[Peter Matteson]

My co-op at Pratt & Whitney was through WPI's career development center. I interviewed and didn't really have a clue what I was doing then.

The next summer I got my job at Eaton's Naval Controls Division through a career fair on campus talking to the Eaton rep who set me up for an interview.

The summer after that my cousin had started working at International Fuel Cells and said I should send in my resume for an internship. I interviewed and they brought me in for the summer.

I went back to school for one more quarter that fall of 2001. I graduated that October after 9/11 and when I started interviewing I used the "shotgun method" take as many interview as I could and hoped one worked out because no one knew if they could hire because the economy was in the toilet, but they still wanted to interview just in case. I ended up having 5 job offers to mull over by the first week of December. 3 were defense contractors hiring on speculation one is a commercial sponser of FIRST and the job I ended up taking at International Fuel Cells which has since changed its name to UTC Fuel Cells.

To speed up getting an interview I called the connections made during my internship at IFC because I had a limited time on the other offers and I knew that this was the environment I wanted to work in. They brought me in, interviewed me and then a couple weeks later gave me an offer in a different department. I took the job and have now been here full time for 4 years.

Pete