The Rice Business Career Development Office (CDO) will be an essential partner as you work towards a career in tech. During the summer before your first semester, the CDO offers an alumni panel dedicated to technology, and past panels have featured alums working at Dell, HPE, Facebook/Meta and Apple. Each fall, there is a Technology Career Connections event that brings together students and recruiters in the technology industry, organized by the CDO’s dedicated relationship manager for tech companies. Throughout the year, the CDO also offers career education workshops designed for students interested in product management roles in technology.
And while there is plenty of access to tech companies at home in Houston, the CDO also hosts an annual Austin trip, where students can network with Rice Business alumni at tech companies with outposts in that city, including Dell, Facebook, Indeed.com, Rackspace, Oracle, Tesla and eBay.
Jessica Campbell, the executive director of the CDO, also recommends that students interested in tech careers utilize the office’s technology career communities site. “On this page, the CDO team curates career development information, job search strategies, articles and resources specifically for the technology industry,” Heavilin says. “Students can also view alumni that work in the technology sector and have active profiles on the Rice University online networking platform, Sallyportal.”
The CDO collaborates with the Student Technology Association to host networking and panel events, plus networking trips to San Francisco and Seattle.
Beyond the alumni networking events and trips to other tech hubs, the Student Technology Association also helps prepare members for careers in the field with skill development workshops in statistical analysis programs Tableau, SQL and R.