Spotlight Interview — Jenny McCauley, Campus Program Manager at Red Hat
Jenny McCauley is the ideal recruiter. Reliable, resourceful, and generous — Jenny is genuinely passionate about helping students find jobs and internships.
As a Campus Program Manager, Jenny is responsible for managing Red Hat’s North America Intern Program. Currently, the main focus of her job is on strengthening Red Hat’s partnership with Boston University.
“My favorite project that I have worked on would probably be bringing brand awareness to campus at Boston University and hiring as many interns as we can. Compared to last summer, there has been about a 300% increase of interns from Boston University,” she said.
At Boston University, Jenny focuses on providing students with unique opportunities to engage with Red Hat employees and technologies. For example, during the school year, she travels to the university to do resume reviews and assist with interview preparations.
“We also bring engineers over to the university, so students can come and get to know Red Hat employees,” she said. “At those events, we look out for good students for our internship program.”
Red Hat’s internship program in Boston is unique in that they partner with Boston University to provide a broad range of research opportunities on prestigious projects, such as the Massachusetts Open Cloud and the ChRIS Code Lab.
These opportunities are made available by the Boston University Red Hat Collaboratory initiative, which aims to connect faculty and students with industry practitioners to advance research focused on emerging technologies.
Research topics at the Boston University Red Hat Collaboratory range from operating systems, cloud computing services, machine learning and automation, and big data platforms.
Before becoming the Campus Program Manager, Jenny worked as an analyst on the talent acquisition team at Red Hat. During her two years at Red Hat, Jenny has enjoyed seeing the internship program grow.
“I think it will be really exciting to see how this grows in the next five years,” she said. “We are getting more office space soon and there is going to be a lot more going on as our collaboration with Boston University continues to flourish.”
For students looking to get an internship at Red Hat, Jenny recommends getting to know the company before you apply.
“You can always tell when you talk to students that they don’t know anything about Red Hat or anything about open source,” she said. “There’s a huge difference between that and someone who knows about open source, about Red Hat, and is passionate our mission.”
For all students looking for a job or internship, Jenny recommended students look for companies that work on technologies or topics they are genuinely passionate about.
“You should be trying to work for companies that really speak to who you are and have the type culture that you are interested in.”
When Jenny isn’t at work helping students find their dream job, she is strolling with her dog George around Seaport with a good fantasy book in hand.
If you are interested in learning more about opportunities at Red Hat, feel free to reach out to Jenny at jmccauley@redhat.com.