Navigating the World of Internships: A Comprehensive Guide
Landing an internship can be a pivotal step in launching a successful career. This guide provides insights into finding, applying for, and excelling in internship opportunities, drawing from real-world experiences and proven strategies. We'll cover everything from researching companies to acing interviews, with a focus on maximizing your chances of success.
The Importance of Early Preparation
The internship application process is highly competitive, and early preparation is key. Don't treat it as something you can procrastinate on. There are many cases where candidates successfully complete their interviews but cannot get the job because the company already hired too many interns. The internship availability is extremely dependent on when you apply for the company, and you will lose your potential internship because you applied later than others.
For most big companies such as FAANG or equivalent, the optimal timeline is to start applying in September for next year’s summer internships.
Recommended Timeline
A structured timeline can significantly improve your chances of securing an internship. Here's a suggested schedule:
July - August:
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- Finish side projects
- Polish your resume
- Grind Leetcode, System Design, SQL
- Interview prep
- Gather information on companies
September - January:
Continue grinding Leetcode, interview prep, gathering resources and information on companies
Companies start posting their internship applications
Apply to companies
Complete OAs and coding challenges
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Interviews
Track processes for companies you applied to on live spreadsheets from Discord and Reddit communities.
- Ex. Finishing up interviews, getting offers/rejections
May - August: Internship period.
Researching Companies and Gathering Information
Acquiring information is one of the most important things to do before applying to companies. Most likely, a lot of the questions in your mind have probably been answered before.
Utilizing Online Communities
Online communities, such as Discord servers and Reddit, can be invaluable resources. There are channels in these discord servers that track internships for each of the three seasons (Jan - Apr, May - Aug, Sep - Dec), salary info, internships by location, live process tracking, LeetCode help, resume review, mock interviews, and a lot more other topics that people discuss. Furthermore, there are usually individual Discord servers for applicants of bigger companies that you’re applying for. However, I found most people to be very friendly and willing to answer your questions as long as you ask them politely.
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Make sure to be very friendly and polite.
Key Factors in Securing an Interview
Several factors contribute to landing an interview. Here are four of the most important:
- Resume
- GPA
- Networking/Connections
- Graduating Year
Crafting a Compelling Resume
The resume is the most crucial part of getting an interview. Everyone is more than just a single piece of paper, but this is all they’re going to be seeing to evaluate you. The resume is the most crucial part of getting an interview.
GPA as a Baseline Criterion
Many companies don’t even ask for your GPA or your transcript because they value your software experience and skill more. I think of GPA as a baseline criterion.
Leveraging Networking and Connections
Having a referral for a job application that you’re applying for can increase your chances (this depends on the company, but might as well ask around for referrals).
On a side note, a referral from an intern compared to a referral from a full-time employee or a manager may be treated differently. You can also get a direct referral from the higher-ups within a company or the hiring manager which both are very effective.
Everything is not just systematic as people seem. I personally had more success with reaching out to engineering managers/staff engineers. These people are usually the head of their engineering team; they usually don’t get messages like this. Show them your ambition and skill, and ask them if they have room for potential engineers on their teams. Furthermore, engineering managers/staff engineers know hiring managers who can get directly in touch with you for an offer after they decide that you’re fit for the job.
The Importance of Graduating Year
Although the graduating year might not seem too important, I value this as one of the most critical factors in getting interviews.
Some FAANG+ companies don’t even look at your application after realizing that you’re not going to be graduating soon. Optimally, these companies want you to have finished at least 2 years of university before applying to their internships. The closer you are to finishing your degree, the better your chances of getting the job.
Companies’ wants: Interns with potential who can come back as full-time employees within a short period of time - ideally within a year.
Applicants’ wants: Experience, money, prestige (clout), full-time offer, connections.
There are definitely exceptions to this as I’ve seen some students before who made it to FAANG+ companies in their first/second year. However, most of the time, these companies only like hiring “almost-graduates”.
On a side note, please research the company that you’re applying for to figure out if they have a preference in upper-years or if they don’t care about what year you’re in.
Every company is like a human being: each with its own personalities, likes and dislikes, and a set of rules that they follow. To get someone to like you, you need to know what they like.
