Intel's Rotation Engineers Program (REP): Creating a prepared, well-connected future for CGs

From day one at Intel you’re told, as Andy Grove famously once said, “own your own employability.” You hold the key to promotions, becoming a manager, and earning your own raises. You’re even encouraged to change job positions every few years to keep your mind fresh and working in new and challenging areas. But as a college grad (CG) starting out at Intel, all of these are probably the last things on your mind. As a current CG, I find it to be a pretty overwhelming and challenging task trying to prepare myself for the near and distant future at Intel. To help you prepare, Intel’s CG program does an excellent job providing CG’s with the appropriate tools and information to start building your future. As an additional resource to Intel’s CG program, I am a member of Intel’s Rotation Engineers Program (REP). I’d like to share with you some of the “not so obvious” ways the REP is helping prepare me for a successful career at Intel.

First, I would like to point out how the REP made it easy for me to transition to Intel. As a CG moving to a new city thousands of miles away from home where I had little to no friends or family and starting a new job, I had plenty of problems to face and a ton of questions to ask. “How will I get all my stuff there?”, “Where should I live?”, “What is there to do for fun?”, “How can I prepare for Intel?”...and the list of questions goes on. Months before I even started at Intel, the REP assigned me a “buddy” to help with everything and anything. My buddy helped me find a place to live, get my belongings to my new apartment, showed me around the city, identified fun things to do and see, and even setup a schedule for my first few days at Intel. It made my move to Oregon really smooth and easy, and allowed me to focus a lot of my time and energy into transitioning into Intel and getting started on the right foot.

Second, the REP made it effortless to find peers in a similar situation as myself and make friends. In fact, after my first day I had already met the current class of rotation engineers (REs) and made a handful of entirely new friends. It’s nice to know that by joining the REP, you’ve already got a group of friends who eat lunch together, plan hiking, go carting, and skiing trips (to name a few), and occasionally get together for happy hour. It not only helps socially outside of Intel, but inside as well. Quite a few REs have different backgrounds, and thus work in different business groups within Intel. Having these connections provides me with a bigger picture of what’s going on at Intel and allows me to hear about different parts of Intel that I normally wouldn’t be exposed to.

Finally, I have come to find out that Intel is all about networking, networking, and more networking. Whether it be finding your final position or looking for a career change, building a strong network of peers is a key and fundamental attribute and the REP provides just that. Joining the REP instantly gave me access to a vast network of current and past rotation engineers across all Intel sites (REP is available in Hillsboro, OR; Folsom, CA; Santa Clara, CA; Chandler, AZ; and Rio Rancho, NM). The program hosts numerous networking and social events making it easy for current rotation engineers to network and engage with REP alumni. I’ve had no problem making connections through these events, other REs, or through my rotations. As an RE, I soon came to realize that my network is already there, the REP has built it, and I just have to connect to it.

Please follow this linkfor more information on the REP.

If you have additional questions, feel free to leave them in the comments! I will try to answer as many as I can!