Can't get an internship

[Armslong]

I'm a CS student at a small college (no opportunities at career fairs) in WA, and I've been trying to find myself an internship for the past couple of months, and I've had little success. As far as I can tell, my resume is decent (modeled after careercup's resume), I have stuff on my GitHub (no one really asked me for it though), but I still rarely get any replies (especially with resume black-holes like Jobvite - 0% reply rate). I've tried pretty much every approach from contacting people individually and "showing passion" for their company, to blasting my resume to anything I can find (ironically, response rates are about the same). I'm not particularly confident in my skills, but my get-an-interview rate is 100% for whenever I had to do a programming test/challenge for the initial application, so I can't be all that bad, but it never works out in the end. I even had an interview at a (mid-sized) startup in Seattle that went from "we'll make you an offer" to "you're not a good fit" as soon as they found out I'm not a US citizen. The prevailing advice on HN for "I can't get a job" seems to be "get an internship", and that you just have to not drool during the interview to get one, but I haven't found it to be as easy as some people make it out to be. I'm pretty desperate and at this point I'm looking for pretty much anything that would pay just enough for me to be able to survive the summer (I'm finishing up my junior year, so this is pretty much my last chance of getting a job that will allow me to stay in the US after graduation), but has depressed me to the point where it's starting to affect my day-to-day life in pretty severe ways. If you have any advice, I'd be grateful to hear it

[ASpring]

You're at a small college. I've been there. You don't have the same huge career fairs and prestige that many other large colleges have to attract internships.

However, you have something better. You have 1 on 1 connections with your professors who (hopefully) have some ties with industry around your area. Talk to your professors and start applying for some REU programs if that seems interesting also.

I was in the same position, my graduating CS class had 5 members. I had done some research with my advisor in undergrad and she hooked me up with an REU, internship, and a job once I got out. Your professors are one of your most valuable connections in college.

[rbnio]

I'm in a quite similar situation. I'm a graduate student in Europe, currently trying to get an internship in the US - and trust me, I know about the black-holes.

I have a few years of professional experience in design and marketing but decided that it's not what I want to do for the rest of my life. So I started studying for a interdisciplinary degree in Digital Media / Computer Science and really love it. My grades are good and I finished a few projects that I'm quite proud of. A few days ago, I started applying for working student positions at tech companies and startups in the city where I just moved for my graduate studies, and most of them invited me for an interview right away. So i guess that my CV/Resume can't be too bad either. But companies in the US? I guess that me being from outside of the US in combination with my "weird" interdisciplinary studies is just too inconvenient for most US companies.

You didn't mention where you're originally from. Getting a job there is probably much easier. May I ask why you absolutely have to stay in the US after graduation?

Anyway, good luck!

-- Edit: Oh, BTW, I'm looking for an internship opportunity in the US :) I finished a few projects with Python and Django, started with iOS development a few months ago, and I have a strong background in design and UX. I would love to hear from you and any feedback on my resume would be highly appreciated: http://goo.gl/G9tf2U

[eshvk]

It is not clear to me how your citizenship or lack of it has to do with your internship prospects. From an immigration point of view, assuming you are legally in the country, there is literally nothing that any company has to do extra to hire you as an intern. It could simply be that that specific company was being stupid.

I have been in the same situation you were some years back. No C.S. experience; I had just moved from an EE background to work on Machine Learning. I was at an incredibly good school but still getting an internship seemed atrociously hard. Especially considering that people who had a C.S. background were not being grilled that hard in interviews. The problem is social proof. At the moment, you have a severe lack of social proof. Maybe, it is your school; maybe it is a question of abilities. It doesn't matter. Stop overthinking about things that are out of your control.

The solution? It may seem futile or simple but just keep going. Take concrete steps. Do more networking (which you are already doing), do prepare more for interviews (the standard algorithm/datastructure prep), rebuild your resume (feel free to ping me or post your resume on this thread and someone can critique it). Also, it is not the end of the day if you can't get an internship. It is one way to getting a full time job _but not the only way_. You can do other things: Google Summer of Code, hack on open source projects (which you should start doing yesterday, an excellent way of acquiring social proof), working on research projects with Professors (high profile ones that have good industry connections).

[argonaut]

1. Make it clear that your non-citizenship is a non-issue for working over the summer (because it isn't an issue, right?)

2. Make sure there's a link to your github profile. A good place to put it would be under your email/phone number.

3. As long as the resume stays at most one page, add some projects to your resume (prioritize the most impressive ones), below work experience.

