Global analytics software leader FICO is an enduring American brand yet remains relatively under the radar among Gen Z and younger Millennials. Given its reputation for the 'FICO® Score,' the industry standard for assessing credit risk, and robust and growing Software business, how did this global enterprise crack the code for attracting top undergraduate talent into a wide variety of technical and non-technical roles?
Enter Jennifer Bruch, Vice President, Human Resources. “I was always very much a believer in the campus recruiting model and bringing in young talent to grow the pipeline,” says Bruch, who joined the company in 2014 after over twenty years working in HR at Wall Street firms, including nearly a decade in campus recruiting. “Hiring interns and successfully converting them to full-time hires post-graduation is not easy, it's a lot of work but it's an investment in their future and ours.”
In 2020, FICO lacked a formal campus recruiting program in the U.S. and Bruch knew that a campus program would provide a way to connect the company’s expanding business needs with a pipeline of top emerging talent entering the workforce. That same year, a FICO board member told Bruch’s manager, Chief Human Resources Officer, Richard Deal, about MLT. “We looked into it,” Bruch says, “and the rest is history.”
“When Jen first approached us about co-creating a FICO internship program together, we were impressed not only by the innovative, agile, best-in-class services FICO provides, but also by their growth mindset and desire to invest in the base of their talent pyramid,” says Dan Walsh, Managing Director of Partnerships at MLT.
The opportunity for MLT Fellows to earn a front row seat in the software engineering and data science divisions at this powerhouse, while adding value and dimension to their workforce, was truly amazing.”
DAN WALSH“MLT was fortunate to help lay the foundation for FICO’s campus hiring program,” says Mary Lynn Blattberg, Senior Director for Partnerships at MLT. “What began as an organic, relationship-driven effort – with individual hiring managers volunteering to host interns – quickly gained momentum. By building the program one hiring manager at a time, Jen created a level of personal buy-in from leaders that you just don’t see every day. FICO used their people first, collegial culture to their advantage to provide a more personalized internship experience that’s still their secret sauce today.”
Sourcing Excellence: The MLT Difference
Bruch engaged MLT to help her create an internship program that would source high quality recruits from a multitude of backgrounds. “The way the MLT program is structured, how they source rising talent from across the country and all different types of schools, made it super compelling,” she says.
As a campus recruiter in the finance sector, Bruch observed Wall Street’s narrow preference for targeting Ivy League schools. “I really like the fact that MLT casts a wider net and sources recruits from a multitude of backgrounds,” she says. FICO has long recognized that bringing together individuals with different perspectives and life experiences leads to more creative ideas, stronger problem-solving, and greater innovation.
“While Jen was quick to see the potential of scaling FICO’s intern program along with MLT’s growth – which grew from ~400 students in 2021 to 2400 students in 2025 – she was also savvy about creating a differentiated internship experience that would allow FICO to compete with top tech brands for highly sought after MLT talent,” Blattberg says. “Her advantage was keeping it personal – providing direct access to hiring managers at every stage of the recruiting process (from info sessions, coffee chats and interviews) to building an MLT community within FICO. With some of the larger intern programs, interns don’t find out where they’ll be placed at the time they accept their offer, so it feels like a roll of the dice. That’s not the case with FICO, where they’ve met their hiring manager and likely multiple members of the team by the time they receive their offer.”
Ingrid Altamirano, a member of the inaugural cohort of FICO interns in the summer of 2021, felt the difference in her FICO recruitment experience. “In other interviews, I didn’t get to meet the hiring managers or have any kind of connection with them,” says Altamirano (Career Prep 2022).
I wasn’t able to be vulnerable or share some of my story with them. It’s different with MLT. I felt like I belonged at FICO before even showing up for the interview. They knew about my background, they knew what MLT brings to the table. Having the opportunity to talk to my hiring manager directly was also really powerful. I saw the interest. I saw that they wanted me there. It made me want to give it a shot. And here I am.”
Ingrid AltamiranoFICO appreciates and understands MLT’s dynamic approach to sourcing talent, but also the professional coaching and development that prepares MLT Fellows to successfully navigate college-to-career opportunities. “MLT really prepares their Fellows to succeed in the workplace, and it’s not just a one-and-done thing,” says Bruch of MLT programs like Career Prep, in which Fellows are paired one-on-one with a coach who works with them to build networking and interviewing skills, and learn to navigate nuances and opportunities in the corporate world.
