From riding in a van that caught fire four times, to a coding interview with nothing but a notebook and orange pen. This is how I got my first software engineering internship.
Photo from stathakis cleaning
This article anecdotally describes how I obtained my first software engineering internship, with a few tips and lessons along the way. I hope to write a more succinct guide depicting the steps and strategies to break into the tech field, but for now here’s a story on carpet cleaning and strange interviews.
At the end of my sophomore year of college, most of my friends had already landed their first software engineering internships. I had applied to several openings, but received nothing more than rejection letters and the occasional “we hope you apply again next year!” I come from a low income, blue-collar background where saving money over the summer was a necessity, so I couldn’t afford working an unpaid internship.
This left me in the all-too common situation of applying for entry-level positions requiring relevant experience that I simply did not have.
A few weeks after finals and realizing my fate was sealed, I began working for a family friend cleaning carpets. While I have nothing but respect for blue collar jobs, nothing motivates you more to take your career seriously than cleaning the carpets of your own university’s Fraternity houses. You think scrubbing up a spilled beer with an old towel the morning after really works? Think again. As if that weren’t enough, the decades-old van I worked in had literally caught fire four times. The seat belts had burned away without replacement. If I happened to hit my head on the ceiling over a bump, black soot would fall down onto my lap. Since the job was paid in cash there was no paperwork, but I seriously considered asking at least for a waiver of my bodily safety. In short, it was a motivator for my success. The work was only part-time, so I took an extra job tutoring at-risk youth as well. That experience deserves an entire article in itself, but that’s for another day.
Even with two jobs, I still felt like I was doing nothing to better my chances of obtaining that coveted first software engineering internship. I started googling and quickly found that a great way to get your first internship is to create your own side projects!
But what the hell was I going to build?
Well, turns out it’s very difficult to build your own projects when you have nothing more than a few basic math and coding classes behind you. So instead, I started looking up tutorials and online courses that I could at least follow to completion and learn something from. Yet it seemed that the more interested I was in a course, the more it was going to cost me — and I had next to nothing in spare cash at the time.
I eventually came upon a web development course offered by codecademy, a popular online learning resource for basic coding skills. I was immediately drawn to the course because it required very little setup, just JavaScript, HTML and CSS. However, the course was close to $300 and that was almost half of my summer’s savings. To my own good fortune, the course also just so happened to have a two week free trial. You know where this is going.
The program suggested one to two hours of coding a day, but I was pushing at least five or six hours every weekday after work and even more so on the weekends. It was so satisfying to see the immediate progress that comes with web development, and I figured that if I could complete the course before the free trial ended, then I could learn the basics of web development without cutting into my food bank. After completing a three month course in just under 13 late nights, I actually felt a decent grasp on creating static yet responsive web pages. I was able to take that foundation and build a few friends and family their own sites, I even built my carpet cleaning boss his own website to display his contact information and services.
I didn’t do anything fancy, but I was putting the work in.
Fast forward to the spring semester of my junior year, and I was preparing for the career fair. Now that I could place “freelance web developer” on my resume, I made a strong effort to use my class projects to display my technical abilities. I wasn’t going to timidly introduce myself to a handful of companies this time around. This time, I was going to research each company I was interested in and put myself out there.
I arrived at the career fair before the doors had even opened at 9:00 am. If there’s one thing I learned from previous fairs, it’s that there is no point in showing up if you’re simply going to hand over your resume to an employer and hope for the best. Instead, I wanted to make sure I had time to have meaningful discussions with the individuals representing companies I found interesting. In an environment of hundreds of sweaty and stressed out students,** the little things stand out**.
I routinely witnessed students in front of me have interactions with employers that were so awkward even the students in line would wince. Here’s a particularly bad example of what not to do when introducing yourself to a potential boss:
Student approaches employer and offers resume: “Hello.”
Employer: “Hi there, what’s your name?”
Student responds without making eye contact: “John.”
Employer: “… Hi John, what brings you to company X?”
Student: “Well, I need experience and your banner looked interesting.”
Employer: “Well, that’s good I guess, what year are you John?”
Student: “I’m a sophomore. Do you have any internships?”
This conversation is going NOWHERE. Believe it or not, I saw these types of interactions at the fair countless times. One thing I take pride in with my family background is that there was always a high standard of respect when introducing yourself. Simple acts such as shaking someone’s hand (prior to covid-19) and making eye contact can go a long way.
Now, one of the most notorious aspects of any career fair is answering the question “so can you tell me about yourself?” It is vague yet direct, and leaves the floor to you. However, this question shouldn’t warrant so much stress. Nobody knows yourself better than you do, this question isn’t even supposed to be an indication of anything, the employer simply wants to know who you are!
Make sure you shake hands (pandemic permitting) at the start and make eye contact throughout the conversation. The employer should have a name-tag or introduce themselves, and you should make an effort to address them by their name. It’s much more personable and you will immediately stand out! Instead of going through the cringe-worthy interaction noted above, here’s a great standard for introducing yourself to an employer.
“Hello Samantha, my name is Israel Miles. I’m a Junior in computer science here at CU and I wanted to apply for the summer software engineering internship at Intel.”
This introduction acknowledges both of your names, your general background and that you’ve already taken the time to review a company’s internship opportunities. Now you can get to the good stuff:
“I saw that your internship focuses on web development with React JavaScript. I haven’t used React before, but I have built multiple projects with HTML and CSS from scratch. I’ve also used JavaScript to make the sites interactive, as well as JQuery and Boot Strap for responsive layouts. I’ve also built a movie rental project using C++ in one of my classes, and feel like I could learn the basics of React by the time the internship starts.”
Here, you have addressed that you may not have one particular skill in the job listing, but you have enough of a background and initiative to be considered. After all, an internship is where you have the benefit of focusing your time not just on work, but on learning as well!
Here’s one more career fair tip. When you start the fair, pick the companies that you have little interest or desire to work at. Give your best shot at the elevator pitch, but relax knowing that if you don’t do that great, you don’t really want to work there anyways. This will serve as a primer for the companies you really want to ace an introduction with, and will smooth out your transitions for your elevator pitch.
Enough examples, how did my real interactions play out?
Well, I first spoke with an engineer at the Visa table. I wanted to apply for an internship that required junior status (which I was), but after a few minutes of talking about my background the engineer asked if I was a Freshman. Ah well, not the best start but that’s the point. I continued hitting table after table but was receiving consistent feedback that while I had great energy and side projects, they were looking for an intern with more specific experience.
The clock was ticking and the career fair was coming to a close, and yet I didn’t feel that I was getting any traction. I finally came across a cyber-security company I was really hoping to work for. I approached the booth where a very tall man with an enormous beard and large glasses towered over me (we’ll call him Mike as a pseudonym).
#interview #software-development #humor #college #internships
