How These New Graduates Landed Jobs Before They Graduated

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Dhimta Chowdhary, history, with minors in politics and in legal studies   

I’ll be an archival research fellow at the Holocaust Center on Post Street. I learned about this fellowship  in the email newsletter that the history department sends out.

My career advice to my first-year self? First, read your department’s emails! Second, ask your professors for help. Brian Wiener, Kouslaa Kessler-Mata, and Taymiya Zaman have helped me not just academically but with career guidance and with personal guidance that I’ve wanted as an international student. Third, you miss all the shots that you don’t take, so you need to take all the shots that you can. Apply everywhere, to every type of job, on campus or off-campus. Even more than subjects and classes, work experience helps you figure out what you actually want to do — and what you don’t want to do.

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Isabel Partida, nursing 

I’ll be a registered nurse at Kaiser Permanente in South San Francisco. My career advice? Get experience in the field you want to pursue. In my case, that would be work as a certified nursing assistant, a unit coordinator on a health-care floor, or a volunteer at a clinic. Anything in the health-care field to get in-patient experience. Also, use the resources that USF offers — like the career center for mock interviews and the learning center for tutoring.

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Mason Dougherty, finance

I’ll be a commercial real estate broker at Marcus & Millichap in Seattle. I found it on LinkedIn. My career advice: Use the mentorship program that the career center offers. In the fall of my junior year I was matched up with a mentor, a USF grad just two years older than me. He helped me a lot with submitting my resumes and giving me tips, like with keeping track of all the applications I was doing. I probably submitted 150 applications. I got a reply on about 10 percent of them. Marcus & Millichap got right back to me — maybe because I had USF on my resume.

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Rachel Rayon, sociology, with a minor in  legal studies 

I’ll be a case worker at the Bill Wilson Center, a nonprofit in Santa Clara. I’ll be working with runaway and homeless youth, helping them navigate resources such as medical care, mental health, job skills, housing, and legal needs.

My career advice? Start connecting with classmates and with people in the field. When you search for jobs online, go to Google search and type in specific roles in specific places rather than doing a broad search — my job popped up within the first five results. And ask your professors for help. Cecilia Santos told me to take things slow and not overwhelm myself. The job I got is a first step toward my long-term goal of going into law enforcement.

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Josiah Austin, accounting and finance   

I’ll be a family office associate in the San Jose location of Frank, Rimerman & Co., a CPA firm. A family office is comprehensive financial management for wealthy people.

I found this job through Handshake. I remember during orientation in freshman year, the head of career services mentioned Handshake and how useful it is, so I downloaded it. Then, in early fall of 2024 I sent out a bunch of applications for summer internships, mainly through Handshake, and Frank, Rimerman offered me an internship last summer. Through that internship, I landed a full-time position.

My advice: Start looking for internships now. There are all kinds of internships and part-time positions that are offered now for freshmen and sophomores going into their summers. Also, start learning Excel. Do it beyond Excel classes. Do it at home. Do it all day, because if you’re going into finance or anything in the financial world, you’re going to be using Excel.

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Arya Srivastava ’25, computer science with an AI concentration

I’ll be a software engineer at Kohl’s Technology. I work with design, product, and other software engineers to build apps that make life easier for Kohl’s customers and associates. I did my first internship there last year, and then got a second internship this year and then a full-time offer.

I first learned about Kohl’s at the Grace Hopper Conference. It’s this big conference for women and non-binary technologists looking to get their start in tech careers. I got a scholarship from the computer science department’s Women in Tech club to attend that conference.

My career advice: Step out of your comfort zone and really interact with people here on campus, as well as in the city. Join clubs like Women in Tech and the Association for Computing Machinery. Go to networking events. Go to conferences and bring back what you learned. Check out the Horizon Collective. Interact with your professors — Paul Haskell, Phil Peterson, Kelsey Urgo.

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Evana Pradhan, computer science 

I’ll be working at CoStar Group in Sunnyvale as an associate software engineer. If you’ve heard of Homes.com and Apartments.com, and if you’ve used their 3D virtual touring platform, that’s the technology I’ll be working on.

To land this job, it was a long journey. I worked at Girls Who Code for two summers after my freshman and my sophomore years. And then in my junior year, after a lot of searching and a lot of rejection, I landed an internship at a tech startup at the prototype stage — fully unpaid.

My advice: Take the opportunities that come your way, even the ones that don’t look attractive. I didn’t want to take that unpaid internship because it felt like settling, but it gave me the experience I needed to land this job at CoStar.

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Natalie Thorpe, art history & museum studies 

I’m a preparator, archivist, and registrar at the Maybaum Gallery in San Francisco. I started there as an intern last summer.

My career advice: Listen to yourself. See what gets you energized. I started in psychology. Then I switched to design. But at the same time, I took an art history class with Nathan Dennis, and the light went on. I’ve always loved going to museums. I’ve always loved looking at art, trying to understand it. And I realized that in art history I can do what excites me from psychology, and I can also learn more about what it means to create and what I want to create. Every time I go to the gallery, I’m inspired. Every time I learn about a new piece of art from a new era, I’m inspired. I feel like part of a really strong community in the art history department, just being nerds together and liking what we like.

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Liam Casserly, economics 

I’ll be a firefighter for the San Francisco Fire Department. My first year at USF, I was thinking about a career in business or maybe in analytics. But then COVID happened and essential workers were very publicized in the media — EMTs, paramedics, firefighters, nurses, doctors. I decided I wanted to be one of them. So I got my EMT certification and worked on an ambulance, then I went the firefighting route.

My career advice: Keep your eyes open and your options open. When I started at USF, I did not expect to become a firefighter, and now I can’t see myself doing anything else. But I don’t regret going to college. Far from it. I was hired by SFFD because I was on my way to getting a bachelor’s degree. Also, USF teaches communication and public speaking and how to work on a team — all things that you really need in any profession. I’ll use those skills for life, in whatever I do.