was to continue on to law school. However, after my experience in the tech world I now realizeI’m not going to law school. I feel really good about my tech skills, like coding. Google is really good about getting you comfortable around technology and keeping you confident in knowing what you’re doing. I really like the tech world and I really like Silicon Valley. I hope to go back next summer.

What are the most valuable lessons you gained from this internship?

Communication is probably the best means of advancing yourself in your internship no matter what you’re doing. Communicating with your team about what you’re doing and being collaborative is the key to success. Being able to create well-written emails is so important to an internship or really any job. It’s not about your area of expertise, but how well you’re able to communicate those findings.