For some time, Cadence had an informal internship program: if managers wanted to hire an intern, then they could. But it was not formalized and it wasn't very consistent. As the Cadence Academic Network grew and went global, a few years ago we took the best of what was being done informally and created CHIP, the College Hire and Internship Program. Ann Mai came on board to run it. There are several motivations for having an internship program. Obviously, when things go well, the intern likes Cadence and we like the intern, and they come onboard as a full-time employee. Even if interns do not join full-time, they are evangelists for Cadence wherever they go. This is particularly the case for interns who are not available for "instant hire" because they haven't finished their course and graduated, be it a bachelor's degree, master's degree, or a Ph.D. After a summer at Cadence they will go back to school (and, hopefully, join Cadence after graduation). Cadence Hire a Lot of Interns Back in 2013, Cadence hired 166 interns during the year. Last year, 2016, that was almost doubled to 308. So far in 2017, we have hired 218 interns. As you can see from the photographs through this post, these are not just in San Jose (or even just in the US). Intern Showcase (Please visit the site to view this video) With the 10 year anniversary of the Cadence Academic Network coming up (which I wrote about in yesterday's post, see Cadence Academic Network Is Ten Years Old ), I sat down a couple of weeks ago with Patrick and Ann to find out more about the intern program. I had already attended the Intern Showcase in the cafeteria earlier in the summer. I was surprised when I walked into the cafeteria by two things. First, there were about 40 interns showing off what they had worked on in the poster session, I had no idea how big the program was (and that was just San Jose, it wasn't like we were flying interns in from India and China for a couple of hours). Secondly, I assumed all interns were in engineering, but one of the first interns I talked to was in purchasing, which would have been pretty much the last department where I would expect to find an intern. Interns are all over the company in engineering, of course. But a lot in sales and application engineering (WFO in Cadence-speak), plus a sprinkling in other parts of the company. The video above shows more of the Intern Showcase. Other Intern Events During the "intern year", especially in summer, Cadence organized 84 events around the world. Obviously, Ann can't do all this single-handed from San Jose, so there are champions for interns at other sites. Some of the events are social (interns like beer too) but many are to help with professional development, and some are community service events. Career Day One thing we did for the first time was to have a full-blown career day. Interns met Cadence recruiters to sharpen their résumé. An expert talked about job-search tools that are available. There was a panel with Cadence employees who were recent graduates and had been "converted" from intern to employee. Then, in the afternoon, LinkedIn came and told everyone the best practices for putting their (obviously limited) track-record on LinkedIn, which recruiters in much of the world use as a primary tool today. There was a photographer there, so every intern walked away with a professional headshot to go with their revamped LinkedIn profile. I am not going to discuss compensation in detail on a blog post like this. But having read about unpaid interns in journalism and politics, I asked Patrick, "We do pay our interns, right?" He told me that it is company policy that we never have unpaid interns. So, yes, we do compensate our interns (although I won't pretend that riches beyond avarice await them). Becoming an Intern If you are interested in becoming an intern at Cadence or being hired into an entry-level job, we have a special page for you. Cadence has a lot of job openings at any given time, so it is frustrating for a new graduate to wade through lists of jobs that require several years experience in circuit extraction, high-level synthesis or whatever. This is the general Careers page, but here is the special page for Interns and College Grads . Sign up for Sunday Brunch, the weekly Breakfast Bytes email.![]()
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