Tesla ranked hottest place to work for young job seekers

Tesla is currently the most sought-after company for young job seekers. According to the Wall Street Journal, "On Handshake, a student career-services app... nine million student and alumni users showed Tesla received more job and internship applications than any other company [of the 275,000-plus employers] on the app in the 2016-2017 academic year."

Above: Recent graduates are applying for jobs at Tesla in record-braking numbers (Image: Tesla)

In addition, interest in the company is on the rise. It's reported that, "Tesla collected nearly a half-million applications last year, about double the volume in 2016, according to a company spokeswoman." Cindy Nicola, vice president of global recruiting at Tesla, told the Wall Street Journal, "Our interest from candidates continues to grow year over year."

And new employees often eschew larger salary packages from other companies in order to work at Tesla. One example cited was 29-year-old "Kiran Karunakaran [who] says he was making $80,000 a year at a Philadelphia electronics company when Tesla offered him $95,000 and stock options to become an engineer in 2015. Though Apple made him a $115,000 offer around the same time... Mr. Karunakaran took the Tesla job. He said the decision was a no-brainer."

“What really attracts young people to Tesla is instant gratification,” Mr. Karunakaran said. “You see these incredible things you’ve worked on come to fruition, on the road, in months,” he said. Many share this view — other Tesla employees said they've turned away offers from companies like Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo and Uber Technologies Inc. that were 20% to 50% above their Tesla salaries.

Above: Trying to get in the door at Tesla (Image: Tesla)

The Wall Street Journal also interviewed, "Anusha Atluri, a second-year M.B.A. student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, [who] spent the summer as an intern on Tesla’s Model 3 assembly line in Fremont. Partway through the summer, Ms. Atluri spotted a way to tweak a step in the manufacturing line that she thought might speed up production."

As a next step, "She put together a PowerPoint presentation for the rest of the team and, encouraged by the response, she suggested following up the next week with management to discuss implementing the change. 'They were like, why not just try it tomorrow?' she said. The process changed the next day, and within a week the line was running more efficiently."

Landon Kupfer, a 23-year-old San Jose native adds, "Getting a job there was pretty exciting... We’d get one goal to work toward, we’d hit that goal, then, Boom!—it didn’t even matter—let’s go to the next thing." It's reported that many of Tesla's 45,000 workers enjoy the "adrenaline, stock options and a shared passion with the company’s leader to change the world."

Above: A looks at Tesla's production line at the Fremont factory (Image: Tesla)

It turns out that Tesla draws from a deep pool of schools — often with an emphasis on mechanical engineers and technicians. At Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Boston, the company held an invitation-only session with 60 students who peppered Tesla reps with questions about car assembly and production issues. “They were jumping out of their skin excited to be there,” said Dave Ortendahl, the school career center’s director of corporate relations.

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Source: Wall Street Journal