“At FICO, we can coach interns throughout their summer. But through MLT, they’re getting the added benefit of external mentoring, coaching and support over a multi-year journey. It’s a very efficient way to recruit, and it worked really well for us.” - Jennifer Bruch
Seeing the Future With Young Talent
Bruch and MLT started small: in the summer of 2021, they recruited a group of 10 interns – many of whom were MLT Fellows – to plug into a handful of FICO departments. “I was skeptical,” Bruch admits. “We had never done this before. Will the leaders want to hire interns?” Bruch acknowledges there were inherent hurdles with the timing. In 2021, organizations, including FICO, faced ongoing challenges amid COVID. This intern pilot program would be fully remote, which raised questions about its initial success. “Despite my concerns and worries, our first summer was highly positive,” says Bruch.
The success of FICO’s fledgling cohort, Walsh believes, began at a foundational level – with FICO’s commitment to diversifying their talent pool, MLT’s vigorous vetting process for admissions to the Career Prep program, and the valuable competencies MLT Fellows bring to the program and to their internships. “MLT Fellows are highly motivated and have a robust growth mindset,” Walsh says.
These qualities, along with their grit and persistence, translate to an ability to deal with ambiguity and learn quickly on the fly, particularly in a first-time endeavor. The dedicated coaching our Fellows receive throughout their 18-month MLT Career Prep journey – skills-building, cheerleading, holding them accountable – further empowers them to mitigate pitfalls like imposter syndrome and maneuver through an unfamiliar environment with confidence.”
DAN WALSHAs the interns became more embedded within FICO and transitioned into full-time roles, the program’s internal reputation soared. “Each time our senior leaders engaged with these new team members, they were genuinely impressed,” Bruch recalls. “They saw how invested the interns were—their curiosity, the insightful questions they asked during our weekly lunch-and-learn sessions, their knowledge of cutting edge technology. Before long, leaders were proactively requesting interns for their own teams.”
“When we launched the internship program with MLT, nearly all U.S. hires were seasoned professionals,” Bruch explains. “It prompted leadership to take a closer look at their teams as they realized that many had 15 to 20 years of experience. This tenure is great, but it prompted a discussion about our talent pipeline. This shift in mindset really sparked an opportunity for FICO to invest in the foundation of our talent pyramid. Early-career professionals bring fresh perspectives, fluency in emerging technologies, and the potential to grow into our next generation of leaders.”
The internship program was so successful that Bruch and FICO invested further appointing someone to lead campus recruitment efforts full-time. The open position was the perfect fit for MLT Fellow alumni (Career Prep 2024) and former FICO intern EJ Hatter.
“MLT really instills how to take initiative and how to confidently put yourself out there,” says Hatter, who “took the opportunity and ran with it.”
Under Hatter’s newfound leadership, he expanded internal outreach to teams throughout the company, extolling the benefits of hosting a dedicated intern in their departments, and implemented Executive Chats, which give interns dedicated facetime with senior leadership every week. Hatter also amplified his external outreach, encouraging MLT alumni at FICO to participate in MLT events and share their stories with emerging talent, to further bolster the roster of candidates for FICO’s next class of interns.
“EJ demonstrated initiative and passion, and now he’s running the whole program,” Bruch says. “He’s been a marketing machine, taking his presentation on a road show internally and externally.”
“As a former MLT Career Prep Fellow, EJ knows the MLT playbook and leveraged MLT events and recruiting days to the fullest,” says Blattberg. “A big turning point in the early days of the intern program came after FICO developed a case study on fraud detection that helped Fellows understand the high-stakes work the company does involving sensitive personal financial data. Presented by Eric Orozco, one of FICO’s charismatic engineering leaders, at MLT Career Prep’s biggest event of the year, the case study made the lightbulb go off for Fellows, who were excited by the potential for learning and growth that a FICO internship could bring.”
Because of his strong connections to MLT and the FICO hiring teams, Hatter was able to meet the growing demand for internships. FICO saw applications from MLT Fellows surge dramatically. In 2025, FICO nearly doubled its hiring manager count and conducted over 300 interviews in a single day.
“EJ’s level of resource commitment is rare but highly effective,” Blattberg notes, “EJ also seized momentum by putting together offers quickly and personalizing his follow up to seal the deal.”
“It's been really fun to help grow the program,” Hatter says, “giving new opportunities to students by offering a litany of roles that other companies don't typically offer to interns.”
Together with Bruch, Hatter has created an MLT community within FICO that fosters a true sense of belonging for current and future interns. “Everyone who has come through the program seems to love the fit,” Hatter observes.
“Working at a place where you see early-stage professionals just like you who are thriving in their careers…you can’t put a price on that.” - EJ Hatter
Using Her Voice to Create Internal Mobility
For former intern-turned-full-time employee Ingrid Altamirano, the FICO internship program was not only an opportunity to get in the door at the company – she was able to pivot from a role in professional services to her preferred path in the company’s data science division.
