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GREAT-Terry
Good idea to recruitment. Some talents may only want to work at cutting-edge ...
eewiz
Right on! And why use stats from a single univ, when u have more comprehensive ...
VC Kleiner Perkins launches engineering student fellowship
Sylvie Barak
2/7/2012 3:05 PM EST
SAN FRANCISCO--Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins has announced the first class of recruits for its engineering internship program, which aims to place selected students in Kleiner-funded startups over the summer for work experience and mentoring.
The program, announced last year, attracted thousands of applications from over 100 universities in the United States, with just 25 picked from the crop for placement at Kleiner portfolio companies, including Klout, Path, Chegg, Nest, Zaarly, One Kings Lane, Opower, Flipboard, Crittercism, Nebula, Zynga and Shopkick.
The initiative is supposed to give smaller startups access to affordable raw engineering talent, difficult in an area where big players like Google, Apple, Facebook and others can outbid smaller outfits to acquire the talent they want. It will also afford the engineering students work experience at some of the most cutting edge startup companies in the area, and valuable networking opportunities, with a seal of approval from Kleiner Perkins to add to their resume.
The fellowship students also get paid at what Kleiner calls a “competitive” rate.
“The caliber of students who applied to our program was extremely high, making the selection process very difficult,” said Kleiner Perkins, on the program’s website.
Despite the thousands of applications, however, only two female engineers made the cut to Kleiner’s fellowship program. Kleiner Perkins would not comment on the gender discrepancy when asked.
The program, announced last year, attracted thousands of applications from over 100 universities in the United States, with just 25 picked from the crop for placement at Kleiner portfolio companies, including Klout, Path, Chegg, Nest, Zaarly, One Kings Lane, Opower, Flipboard, Crittercism, Nebula, Zynga and Shopkick.
The initiative is supposed to give smaller startups access to affordable raw engineering talent, difficult in an area where big players like Google, Apple, Facebook and others can outbid smaller outfits to acquire the talent they want. It will also afford the engineering students work experience at some of the most cutting edge startup companies in the area, and valuable networking opportunities, with a seal of approval from Kleiner Perkins to add to their resume.
The fellowship students also get paid at what Kleiner calls a “competitive” rate.
“The caliber of students who applied to our program was extremely high, making the selection process very difficult,” said Kleiner Perkins, on the program’s website.
Despite the thousands of applications, however, only two female engineers made the cut to Kleiner’s fellowship program. Kleiner Perkins would not comment on the gender discrepancy when asked.
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elPresidente
2/7/2012 5:56 PM EST
The other girls were obviously off making sandwiches.....
Come on, Silvie - why are you baiting with an allegation of gender discrimination in this piece when it's unwarranted? Begging the question makes you a chauvinist and an apparently poorly researched journalist.
You stated the criteria for selection "attracted thousands of applications from over 100 universities in the United States, with just 25 picked from the crop". 24 happened to be guys based on the likely selection criterion of grades and experience, from a pool of candidates where the overwhelming majority (80%) of graduates are male. http://chronicle.com/article/Female-Students-Just-as/47933/
By those numbers there should have been 5 girls, there was one. That is in the noise of the selection criterion that precludes gender bias, which anyone with an engineering degree and access to Google can figure out. Do you have these?
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SylvieBarak
2/7/2012 7:07 PM EST
Hi elPresidente,
Thanks for your stats.
According to the numbers from Cornell University College, based on the Engineering undergraduate student profile there were 70% male, 30% female students out of 3051 total enrollment. (Source: Cornell.)
So, based on those numbers, it should have been 7 girls (7.5 technically, but I'll give them 7... or even 5 as you suggest). It's the 24 to 1 ratio that is disconcerting.
I assure you I had absolutely no intention of baiting or being a chauvinist (I'm pretty sure I'm not:) I was simply pointing out the facts of those numbers.
I do find it a little sad that KP, who is investing in tech's future here in the valley, couldn't make a little bit more of an effort to at least mirror industry stats of women in the workplace.
In a society that prides itself on being equal opportunity, I think KP should perhaps have made more of an effort to reflect that.
Of course, it's very well possible that there were simply no good female candidates that applied, but since KP has not responded to my request for comment, I wouldn't speculate on it.
I think that running a program like this for young engineers is great. I certainly applaud KP for the initiative. It would just be nice to see them encouraging more young women to enter the tech space.
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bpd
2/7/2012 11:42 PM EST
Sylvie, shouldn't we have taken KP's word when they clearly say “The caliber of students who applied to our program was extremely high, making the selection process very difficult". How can you claim not to be a chauvinist when you are clearly gender biased. It's like me asking why there aren't enough men in HR ? You can drag this whichever ways. What about minorities, Vets, disabled ? Don't they deserve better representation. I think we've come a long way since Rosa Parks !!
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eewiz
2/8/2012 12:29 PM EST
Right on! And why use stats from a single univ, when u have more comprehensive records collected from multiple universities over a span of 17 years!
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goafrit
2/7/2012 8:25 PM EST
Very innovative and very lucky students, indeed. Just have a resume that has this iconic company means good life after college.
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GREAT-Terry
2/8/2012 10:31 PM EST
Good idea to recruitment. Some talents may only want to work at cutting-edge start-ups rather than the giants. Will the students be shifted around among different start-up during the internship? I bet this is also a very good experience for the students.
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