Working Backward to Success

Ari Weizman’s 3½ years at San Diego State University end with job offer from Google.

By Aaron Burgin, Student Affairs and Campus Diversity

Ari Weizman’s student internship with Google led the tech giant to offer him a full-time position

Ari Weizman received a powerful piece of advice from an SDSU mentor: work backward.

“He told me that we all have these big aspirations, and the question is how do you turn those long-term goals into short-term, manageable things,” Weizman said. “So if you have this goal like ‘I want to be the COO of a Fortune 500 company,’ you work back from that point. What do you have to do immediately before you reach that step, and before that step and so on and so forth.”

So, let’s start Weizman’s story from its concluding high point —and work backward. 

Weizman is set to graduate in December 2022 from SDSU’s Fowler College of Business with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, with an emphasis in management information systems, after only 3½ years. After graduation, he plans to visit his native Israel with family for a month, complete a lifelong goal by learning how to play the guitar, catch up on his reading and put a dent in a long list of movies that he has been told he has to watch. 

He has six months to do those things. On June 26, 2023, Weizman, 21 will start his new career at Google, where he was hired as a growth associate to help small businesses discover their marketing goals and improve their Google ads. 

The Bay Area tech giant offered him the position in October after he interned with them from May 31 to August 19. 

“I’m really excited about that next step. I could have graduated in May, but I worked hard and I had the units (to graduate early),” Weizman said. “There’s no other time in my life where I’ll have six months with a job secure and having no responsibility, so I am going to discover who I am without school.”

How did he put himself in a position to graduate early and land a job at Google? Weizman said it’s all about balance and planning. 

“I’m not a procrastinator, I am someone who gives at least an hour a day to each task,” Weizman said. “It’s about finding that balance in life and work and planning for the future while enjoying the present.” 

This philosophy played a huge role in Weizman landing the internship at Google that ultimately put him in a position to get hired. 

He got a phone call from a Redwood City phone number on Dec. 1, 2021. On the phone was a hiring manager from Google, letting him know “he got it.” 

“I was shocked,” Weizman said. “That phone call changed my life.”

A day earlier, he had completed the two interviews for the internship, which he applied for in October. 

After interning with Northrop Grumman during the end of his freshman year to the beginning of his sophomore year, Weizman started to think about his next internship opportunity, knowing that this internship would likely be critical to planning his early career steps. 

So, the meticulous and ambitious Weizman created a Google document in August 2021 in which he listed 50 of the top companies in the country. His goal: to study and apply to at least one company per day, tracking the firms’ responses in the document. 

One by one, he applied. And one by one, he was rejected. 

No - A step to an eventual yes

The “no’s” didn’t deter him. It was a lesson his mother taught him early in life, and one that had been reinforced by mentors at SDSU as well as his experience at school. 

“My mom always taught me that the worst thing that someone can say to your request is ‘no,’” Weizman said. “A ‘no’ is only one step to get to the eventual ‘yes.’ It took hundreds of ‘no’s’ for me to get to that ‘yes,’ but if you never give up you will get a ‘yes’ eventually — maybe not exactly how you expected but you will succeed.”

Weizman’s mentors reinforced his mother’s advice, including the one he counts as having the greatest influence on him while at SDSU, Fowler College of Business Assistant Dean Patricia van Damme. 

“We have met at least once a semester, and she has grown from an adviser and mentor for my major to a powerful mentor in my life — continuously empowering me to be proud of my accomplishments while constantly pushing me forward toward my future aspirations,” Weizman said. 

Van Damme spoke effusively about Weizman, his accomplishments and the mindset it took for him to accomplish them. 

“I believe that (Weizman’s determination) is one of the most important attributes in mind shifting that students can have,” van Damme said. “You will hear ‘no’ many times in your life, and you can either become a pity puddle on the floor, or use that ‘no’ as a jumping block for you to bounce up. The resilience that it brings will take you much further than someone who sits with that ‘no’ and takes that defeat.

“A ‘no’ means ‘not now,’ not ‘not permanently,’” van Damme said. “I am beyond proud of Ari for taking that lesson to heart. It really means the world and reminds me of why I do what I do. I’ve been at SDSU for 23 years, and students like Ari remind me that I have a reason to keep going. They inspire me. I am so proud of everything he has accomplished.”

“I didn’t know how to quit”

One of those accomplishments, Weizman said, was a defining moment in his experience at SDSU. 

Around the time he got the call from Google, he was sitting in his first meeting as president of Rotaract, SDSU’s student version of the service organization Rotary Club. He remembers the atmosphere being “electrifying” and full of new, fresh faces after the organization changed its notoriously selective 20 percent acceptance rate to 45 percent.

It was a goal that Weizman had striven for since joining the organization his freshman year, when he was one of only two first-year students to be recruited.

“I felt the recruitment process could have been more inclusive; it felt too harsh,” Weizman said. 

So, he decided to change it from the inside. He ran for president at the end of his sophomore year in May 2021. Weizman overcame his relative neophyte status within the organization by proving his leadership and initiative to his peers when he organized and hosted an online social mixer for the organization, whose members had been — like most SDSU students — longing for connection in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A year earlier, Weizman was just trying to get his foot into Rotaract’s executive leadership board. He was elected vice president of records, but only after losing elections for vice president of finance and recruitment. 

All those ‘no’s’ before he got a ‘yes’. 

“I didn’t know how to quit,” Weizman said. 

That resolve was put to the test during the previous year, 2020, when, after just nine months on campus, he began taking classes remotely along with the rest of the student population. 

Weizmane didn’t let that deter him: He regularly checked in with his friends, making sure they were OK and keeping those connections alive. By the end of his freshman year in spring 2020, he got involved with Associated Students, the university’s premier student organization. He was named a representative of the Student Support Commission, which markets and advocates for student resources. 

“In life, there are things we can and can't control,” Weizman said. “We strive to do as much as we can to take control and seize or own destiny, but there are other things, such as the pandemic, that are out of our control. If you work hard and put in effort into the things you can control, you’ll have a bright future.”

Making the most of a commute

While serving on the commission, it created a student resources guide aimed at informing students about each resource they were eligible for. 

Weizman was very proud of this accomplishment, as he thought the guide would demystify the web of opportunities available to students — especially those who are commuter students just as he is. 

When Weizman arrived on campus in the fall of 2019, a recent graduate of University City High School,  he didn’t want his status as a commuter student to impede him from having a full college experience. He’d take the MTS Trolley to campus, arriving in the morning, and staying on campus until the late evening hours. , He got involved in student organizations. He joined a study group with four other students in his Statistics 119 class, a required course for business majors, and the quintet are the best of friends to this day. 

“It’s very hard to get involved (as a commuter student) because you really have to plan,” Weizman said. “I didn’t want that to be my narrative, so I set out that I was going to be involved no matter what. I would get to campus at 10 a.m. and wouldn’t leave until at least 7 p.m. or 8 p.m., because I wanted to make sure I was involved.”

From participating in campus organizations, to helping change Rotaract, to landing a dream internship to being hired by one of the world’s largest companies, it’s safe to say that Weizman accomplished his college goals.

“I feel very blessed,” Weizman said. “When I reflect on the journey, every step helped me get to the next one. And I’m so excited to think about what’s next.”