Mastering the Interview Process
Interviews can take various forms, including behavioral and technical assessments, conducted via phone, video, or in person. Some companies will fly you out to their offices or fly someone into your university for the in-person interviews (not much nowadays since covid).
Preparing for Behavioral Interviews
Many people take behavioral interviews lightly because they think that the technical portions of the interviews are way more important for software engineering positions.
But let’s not be that guy who aces the technicals then gets rejected because of the behavioral portion.
These are my steps in preparing for the behavioral interviews:
Know the company and the position
Investigate
- What the company does: Their purpose, mission statements, main products, etc
- What type of culture they have: Open office spaces, benefits, team size, remote work, location, etc
- How much people get paid for the same positions at this company (you will need this later to compare the salary you were offered)
You also want to understand what type of theme or questions this company asks
- Ex. Amazon asks their behavioral questions based on their Leadership Principles. Leadership Principles are a set of principles that Amazon encourages its employees to always use during work. I would suggest studying and embodying their leadership principles to prepare for Amazon’s behavioral interviews.
- Similarly, I encourage you guys to investigate the theme and the set of questions they usually ask.
Know your resume
- When asked about any piece of information on your resume, you should be ready to answer them coherently with confidence.
- I personally have a go-to verbal description for each of the experiences and projects on my resume. I suggest practice answering questions about your resume as well.
Prepare general behavioral questions
- Here, you’re really more or less describing yourself to the interviewer and you want to relate it back to why you are fit for this position at this company.
- Furthermore, I always include relevant experiences that I’ve had in the past in my answers and narrate a story to further support my point. Essentially, you want to have a relative idea of how to answer these questions by answering similar types of questions beforehand.
- Below are examples of common questions asked during interviews.
- ex. Tell me about yourself.
- ex. What are your biggest weaknesses?
- ex. Why did you choose to apply to ?
- ex. How do you handle success and how will that help you?
- ex. Recall one time you worked in a team you were not satisfied with. How did you resolve the issue?
- ex. I suggest doing most if not all of the questions here.
Technical Interview Preparation
Technical interviews often assess problem-solving skills and technical knowledge.
LeetCode and Algorithm Practice
LeetCode questions for the company you’re interviewing with. You can definitely find a similar list online collected by other applicants.
Solve the questions multiple times to a point where it’s comfortable to answer these questions. Most companies give variations of the same LeetCode questions so you need enough practice and understanding to solve them during the technical interviews.
Furthermore, there are times where you can get stuck on LeetCode problems. Personally, I work on the problem for around 15 minutes, and if I am still completely lost, I look at the discussion posts to understand how it’s done. Then, in the near future, I practice the same question again to make sure I fully understood it.
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
OOP is a fundamental programming paradigm that’s important in both technical interviews and software engineering.
OOP can slightly vary depending on the programming language you use. SQL is most asked in data analyst/scientist-related positions. However, software engineers are also expected to know how SQL works.
System Design
This is an amazing guide on learning system designs. It is very lengthy, so I suggest taking your time to really understand the entire primer.
Companies will at times ask System Design based questions to test your understanding of software architectures and system design.
Programming Languages
Sometimes, the internship posting will contain the languages that they use.
For example, a Front-end Developer posting could mention their use of the MERN stack.
I highly recommend practicing the language especially if you also put that same language on your resume.
Interview Tips
Practice! Practice! Practice!
- After finishing the 4 steps listed in Section 4.3, you can practice mock interviews unlimited times with your friends and colleagues for both behavioral and technical interviews. It’s really different when you practice by yourself compared to someone else interviewing you.
- Personally, I had another friend in the software field with who I could do mock interviews. We would take turns in being the interviewer and the interviewee. Not only did it help with practice interviews, but it also allowed me to see from the point of view of the interviewer.
- I suggest doing mock interviews with people with more experience than you. Sometimes it’s hard to get good feedback from people performing at a similar level to you due to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Wear casual to formal casual for these types of interviews. Most of the time, SWE interviews are relaxed and you can just wear what you would wear outside.
tags: #OA #internship #benefits #early
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