The Internship Grind

To start off lightly, it is brutal. But I'm going to skip the doomer portion of my experiences that you can find everywhere on r/csmajors. Instead I want to share my journey and a lot of the things that I've learned throughout the process that I found interesting.

How I'm Doing

First I'll go into how I'm doing. I've applied to over 200 places and I've received something back from around 20ish. Out of that, I've been given three total interviews, with one being a pretty big tech company which I'm really excited for. I've also been given "invite only" OA's and video interviews, but I'm not holding my breath on those. I'm also optimistic I'll hear back soon from a few other places. In my opinion, with no former professional experience, this is pretty good.

Why The Grind?

One I want to gain experience working with industry giants and writing "professional" code, with unit testing and code reviews, which I believe can elevate my programming ability. The second reason is that I want to go out and experience doing something I love somewhere else in the states. I love Hawaii, but I also love change and I want to experience new things. I desperately want to grow my professional experience and my own life experiences. These are the two main motivators for my grind. Anyways I'll now go into the things that I've learned during this grind as class of 2027 (or 2026)

Apply ASAP

No excuses, just apply. Many companies are extremely rolling sensitive. From one of my interview invites I had to schedule a time to interview. I did it the week after I got it, but when I checked it again two weeks of available time to interview were gone. "Preparing ur resume" is no excuse, unless it's really bad lol. The only thing that triumphs this is referrals, but only for certain companies that aren't as rolling sensitive.

Resume Template

We aren't b-schoolers, please for the love of everything good use a technical resume. A good one can be found on UT-Austins career page. Use bullet points, highlight tools used in experience and projects, and quantify. TBH my main problem is idk how to really quantify the stuff I did. I'm going to strictly improve this by next year.

Get Gud

Resume screen is by far the hardest part to get past. You need to make yourself look smart and capable. Experience beats everything, but if you don't have them then you need to convenience recruiters you are capable. I personally don't have much former professional experience, but I believe I made this up by my projects and robotics. My networking hand project is the only thing people talk about, but imo it makes sense. It's a technically large project and it highlights that I know my stuff. Class projects, unless they are sufficiently complicated, aren't cutting it. Literally just follow a tutorial to make some web app and make it cool.

Just apply

Don't be picky or afraid, unless the company severely crosses the border on your values (such as a military company), just apply. If you believe you're not "qualified" for a position, who cares, just apply. It takes a few minutes max. The game is to have someone take a chance on you, increase number of applications, higher chances of "chances"

Brag with questions

So we all know that we need to convince person x that we're capable and able to succeed in this job. But you can't brag outright or you sound cocky. So what do you do? Simple, ask questions that relate to a technical feat you did. An example can be "I interested about x thing that your company does, I did y thing before using z method, and i'm curious what different approach you did." It's that easy.

School MATTERS

I wish I didn't cope earlier with the whole bullshit "degree doesn't matter." Sorry it does, doing this process without a degree program is impossible. Now, does going to MIT help? Yeah duh, but it's not that important, meaning if you don't go to these schools you'll be fine. What matters more though is location, which SUCKS. First, companies only really go to career fairs that are close or top schools. But a bigger aspect is that these companies only really hire talent that are close to their offices. This really blows, especially being from Hawaii. The strategy I use is that I make my location from St. Louis. Now tbh, this really only matters in my specific case because companies don't want to fly someone out from so far away. It really sucks but who cares ig.

Summary

It's brutal, but not impossible. The most important thing is grit. At the end of the day you are just apply to companies, you're not asking a girl out. Avoid making relationships with companies, most company does something cool that you enjoy. Be resilient in your self confidence and just keep applying and keep improving. Also end notes, I've massively improved the blog portion of my page so I'll post more.