Talk to any co-op at Waterloo and they’ll tell you that the best, and the worst, thing about Waterloo is co-op. Sure, you get the opportunity to work with some of the best companies around (anywhere), and if you’re lucky (or in Engineering) you can graduate without any debt – but it can be quite the load to carry when things get busy.

This term, that meant showing up for 9 Employer Information Sessions, 2 group interviews, and 12 individual interviews (the individual interviews were 8 hours all on their own). Then you’ve got to add in the time to go through the job postings (over 1000 for CE/SE/CS majors this term), to update your resume, and, well, it’s quite the busy time.

On the flip side, the hard work really does pay off – or it least it did for me this term. Of the 14 companies I applied to, I was offered the opportunity to interview for positions with 9 of them. And of the 9 positions I interviewed for, I received offers for 8 of them – an 88% conversion rate from interview to offer. Not bad!

For the astute readers out there, yes, the photo above is taken directly from UW’s Jobmine system, and yes, the legible entry is the offer I’ve accepted. That’s right – I’ll be going to work for Microsoft as a Software Development Engineer (Intern). We’re still figuring out which team I’ll be working on, though both the C# Compiler and WPF teams have shown some interest.

Of course, with 8 offers and only one co-op term, I did have to turn down offers with some other awesome companies to have a go at Microsoft. That meant turning down nVidia, Amazon, and Morgan Stanley – some big names there – as well as some lesser known companies offering positions ranging from data graphics to usability/product design. If only I had more than two co-op terms left!

Redmond, here I come!