I got an interview with Denso after speaking briefly with the Co-op hiring manager at the NCSU career fair. The interview was held in Vaughn towers in the NCSU football stadium. Denso was not the only company conducting interviews in this location, so I was interviewing alongside several other students interviewing at various companies.
The gentleman I interviewed with was very professional and polite, and not necessarily exciting, but definitely enjoyable to talk with. I got the vibe that he took his role of recruiting very seriously and he seemed genuinely interested in both the professional and personal character development of the applicants, and his questions and our discussion reflected this.
Some of the questions were somewhat harder than expected, but learning how to give a genuine and adequate answer to a question you were not prepared for is a really useful skill to develop, especially for interviews. There were more questions than I expected, and to be honest, probably more than necessary. However, they were all thoughtful questions, even if a few were somewhat vague.
I received an offer from Denso via email on September 29th. Apparently, there was some administrative error in sending me an offer because I received the offer only after emailing the hiring manager to inquire about the status of my application. The "deadline" on the offer for when to accept was listed as the 29th of September, the day I received it, leading me to believe the offer was meant to be sent sooner than the 29th. I had basically no time to consider the offer, but I responded via email to accept.
Soon after accepting the offer, I confirmed with the hiring manager that I would tour the Maryville, TN location on September 17th to get a good idea of what to expect while working there. Denso provided excellent accommodations for my visit, providing me with a plane ticket both ways, a hotel, and a rental car. During the tour, I found out that the purpose of the tour was for me and the other co-op hires to confirm we want to work at the company before finally accepting the offer. After seeing the type of work that Denso would have me doing, I decided to decline the offer, having received an offer from Altec as well.
I decided to accept the Altec co-op position over the Denso one because working at Altec provides the opportunity to work in both manufacturing and design, while Denso would be more focused on manufacturing only. Though manufacturing doesn't sound bad, I wanted the chance to try out both major areas of the engineering production cycle, so my decision was fairly easy. (Denso has some design positions, but none were open at the time I applied. Had this not been the case, my decision may have been different.)
I have no major complaints about Denso. They seem like a great company with very nice, genuine, and hardworking people, but I do wish there had been more effective communication regarding my offer and whether it was final with my acceptance of the email offer sooner. Though the gentleman I interviewed with closed the interview with "you have a lot of potential, let's arrange a factory tour and go from there", which more accurately communicated the non-finality of the offer, receiving the offer letter from the hiring manager via email gave me the impression that I was required to commit fully without having seen the factory. Had I known sooner that I was not irrevocably committed to the company yet, I would have applied at several other locations in addition to Denso and Altec.
NCSU has a policy for co-op application that you cannot apply for another position with another company after accepting a job with a particular employer. For this reason, I was not able to apply anywhere else after confirming the offer letter from Denso until after the factory tour on the 17th, where I was informed of the ability to still decline the offer. Because of this my application to Altec was fit in last minute after I finished touring Denso.
