"Mentoring is not an option, but rather its essential in developing the next generation of technical professionals. I know I speak for all my colleagues at IBM when I say how excited we are about the IBM-NCSU Pathfinder Mentoring Program. NCSU is a great school with great students, and we're all benefitting from this program."
Dr. Tom Bradicich, IBM Fellow and VP Systems Technology
Executive Sponsor, IBM-NCSU Pathfinder Mentoring Program
If you were there, you might agree with the following statements from attendees. If you missed the event, we hope these quotes encourage you to not miss the next one. Keep an eye on the calendar page for our upcoming events.
We would love to hear more. Send us an e-mail.
Success Story
One of the 2008-2009 participants shared her feedback on her mentor and the program ... [read more]
General Feedback:
- During the events, I got to see many things relevant to the career I am looking forward to.
- Enjoyed the exposure to the views of professionals working in the field I want to work in.
- Valuable to step through mentor’s experience in choosing a job. I felt hearing about his job decision experience was particularly helpful and relevant.
- The planned events were very informative. I didn't attend two of them because I didn't think they were relevant to my interests – I eventually found out that it would have been worthwhile for me to attend.
A Quality Focus: Modular/Blades Sys Superlab Tour
- xSeries and BladeCenter Superlab Tour -- that was really cool. I didn’t know IBM had labs that big.
IBM Design Center Tour
- I attended the Design Center presentation today at IBM and was very impressed. It was very inspiring to see the kind of things that IBM has been doing and am very interested in this association with IBM as part of the Mentor program. Looking forward to more such programs! Thank you.
- I attended today's event at IBM. I must say, it was excellent. The campus was overwhelming and it was inspirational. I really enjoyed it and I would have greatly regretted it if I had missed it. Thank you very much for arranging this. I look forward to all future events.
- I really enjoyed the tour of the lab. It seems that IBM is involved is some very innovative designs. I especially liked your design of the hand-held New York Stock Exchange device for traders. The problem solving process was ingenious.
- This program is awesome and that it is such an opportunity to be able to participate.
- I didn't know that IBM did all of those things [referring to the variety of handheld products that were on display].
- I was impressed by the amount of customer interaction that went into the product design. I didn't know that engineers had so much opportunity to interact with customers.
- It was good to see entire product cycle...to see how things are done.
How to be Your Best Advocate: Mock Interview Sessions
- Thank you so much for organizing the mock interview session today. I received many invaluable tips at the session, which I'm sure will come in useful in the coming days. Also wanted to thank all the managers for taking time out from their busy schedules to come for the event today.
- The mock interview session … was very helpful and enlightening. [The interviewer] had been very kind to work with me even after the session ended, for explaining to me the different certifications I could take to improve my career opportunities and also had reviewed my resume and gave me pointers on how to improve it. He had also explained to about the Blade servers and the storage system with explanation on how VMware works for virtualization. The session was really a great help and I really thank you and [the interviewer] for helping me out for taking your time out to mentor me and hope to have more enlightening sessions like these in the future.
Getting to Where You Are: Career Panel Discussion
- The Career Panel Discussion was amazing to know people of IBM coming from different technologies, different backgrounds, different experience but contributing for just ONE cause .. Innovation !!
