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Back in his home country of India, 51��Ƶ-Dearborn graduate student Mahendra Kakad already had a good life and a good job. He actually already had a master’s degree and had been working in the automotive industry for eight years as a design engineer, including with . But a few years ago, Kakad, who describes himself as an “aspirational, self-motivated person,” started to think more strategically about what he wanted the next stage of his career to look like. If he ever wanted to make a bigger impact on a company, say, as a chief technical officer, he knew he’d likely need to complement his advanced technical skills with managerial ones. With two teachers for parents, he says he’s always loved education. And when he learned about the engineering management master’s program at 51��Ƶ-Dearborn, which was located in the heart of one of the world’s biggest automotive centers, he thought it was a good bet to help him take that next step.

Engineers have a reputation for being super analytical thinkers, and Kakad definitely used that mindset to shape his new life in the United States. From the outset, he sought out advice from his fellow students who were in the second year of the program to get a sense of what he needed to do to be successful. One of their first recommendations was to get involved in as many things as possible outside of his studies. So he joined student government; he connected with the vibrant Indian Graduate Student Association; he lent his expertise to MASA, the student rocketry team. “I was on campus almost all the time — even Saturdays and Sundays,” he says. “The only time I was really at my apartment was when I was sleeping and eating dinner.” His on-campus presence helped him check another box on his wishlist: getting an on-campus job. One day, at an event, he bumped into John Cristiano, the College of Engineering and Computer Science assistant dean for research development and strategic initiatives, who remarked that Kakad seemed to be “everywhere.” Kakad mentioned that he wanted to work on campus in order to gain some experience, and Cristiano and CECS Dean Ghassan Kridli scooped him up, creating a program assistant position to help him manage corporate relations. “The system is very different in India. So I sort of saw the job as ‘kindergarten’ for me. I could help support myself financially and also get to know what the work culture is like in the United States,” Kakad says. 

At this point, Kakad was still just a few months into his studies, but he was already preparing for a future job search. As an international student, he wasn’t authorized to work off campus, even at an internship, until he’d completed 18 credits, something that was still more than six months away. He started working with a recruiter, noting on his resume when he’d be work-eligible, but he generally found employers weren’t planning that far ahead. So, after getting some advice from his classmates and the staff at Career Services, he used the time to continue tweaking his resume to fit American norms. With his years of experience in industry, Kakad thought he’d be an attractive candidate and set himself what seemed like a reasonable goal: get an internship offer by January 2024. But he saw that target come and go, even as students younger and less experienced than him were lining up their internships. It was disappointing, but like a good engineer, he saw the lack of response as motivation to retool his resume.

One day when he was feeling particularly frustrated, he went to the Tesla website and directly applied for “15 or 20 jobs.” In early February 2024, he finally got a bite. Interestingly, it wasn’t for any of the positions he'd applied for, but a hiring manager had seen his resume in the system and reached out directly to ask him about his interest in another job. He spent the next few days methodically prepping for the half-hour interview. He created a Google doc mapping all the key features of the job description onto his own skill set. He got on LinkedIn and learned as much as he could about the hiring manager. He called a couple of his old colleagues back in India to get their advice. The interview went well, and a couple hours later, he got an email stating he’d made it to the next round of interviews. In a few more days, he finally had an offer.

The internship at Tesla was a technical engineering position, similar to the work he’d been doing back in India. But he says it was a great introduction to how an American workplace functions. Americans are often characterized (in contrast with Europeans, presumably) as workaholics who sometimes don’t even exhaust the often meager amount of vacation time their jobs allow. But Kakad says Americans have nothing on people in many Asian countries. In his former position, seven-day work weeks were the expectation and it was hard to ever really turn work off. “For example, in my previous roles, if you’re given an assignment, your manager might come up to you and ask, ‘Have you mailed that guy?’ And if you say ‘yes’ — ‘Have you called that guy?’ If you say ‘yes’ — ‘Have you messaged that guy?’ If you say ‘yes’ — ‘Have you met that guy?’” Kakad says, laughing. Here in the U.S., he was happy to see that people generally took weekends off and that managers gave their employees more agency. Even at Tesla, where he says they “stretch a little bit,” any weekend work is lower-key, and you definitely shouldn’t be bombarding your colleagues with emails and phone calls. 

The internship at Tesla went very well. Kakad was the only one in his group who got to travel internationally, and he visited nearly all the Tesla manufacturing facilities in the United States. As it wound down, he started applying for full-time positions within the company. This time, the job search was decidedly less bumpy. “I remember it was Feb. 6 last year that I got the interview call from Tesla for my internship and Feb. 6 this year that I got the offer for my full-time job,” he says. Better still, this new position is more in line with what he was hoping going back to school would lead to. Rather than working as a design engineer, he’ll be working more on the manufacturing side as a supplier industrialization engineer, helping coordinate the production and ensure the quality of components as they pass from the design phase through a complex manufacturing process. He credits his 51��Ƶ-Dearborn professors — particularly Professors Shan Bao and Onur Ulgen and lecturers Roger Klungle and Faisal Khalaf — with preparing him for this new role in which knowledge of quality control processes and systems engineering will be crucial. “The quality of the instructors we have at 51��Ƶ-Dearborn is really next-scale,” he says. “They are working with big companies. They are working with the Department of Defense. And they have years of experience in industry and academia. So it’s been a privilege to get to know them and learn from them.”

Kakad is definitely looking forward to this next chapter, which will involve a move to California. Through the Post-Completion Optional Practical Training and STEM OPT portion of his student visa, he currently has work authorization through 2028. And he recently got more good news: The application for his H-1B visa, which would allow him to extend his stay in the United States even further, was recently selected in the government’s lottery process and should be active in 2026. But he’s also a little sad to be leaving Dearborn. “When you come to the United States from another country, I think the state where you end up sort of becomes your home away from home,” he says. “I really like Michigan. I’m a nature lover. And I’ve made so many friends here. I’ll miss those days where you’re on campus and you just bump into a professor and have a nice conversation. But my journey at Tesla has also been very good, and as I look ahead, I carry both the values I brought from home and the experiences I’ve gained here. I’m excited to contribute at the intersection of engineering and leadership.”

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Story by Lou Blouin