A plea for roboticists

[Erin Rapacki]

Originally Posted by Adam Y.

Part of the reason also has to do with the fact that they dont hire people directly out of college. I'll have about 1.5 years of work experience but I don't think that would be enough to get the job right out of college.

Its unfortunate you think that way.

I was an intern at iRobot last year in Home Robots; while there, I made some friends on the G&I side and my senior project is in G&I... and get this, I'm not a Mechanical/Electrical/Software engineering student either! I'm Industrial Engineering (who wants a Mechanical Masters, but I'm not qualified to do hard-core design analysis work yet). My senior project is all mechanical, I learned how to machine/prototype/hack-design in FIRST... so that's enough for this round of project prototyping. My mechanical project partner is doing the hard-core analysis, but I'm coming up with the effective material-handling methodologies because, well, my frame of reference from FIRST and working at HSES, HSSI, DEKA, PW, Gillette, and iRobot has giving me a well-rounded view (of course, well rounded people are pointless). Actually, the reason why I'm a roboticist for a respectable company at such a young age is because I'm interested in the field, I have a hunch on where it will go in the next few years, and I'm crazy passionate about doing anything I can to push that field further into new products and development.

iRobot has an intern-to-full hire program to it where if you're right out of college and they don't know you, they'll hire you on as temporary for a few months (intern/contractor) then put you on full time if they like you.

It's worth a try; if you want the recruiter's information: PM me. He's always looking for talented/passionate people no matter what your academic/experience level is. The way they hire is: if you're smart and they like you're personality; they'll enjoy working with you and teach you what you need to know.

Act like a passionate roboticist, and you'll get paid to be one .