By Jackey Locke

When the call came from Tesla to do some in-person recruitment on Memorial’s St. John’s campus, Claire Avery was quick to answer.

“Over the past few years, I’ve seen first-hand how impactful working at Tesla has been for students,” said Ms. Avery, an academic staff member at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science’s Engineering Co-operative Education Office. “Our students integrate into Tesla’s mission and work environment seamlessly due to their strong backgrounds in co-op work experience, student teamwork and academic programs.

“When Tesla’s recruitment team reached out to let me know they were coming, our team went into full planning mode. We were excited to welcome them, especially in person, to help foster our growing relationship.”

Student focus

As a result of those efforts, engineers and recruiters from Tesla U.S. met with engineering and science students and others from the Memorial community on Sept. 26.

Kyle Liechty, Tesla talent recruiter (university relations), says Memorial has been “exceptional” to work with, which is one of the reasons they included Memorial in their four-day recruitment efforts in Canada.

“While recruitment is a focal point, we also want to create awareness and provide some guidance to students so that when a student is ready to apply, they have the resources to put together a robust application to ensure being seen by the hiring manager,” he said.

Tesla’s visit, which was held in the university’s Core Science Facility, included a meet and greet with members of the Memorial community followed by several student-focused events, such as mixers and presentations.

Mr. Liechty said his team’s conversations with students were all pathways to co-operative education, intern and entry-level employment placements.

He also added that Tesla is aiming to have a more active role and relationship with universities that they have engaged with over the years.

“We started running reports on where students were participating from and saw that consistently students from Memorial were one of the most active in terms of participation. We are also interested in visiting universities that are fun to work with and that have a population of students that are naturally a good fit for the roles we have.”

Tesla representatives also toured several electrical and computer engineering laboratories in the Core Science Facility.

‘Best suited for’

Zarin Tasnim is a fourth-year mechanical engineering student who was on the planning committee for the event.

“It’s so important to meet the people who actually work there and to learn from them why they love working there,” she said. “It’s also important to have an opportunity to have those frank discussions to figure out what team you may be most suited for and for Memorial to receive this recognition.”

Currently, there are seven engineering students on work terms at Tesla in Fremont, Calif., and Seattle, Wash.

More than 30 engineering students have completed work terms at the company since 2016 and approximately 15 Memorial engineering alumni are Tesla employees.