NJIT Alums from Computing, Engineering, Management Succeed at CGI
Alumni from NJIT are impressing Mike Reagan, who leads 250 people for the New York/New Jersey region of international technology consultancy CGI Inc., because the Highlanders among them stand out for backing up solid training with invaluable soft skills.
“They have risen to be the cream of the crop,” said Reagan, senior vice president, who’s an electrical engineer and transitioned into management. “What I do not hire is someone with a resume of 4.0 and nothing else. Give me the 3.2 who was part of a couple of clubs, involved in student government and has a personality.”
Four alumni, representing NJIT’s Martin Tuchman School of Management, Newark College of Engineering and Ying Wu College of Computing, shared insights into their early career experiences, lessons learned from college and advice for current students who desire the same success.
Nada Aly ’22, B.S. Computer Science, ‘22
Aly, from the Colonia section of Woodbridge, made an effort at NJIT to learn unique skills. She studied Microsoft’s C# language, in the context of game design, from assistant professor of informatics Margarita Vinnikov. She also learned about legacy COBOL code by taking CS-210, Technical History of Computing. She never expected to use either language in the workforce. But at CGI, she found herself using C# as part of SQL Server Integration Services, and she helped translate a client’s COBOL into modern formats, impressing her client by simply having heard of it. “He was shocked … there were a couple of times where I caught things that he didn’t,” she said.
Technology aside, Aly has a love of culture. She was a member of the NJIT art club and said she’d love to someday work in a CGI field office in France or Morocco.
Jesslyn Gutierrez ’21, B.S. Business Administration, ‘21
At CGI, Gutierrez began in operations and transitioned into business analytics. “Much more of gathering information, reporting, analyzing and then working side-by-side clients,” she explained. One of her clients is the City of New York. She’s helping to implement and test a financial project tracking system. “Currently, what I'm doing is testing. I've been doing test scripts, and validating those test scripts. Right now we're in the user acceptance phase … making sure everything's good for deployment.”
“I do enjoy having studied management information systems at NJIT because I like the communication side and having to explain the technology,” she noted. “NJIT gave me the foundation of how you do this and how to take it up into your job.”
Gutierrez grew up in Perth Amboy and transferred to NJIT from Middlesex College. She understood the importance of diligence and dedication from her NJIT data science professor, Ai Chih (Jasmine) Chang, adding, “She was very patient and thorough with her teachings and always had her student’s success in mind as the end goal.”
Looking back, “I had a couple of challenges getting through the programming classes. I know they can be a little intense and stressful. One of my biggest regrets that I do recommend doing now is definitely taking advantage of office hours. They're there for a reason, and professors aren't as scary as it seems. They won't judge you. They're willing to help if you come to them — they'll never know that you need help unless you reach out. So I think I was more on the shy side while I was in school, and sometimes you’ve just got to put that to the side, and take advantage of their willingness to help.”
“Lately I've wanted to get back to NJIT and see what I can give back to the [Martin Tuchman] School of Management, if it's mentorships or anything like that.”
Sheyeanne Powell ’22, B.S. Information Technology, ‘22
Powell needed to learn C# for her job, but had not already done so in college. However, “At NJIT, because I had the foundations and the basics of coding, being able to apply different syntax, I was able to pick that up,” the Hillside native said. She said that this approach to learning, along with human networking skills, were the most important things she learned in college.
Another real-world skill she learned in college, which she finds herself constantly remembering at CGI, is to trust a program’s error messages. “When it comes to bug-solving, error messages are notes from the developers to you,” she said, recalling a lesson she learned from Senior University Lecturer D.J. Kehoe, who teaches game development courses.
All software developers know multiple programming languages, but Powell is also passionate about spoken language. “I'm currently learning Japanese, but I hope to learn a handful of other languages as well,” she said, citing French, Mandarin, Spanish and possibly Korean. She dreams of staying with CGI and working in Japan as a full-stack developer. She also loves to cook, knit and play violin.
For current students, “My advice would be to take advantage of the opportunities that you have to receive help and guidance, such as office hours from professors and different resources on campus. I definitely made full use of that. I feel like it sets you up for success.”
Nirav Rana ’22, B.S. Computer Engineering, ‘22
Computer engineering is a major associated with hardware, but graduates tend to make for good programmers because they know both sides of the equation. That’s the case with Rana, from Parsippany. He received a message from a CGI recruiter via NJIT’s Handshake career service. “So now I’m a software developer, and I do work for Westchester County. They are in the process of upgrading their HR software to one of our products, and I'm helping out with that process,” Rana said. “It consists mainly of working with Microsoft Power BI, used to create dashboards and analytics.”
Rana programs in C, JavaScript and SQL. He didn’t know Power BI, but he used OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot to quickly learn the necessary steps. He also hadn’t taken a database course, but learned enough about joins and subqueries in other classes that he found it easy to pick up SQL anyway.
“Being a CE major, it's tough, there's no easy way to get your degree. There's a lot of hard classes, but the one thing that I would wish I did more of is just pay attention in the class, not just taking notes, but asking questions. I know no one wants to sit in the front of the class. But sit in the front of class, all right? Because that's when you're forced to pay attention. You hear everything clearly, and if you have a question, just speak up. I found that learning the material that way is just so much better.”
More Work with NJIT
Reagan said he intends to continue working with NJIT beyond just hiring its graduates. For example, he said CGI is backing up NJIT’s New Jersey Innovation Institute to help their government clients learn how to use artificial intelligence. CGI attends NJIT career fairs, while Reagan himself works closely with undergraduate entrepreneurship leader Kathy Naasz, and sits on the boards of Choose New Jersey and the New Jersey Business and Industry Association with university president Teik C. Lim.
The goal is to hire more and more NJIT students because they’re well-prepared
Reagan is also a fan of hiring college interns, and even having the interns teach high school students — “The goal is to hire more and more NJIT students because they’re well-prepared,” he said.”
He’s just as happy if students decide consulting is not for them. “Do what your passion is,” Reagan advised. “If you want to be an engineer, be the best engineer you can be. And then from there, map out what you want to do with that career. “I look at internships this way. It's a two-way interview. When you intern at CGI, we're interviewing you throughout the summer. But you should be interviewing us. Is this where you want to be? I’ve had plenty of students say, “I was here for the summer. I'm not going to be an engineer. I'm going to go into business, because this internship opened my eyes to do what I really want to do for the rest of my life.”
