Tom Williams, 23, graduated from Full Sail University Orlando, Florida, in July of 2006. He had earned a BS in Video game Development and headed back to his home town in southern New Jersey to begin his job hunt.
“It was tough for me,” he said, remembering the start of his search for a job. “Their weren’t a lot of positions available at the time…Most companies look for two years experience.” Unfortunately for Tom, he had attended an accelerated college with rigorous hours. He hadn’t the time for internships while in school and once he was out, he couldn’t afford an unpaid internship. He needed a real job paying decent money.
Tom started his job hunt by pasting his resume to websites like Monster and Career Builder just to begin getting himself out there. He planned to bombard employers with his resume, sit back, and hope for a good hit. It didn’t work.
“I had to start working the small jobs [doing labor] and I worked for Drug Store.com in a factory line just to start paying off my school loans. In January I finally got a break, but that was seven or eight months later.”
His break was landing a job with Siemens Medical Solutions doing IT type of work (setting up databases, de-bugging software). Unfortunately, this wasn’t the type of work that Tom had intended to do with his degree in Video game Development. He wasn’t happy at Siemens and hoped something else would turn up.
Tom’s uncle works for a NJ branch of a company called Lockheed Martin. His uncle mentioned that they may be looking for computer programmers for another branch back in Orlando. He passed along Tom’s resume with a personal recommendation. Lockheed flew Tom down for interview in March 2007, and he found himself back in Orlando in May to begin working for the company.