4. I don't agree with orasis's advice of saying that you're cheap. It reeks of desperation. Interns are already viewed as cheap labor, so there's no need to explicitly say you're cheap.

5. Do you have any particularly marketable or in-demand skills? I'm talking iOS, Android, Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, PHP, advanced JavaScript/HTML/CSS, machine learning, data science. Typically as an engineer you get slotted into a particular category The categories I've seen are: Android, iOS, web front-end (JS/HTML/CSS), web backend (database focused or server focused), machine learning.

6. Most big companies wrap up their intern hiring by February, so you still have several months to get an internship through an established bigcorp intern program. However, startups are insanely flexible and most are willing to pick up interns even in the weeks leading up to the summer. One startup I talked to in September was actually like "we like you but it's too early, we have no idea where we'll be in May!" So focus on the big tech companies and the big startups for now, and keep in mind that many small startups don't have internship programs but might entertain hiring you if you email them in a few months.

[orasis]

Don't bother getting an internship. On the top line of your resume, put "I AM CHEAP, TRY ME OUT!" and offer to work for < $20 / hour.

You have to look at things from the employer's perspective - it is very expensive to make hiring mistakes, because it usually takes a couple of months to realize that someone is pure dog-shit, and you've already agreed to a salary that is way above their productivity level.

By being cheap, you make the situation almost risk-free for the employer.

"Intern" says "please hold my hand". "Employee" says, "I promise to provide you value".

In a year or so, after you've learned a lot on the job, you'll be able to start hunting for a new gig at a much higher pay rate AND you can do it while already employed.

Good luck!

[slajax]

If you are a Canadian citizen you should come up to Vancouver. I'll consider giving you an internship at my startup.

[curiouscat321]

Finding an internship can suck, can't it? I'm going through similar issues myself. Mediocre (but above 3.0 GPA), little luck, getting discouraged. HN can be pretty unhelpful about finding internships. HN has a bias towards the Ivy League/successful/US Citizen types that have few issues getting hired.

So what can you do?

1) Breathe. You'll find something. You're working in the hottest field in the world right now. Somebody once told me that anxiety is simply looking too far into the future. He said that if you start thinking far enough ahead, you'll realize how little control you have. You still have plenty of time.

2) Realize the holidays are here. That's great for two reasons. One: nobody is hiring right now. Very few interviews are going out and virtually nobody is sending out offers. Wait until the new year to begin the search again. Two: you have a whole break to better your resume. Build a project, contribute to open source (this one's a biggie), learn a language. You have a free pass to better that resume of yours.

3) Submit your resume on this thread. Hopefully, HN can give you some tips.

4) Use connections. Start with your parents (although it sounds like they might be overseas). See where they work and look for internships in your field. Have them refer you. Then do the same for friends who have interned, their parents, their connections, professors, anybody. Start knowing where people work and ask for favors. It takes a minute or two of their life to send your resume to HR.

5) Don't be afraid to go after "bad jobs". This has been my biggest issue. I've been going after the biggest, best companies out there. And that's fine- to a point. A big-name internship sells itself when job hunting. A smaller, less sucecssful company internship can too. You just have to work harder to sell it.

Now, I haven't addressed the elephant in the room - your citizenship. That's an issue. Very few companies are willingly to go through the effort to get you a visa. Fear not, you have a couple options. You can try to get some kind of visa on your own, although I'm not an expert with that. You can find a company that has overseas offices. Work overseas for your internship, then transfer to the USA for a job. Or you can simply get an overseas internship. That experience will hopefully help you get a job here.

Quite the novel. I know it can be depressing to not have something just yet. Especially when friends have their dream jobs. I must say that writing this has been very cathartic. But don't focus on this too much. Study for finals, go drinking, play video games; just get your mind off of it. Any job search is going to have more negatives than positives. You only need one yes. Every no is one less until you get your yes.

[Armslong → curiouscat321]

Thank you! I've already been doing a lot of the stuff you mentioned, and I'll definitely consider the rest. As far as citizenship is concerned, I can work for almost 3 years with my student visa (employer doesn't need to do anything either), so I'm not sure interning abroad would make much sense in my case. Also, besides language difficulties, a lot of internships outside of the US are either unpaid or so poorly paid that I couldn't afford to move half-way across the world for the summer. Good luck in your search as well!

[curiouscat321 → curiouscat321]

Quick followup on the resume - nobody will look at your GitHub. Make sure that the projects are also listed on your resume.