Karla Valcarcel Martinez

When did you get your first Big Break? How did you get it? How did it go?

I was in my third year of college and I knew I needed an internship in order to advance myself in my career. However, I was pretty scared of going to the job fair since I didn't have any prior experience in the work field, but I went anyway. I prepared myself for all kinds of questions, I took my resumé to the English Writing Center a couple of times, went to company info-sessions weeks before the job fair, and finally picked out the most professional outfit I had in my closet. The day of the job fair, I was there about an hour before it started, anxious and scared. Once inside, I picked up a pamphlet and made a list of all the companies recruiting Computer Engineering majors and I went straight to all of them. My first "Big Break" was in the line for Medtronic, which is a Biomedical Engineering company in Puerto Rico that was recruiting Information Technology interns. I spoke to the recruiter and we had similar interests in terms of our career and I leveraged all of my extra-curricular activities as leadership experience, which the recruiter absolutely loved. About a week later, I got a second interview and, before I knew it, a job offer was in my e-mail. It was the most terrifying experience of my life, I was so nervous and anxious, but I just focused on the goal, which was to get my first experience and learn as much as I could from it.