Altamirano had been following the work of FICO’s Chief Analytics Officer, Scott Zoldi, a renowned data scientist, innovator and inventor. After seeing Zoldi speak at a C-Suite speaker series run by Bruch, Altamirano asked her hiring manager to make an introduction. Zoldi became her mentor, eventually offering her a three-month rotation on his team as a Solutions Engineer.
“We’ve never done an assignment like that before, where you go to the data science team for three months and see how it works out,” Bruch says. “Ingrid brokered that on her own. She used the networking skills that she learned through MLT to make contacts within our data analytics department and sell herself. She made the case and she crushed it.”
“Being an MLT Fellow, as part of the inaugural class of interns at FICO, was an opportunity like no other,” Altamirano says.
I worked on live client implementations, pushing code to production and was even able to join client meetings. It gave me invaluable real-world experience very early in my career. My internship was even extended for another three months beyond the original timeline, which was a testament to the impact I was able to make. Most importantly, I felt a strong sense of belonging, a powerful experience as a first generation student learning to find and use my voice. Along the way, I met some of my greatest mentors, many of whom continue to guide me and support me to this day.”
INGRID ALTAMIRANOAltamirano credits the mentorship she received from her MLT coach, April L. Smith, MBA, MRS, with helping her develop the networking skills and confidence to make the transition to Zoldi’s team, where she now works full-time as a Data Analytics Scientist. “Coach April taught me how to use my voice,” she says. “Something my first manager told me was, You came in with a hunger. A hunger to learn, a hunger to grow, and a hunger to be the person who is here so that others can come in and follow your footsteps. That's where Coach April really lit that fire in me, to do more than I expected I could do in the beginning.”
The Secret Sauce in the FICO-MLT Partnership
Since the inception of the FICO internship program, 75 MLT Fellows have been selected for internship roles, and currently, 26 former MLT interns are working at the company in full-time positions. That number will grow to 44 with acceptances from the 2025 intern class. “Now that FICO has created a thriving MLT alumni community within FICO, the internship programs’ success is building on itself,” Blattberg says.
MLT Fellows are naturally wired to pay it forward – they’re fired up to bring in the next class of interns and continue building the MLT legacy at FICO. It’s what we call ‘the flywheel effect.’ It’s a beautiful thing to witness when it takes hold. Not only does it make the recruiting process feel more natural, it makes Jen and EJ’s jobs much easier because they don’t have to ‘sell’ the program to new recruits. It’s selling itself.”
MARY LYNN BLATTBERG“MLT has a proven track record of excellence, and I’m proud to be part of it,” says Hatter, who has expanded the reach of FICO interns from the original cohort of 10 in 2021 to 33 positions across numerous divisions in summer 2025.
“It’s amazing to see how the program has grown,” says Altimirano, now four years on from her first day at FICO. “What I see in the MLT Fellows in the FICO internship program is that they have that light, that spark, that fire, to take initiative and do what they need to do to succeed.”
For an initiative that is only five years old, offering primarily remote positions, the FICO internship program has been a robust and fruitful investment – for FICO management and staff, MLT’s organization and its network of Fellows and alumni. “MLT’s mission, our work, is not transactional,” Walsh says. “When we partner with an enterprise like FICO, when we accept a candidate into one of our programs, we are investing in those relationships. We’re bringing multi-faceted, relationship-driven services and support every step of the way – for our Fellows and for our clients – to drive win-win outcomes.”
“One of the most satisfying things in my career, and something I am so proud of, is building this talent pipeline to ensure that FICO has the best people now, and that we’re well positioned for the future,” Bruch says. “And to hand it over to EJ and Ingrid and the next generation. Their stories are very much a testament to the MLT approach, to the advice and coaching they got, and to the kinds of people they are.”
“My respect and gratitude for FICO’s openness to growth is profound,” says Walsh. “It’s one thing for a firm to seek fresh thinking and expertise to drive innovation. But it takes real vision, and a leap of faith, to actively recruit young talent from different backgrounds and life experiences because you believe in the value that kind of bench strength will bring to your organization.”
Bruch recalls something FICO’s CEO, William Lansing, once said: Hire the best people, show them what success looks like, and then get the heck out of the way. “That type of mindset works really well with our MLT interns because we’re hiring the best,” she says. “We show them what success looks like, and they make it happen. They're the secret sauce. It’s also great to have engaged leaders and people like EJ and Ingrid who make the program better every year.”
