It was amazing to attend the 2025 edition Canadian University Software Engineering Conference (CUSEC). It contained vibrant speakers, excellent companies, a wide-range of undergraduate software engineering and computer science students, and excellent non-technical events.
There were several great speakers were my favourite. The first one was “What they don’t tell you in technical interviews,” which helps guide you through the interview process for a software engineering job. Key tips involve doing your homework, both about the company and on the technical side, especially through LeetCode problems, so you can ace the interview when it comes. During the interview, it is important to think out loud so you get partial credit even if you can’t fully solve the problem and so your interviewer understands how you think. Finally, after an interview it is important to thank your interviewer and once you accept an offer, inform all companies that gave you an conflicting offer that you have chosen to proceed with another offer as a matter of courtesy. Since the speech, I grinded NeetCode 150 and continue to grind LeetCode and learn new algorithms and other tricks along the way so I am ready for a technical interview.
Another great speaker was “What Everyone In Tech Should Know About Teaching and Learning,” which revealed to me important facets of learning new skills and teaching them to others. A key takeaway was the importance of patterns. The brain has a very small cache of 7 +/- 2 items in short term memory and uses patterns to link ideas so many ideas can occupy few slots in short term memory. Furthermore, slides should not contain a near-transcript of a lecture so learners don’t expend more mental energy on comparing the auditory input of the lecturer to the near-transcript on the slides.
My final favourite speech was the post-grad/research panel. As someone who was a research assistant last year and interested in information security research, I learned a lot from the panel. In any field, including research, it is advantageous to find a mentor a few years ahead of you and regularly check in with them. Mentors help to “give back” to the community which once helped them; for example, I have received guidance about my software engineering courses from upper years and give back in kind to lower years. Furthermore, a thesis-based masters is advantageous to show innovative talent by finding a new facet about software engineering or computer science and writing a paper about it and defending the paper to critical academics. Acting upon the advice of mentorship, I asked PhD student who worked in the information security lab I worked in last summer and had a meeting with him about his research, where I learned a lot about the field.
There were some top companies there, namely RBC and the Canadian Communication Security Establishment but most were upcoming and uncertain like Tailed and Gadget. Networking proved valuable, both with companies and other attendees. While I didn’t secure a job at CUSEC, I made valuable connections with both recruiters and other students.
Finally, there were great events like board games night and a pub night. Strengthening existing friendships with McMaster software engineering students was rewarding. Lastly, spending a few days in beautiful downtown Montreal was an incredible experience, with the charm of a vibrant downtown and the beautiful Mont Royal.
In conclusion, CUSEC 2025 was an incredible experience where I took away valuable lessons which will guide me as I work through my software engineering degree and my software engineering career.