I’m currently studying CS and I’ll get my bachelor’s degree next year. I’ve been searching for remote SWE internships for months now and have not had any luck. I even made a project to put on my resume and it’s still just rejection email after rejection email. Maybe I need more projects? What tips do you have for getting an Internship?
I really don’t want to go back to my previous job cause working with old people in rural America as a minority is literally hell. I think I might just go into omega debt instead lol.
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As a manager who hires developers:
- A candidate’s publicly readable source code makes a big difference.
- Most candidates have no public readable source code, but the ones that do, typically have 3-5 projects, with 1 or 2 showing activity within the last week.
- Some candidates game the ‘recent activity’, by making commits in the week before an interview. I notice, but I’m still impressed with the effort.
- The number one thing a rookie coding candidate can do in an interview is convince me that they know how and when to ask questions. Rookies who don’t stop to ask questions can waste a lot of time and do a lot of damage.
- Do use a recruiter, if you’re able. I have a few I trust, and if you can impress yours, they can get you an interview with me when I’m otherwise too busy. You’ll also get more money, because they get paid based on what you get paid.
Thanks so much for the advice! :)
I was thinking of making a website (a GitHub Jekyll site) to put my resume on (with it also still being available as a document). Do you think that would be impressive or not worth the effort?
Do you think that would be impressive or not worth the effort?
I think it’s worth the effort. About 1/3 of candidates I see a resume for have their own site. I always give it a read, if they do.
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Spitballing ideas:
- Have you contacted your school’s career services department about internships?
- Have you talked to your professors about internships?
- Have you attended career faires on campus?
- Have you attended any meetups or conferences (in person or on-line)?
- Have you contacted the alumni department of your school?
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I do college remotely and the actual university is like 350 miles away, so going to campus isn’t a thing I can do. They use this service called handshake, which doesn’t really work. A lot of the jobs I see on there are scammy ai prompt “engineer” ones. I guess I could talk to my professors though.
As a last resort, I do have an uncle who is a hiring manager and he said he’d hire me if I needed a job but I’d have to move halfway across the country and it also feels cheap so I’d rather not.
I do college remotely and the actual university is like 350 miles away
There’s probably a college nearby that you can go to during a career day. You’d have to find out when they’re holding one.
I do have an uncle who is a hiring manager and he said he’d hire me if I needed a job but I’d have to move halfway across the country and it also feels cheap so I’d rather not.
Call your uncle and tell him you’re looking for an internship. Maybe you don’t want to move, but calling it cheap to ask the people you know for help in finding a job doesn’t make any sense to me.
FAANG manager here.
First, I’d advise to manage expectations when it comes to remote internships. There might be some companies offering them, but there’s possibly going to be a lot of tradeoffs. Larger companies that hire summer interns will often offer relocation, housing, and salary. We do it because we use the internship program to find new hires. Interns get an onboarding experience into corporate culture and a chance to work with mentors on a deliverable product that will be presented to a corporate audience. Not all interns get an offer, but the point of the program is to find candidates.
With that out of the way and assuming you’re a US citizen with a good GPA, also consider looking into things like the National labs programs. They also offer competitive salaries, relo, and housing (iirc). Other government agencies probably have similar programs in place. If you have a research interest you’re interested in pursuing at the graduate level, make sure to mention that as well as any relevant work.
Neither the top tier companies nor government programs generally work with recruiters, and especially not with interns, and most especially not with undergraduates. Like someone else said, you’re probably a bit late off the mark for intern programs for this year (but it doesn’t hurt to look). On the other hand, you might have enough knowledge and experience to take on a junior programmer position at a smaller firm, which might be open to remote work. The pay won’t be much, I suspect, but it’d be resume fodder and a real job, which also looks good on a resume. You can still do an internship if you decide to do grad school, but this time with real world experience as well.
Good luck!
Neither the top tier companies nor government programs generally work with recruiters
This doesn’t match up with my experience at all. But internships aren’t something that recruiters can make good money on so they don’t bother.
I’ve brought on interns/RAs in roles as a professor at a university, as a scientific researcher at a national lab, and as a manager at a large company. They usually pay the equivalent of $60-80k, except for the RAs who get a stipend/room and board, and a tuition waiver (which works out about the same depending on the school). Every position was filled by a person making a direct application, either to me personally or via a position advertised on the company website. One or two might have been from an institutional outreach program, but I’ve never heard of an intern coming in from a third party recruiter.
I’m absolutely not disagreeing with you. Your experience may be very different (my current company doesn’t deal with third party recruiters at all, and my org doesn’t even use contractors). I just wanted to throw my experience out there so that people would realize there’s a variety of opportunities that might require different approaches.
One of the main things going against you right now is timing. A lot of companies try to line up their summer interns by January at the very latest. I had mine confirmed last November.
Other than that, it’s good to try to tailor your projects to the kind of industry you want as best as possible. Like if you’re looking for a job in aerospace or the medical industry, do something where your software is talking to hardware. It doesn’t really matter what kind of hardware - do something that controls a cheap SBC or something, just to show interfacing with something realtime. That’s just an example; think of the skills your target job would need, and then figure out how to demonstrate those skills on a smaller scale.
I also look at hobbies for kinds of interest. The company I work for makes major rocket engines, so I’ll perk up when I see people who list their school’s rocketry club, for instance.
