Zuckerberg to Recruit at Harvard for Facebook Internship

Just over 200 students will have the opportunity to see Mark E. Zuckerberg in person at a Facebook recruiting event on Monday.

The Harvard dropout and mastermind behind Facebook returns to his for his first official visit to the College since 2004, when he left to start the social networking site.

Zuckerberg will be accompanied by Mike Schroepfer, Facebook vice president of engineering.

The corporate heads will speak with students in Farkas Hall, the recently renamed New College Theatre, immediately after a press conference in Harvard Yard in the afternoon. He is also scheduled to meet with University President Drew G. Faust.

Zuckerberg will also visit MIT and Carnegie Mellon University on his East Coast recruiting trip.

“He is eager to connect with computer science and engineering students from some of the best schools in the world, and may well be tomorrow’s Facebook innovators,” wrote Andrew Noyes, Facebook’s manager for public policy communications, in an email.

According to its website, Facebook has three internships available in engineering and security, along with 12 open positions for recent graduates from bachelor, master, and doctorate programs.

To apply to attend an exclusive discussion with the executives at 5 p.m., students must upload a resumé to the Crimson Careers portal on the Office of Career Services website by Friday.

The website received eight responses within three seconds of opening the application, said Robin Mount, director of the Office of Career, Research, and International Opportunities.

Preference will be given to students with applied math, computer science, or engineering backgrounds.

“The plan is for it to be personal and technical alike,” said Computer Science Senior Lecturer David J. Malan ’99, who will moderate the discussion. “In particular, it is meant to appeal to future potential staff.”

Mount said that having students interact with Facebook executives in person replicates the work atmosphere students would enter if hired.

“Facebook is very relaxed and informal,” she said. “They want people who can be in an environment where [Zuckerberg] can see students’ faces and let students ask questions.”

Julia C. Winn ’12, a computer science concentrator who is applying to a few technology companies this fall, said Zuckerberg’s visit significantly increases the appeal of Facebook recruiting.

“He’s a celebrity now,” she said. “That [event is] going to be maxed out—everybody’s going to be there.”

Winn said that her peers who are applying to the technology sector usually target Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. She would like to ask Zuckerberg why these companies are so popular—and why they in turn recruit so heavily at Harvard.

"Rumor has it that software engineers at Facebook have more say over what features they work on and the overall product direction," she said.

Students are not the only ones eagerly anticipating Zuckerberg’s visit. His former professors are also excited for the return of a star pupil.

“I think students will become energized and inspired by the fact that computer science is really a skill—a field of study—that enables people to do amazing things,” said computer science senior lecturer Henry H. Leitner.

“A guy like Bill Gates, or a guy like Mark Zuckerberg, were a bit of anomaly,” Leitner said. Today, Leitner says, in the shadow of Gates and Zuckerberg, creating a startup is a more viable option for undergraduates.

Facebook has been recruiting at Harvard since 2008, according to Mount.

—Reina A.E. Gattuso contributed reporting for this story.

—Staff writer Radhika Jain can be reached at radhikajain@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following corrections:

CORRECTION: November 7, 2011

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article misquoted Julia C. Winn ’12.