Alumna Nicole Liang spoke to a group of aspiring IT & ICT women last week. Born and raised in Tallahassee, she had returned to her former stomping grounds to talk to students – both for advice and recruiting purposes. When she isn’t inspiring the next generation of Noles, she works for General Motors out of Austin, TX, as a Sharepoint Engineer/Systems Architect.

A degree in International Affairs with a minor in IT, pursuing a Master’s degree in Computer Information Systems from Boston University, and real world experience from General Motors – she was the perfect speaker for WISE (Women in IT and ICT Sharing Experiences). Nicole met with the group on Jan. 29 and spoke about preparing for life after college.

“Nicole’s insightfulness aided in confirming one thing: all of this hard work will be worth it,” said Kelby Mahoney, WISE President.

As a SharePoint Engineer at General Motors, Nicole is apart of a team that is working towards upgrading and building out the Global SharePoint environments. SharePoint is a team collaboration tool that integrates intranet, content and document management. As the owner of the SharePoint environment where developers can develop custom applications, Nicole supports these applications through the steps of development, pre-production and live production.

It all started when Nicole got a call from Ebe Randeree, Associate Dean in the College of Communication and Information, telling her about a dinner with General Motors that she should attend. Afterwards she got a call to interview, which went well. Her start at General Motors was almost missed, however.

“Ebe reached out to me to ask what I thought of the offer. I had no clue what he was talking about, because the offer came from a Boston area code and I was tired of talking to my Admissions Advisor at Boston University multiple times a day, so I ignored the call and voicemail.”

Three days later, Nicole accepted an offer to join the General Motors team.

Now the (career fair) tables have turned – and it’s a lot of fun for Nicole. She was part of the recruiting team for General Motors at Seminole Futures, talking to hundreds of students.

“Recruiting at FSU was a lot of fun,” she shared. “I loved meeting the candidates and being on the other side of the process.”