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Qualifications for Summer Internships?
DMBeiler asks: "I'm a first year computer-science student, with a lot of computing background. I learned C++ in the curriculum here, but am also familiar with Perl, PHP, and know my way around Linux. I consider myself adept enough to pick up a working knowledge of a language fairly quickly. As an underclassman, with little formal training, do any jobs/internships exist for me, say, over the summer? What do I need to bring to the table to be considered for even a menial position, these days?"
Are any indicator- a birth certificate and passport from India seem to be prerequisites.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
...and how well can you gopher stuff over to the copy machine, run (someone else's) builds, etc.? If you're extra lucky maybe you'll be asked to write some glue code or track down a bug or two.
This is an internship, after all. (grin)
The only requirement is that you go bareback.
Have you developed good working relationships with your professors and classmates? A lot of the best opportunities at your level will be decided more on who you know than what you know. Make friends and ask around. Good professors will have contacts. You need to start networking and I don't mean the TCP/IP kind. Also check with your schools career center.
1. Technical and business curiosity
2. Solid communication skills
3. A great all-natural rack (and we ain't talkin' servers) and some tight, low-cut clothes
4. A "team-first" attitude!
With that, I'm sure you'll find a great position...
Can you use a stapler and carry monitors?
In my area (Richardson, TX), there are plenty of internships to be had, though that varies from region to region. It sounds like you're on the right track, learning languages and skills above and beyond what the school teaches, as that's what's going to make you stand out from the other 200 applicants. Here at UTD, anyone who's taken principles of Unix is going to have a basic knowledge of PERL and will have written the back-end to a web server of some sort (the semester I took it, we wrote an airline reservation system). However, students fluent in .NET are few and far between here as there are no CS classes that teach it. That extra knowledge only helped me land the internship, but it also helped me excel at the internship.
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
Try going for a job instead of a internship. Having an internship on your school record or resume may look good to school officials and some business types, but real work experience counts a lot more.
I feel your pain, I was in the same frustrating position last summer, so try to forge away with an open source project or two, and if you/me get really lucky, Google will host the Summer of Code project again this next summer
;)
If all else fails, check job listing at school, you might be lucky enough to land a student worker position where you can do something besides reinstall windows on other students' machines
Then again, if all else fails, nothing says you can't take some of those wicked hard math classes over the summer to get ahead
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Forget you and your internships. I'm a CS grad with a doctoral degree, how the hell do *I* find a job?!?
Frankly, the best way to get an internship is to have had previous internships. It's all about getting your foot in the door. I've been doing bioinformatics internships since I was in high school, and in order to get my current job on campus, all I had to do was tell them where I had previously worked and a sample of my research. They didn't even consider my grades. You just have to hack away, ask around, and above all, BE ASSERTIVE. Look up professors in your school's website that are doing research which interests you and email them. Believe in yourself, even if they don't, and soon someone will take interest and give you an ofer.
There are lots of internship positions. Companies like interns cause they often extract maximum work for minimum pay. Plus, if you're temporarily replacing a person, they get to take a vacation.
Now...
You say you just finished 1st year? That's a bit more difficult since in my experience most companies tend to ask for people who have at least finished 2nd year. Which means you might be stuck volunteering but it's worth a try.
Your department/faculty/university should have some sort of career service hopefully. Sign up. My email gets clogged with calls for resumes daily.
Check the big companies' websites.
IBM hires interns for the summer, as does Microsoft for example. Typically 3 month terms.
Your resume should be good enough to get you past the door and your interview skills should be good enough to get you past the 25 minute introductory interview. Then, if you're deemed potentially worthy, you'll get to go to a technical interview (at this point resumes or your conversational skills are irrelevant). As I heard from a friend who was an intern at M$, Microsoft's technical interview is 4 hours of you writing code on the blackboard.
Moral of the story: it might be hard to get invited for a technical interview considering you're only a first year. But if you do get such an invitation, it's only up to your technical skills and knowledge to take you further and land the job.
Of course, there are other not-so-technical internships in other companies. Anyways, ask you schools councellors/guidance department/career service/job posting board in the hall for further info.
Your Perl, PHP, and Linux skills may be better assets in finding an internship than one year of C++. There are lots of "Hey, we need a web view for this, we need these scripts to be fixed, we need a system set up for testing" opportunities that comapnies would like to have done but don't want to pay someone big bucks to do. Enter the intern.
A year of C++ from most schools leaves you in a position of being able to solve homework problems and do basic exercises, but it's a long way from being able to make much headway in a significant software engineering situation. Which is a shame, because that's where the best learning takes place. If you can find an internship where you can work with experienced programmers on serious code go for it -- it's got the potential for being an incredibly valuable experience. But if you're only going to be a round for the summer, a lot of companies won't want to invest the effort required to bring a freshman up to speed on their development environment, their code base, and their processes.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Are you active in your local ACM? If not, join in. There's probably a local Linux Users Group nearby you, find out their meeting times and begin attending. Ask your professors. Ask your guidance counselor. What are your nearby corporations? Are any of them large enough that they would probably have summer internships? Pick up the phone and find out.
They exist but they're not easy to find. The larger companies are going to be looking for 3rd or 4th year students for internships, and the smaller companies won't immediately have projects available to you. So unfortunately (or fortunately) you're going to have to make a project pitch for them. More work, but more rewarding work as well. A lot of companies would be willing to hire a person for $10/hr if they knew what you could do for them, but YOU are the one that is going to have to let THEM know what you can do for them. Come prepared. Bring a portfolio. Offer your services and have examples of things that are similar that you have worked on in the past. It's going to be a case of selling yourself and that's one of the hardest things to do in IT/CS right now.
The internships might be listed or might not, but if they aren't (or the jobs are out of your range) search the job boards for companies that are hiring for things that look interesting to you, and go in there (in *person*) and sell yourself with the line that "I'm not fully qualified for this job but I'm looking for an internship along these lines and I'm a fast learner." They'll appreciate your honesty, they'll appreciate your ambition, and they'll appreciate the fact that they can get someone started on the project for half (or less, depending) the cost of a full timer even if there has to be a hand off later. Sometimes getting a project started is the hardest part of the project.
Hope this helps!
~Jer
Back when I was a strapping young lad, all it took to get an internship was dedication, hard work, enthusiasm, and a perceivable desire to learn your trade. And your father knowing a guy in HR.
Nowadays, it seems that internships which used to be the proving grounds of new minds and places to get that critical initial real-world experience have joined the rest of the technical entry-level jobs: requiring 8 years of experience with references. And your father knowing a guy in HR.
So, for the next two or three years, start working on projects. Make tangible contributions (my name is stuck on a few simple bugfixes and a patch to a game to make the arrow keys work, not that impressive) to a number of medium to high-profile projects. Meanwhile, start some projects of your own. Through all of this, understand your limitations. If you google your name and a flamewar on the devlist over including your code comes up, this is not good. Likewise, if you're touting your awesome GTK mediaplayer on your resume, and googling you comes up with you begging for help on GTK, media, and playing comes up over the span of most of your project's life, thats not good either.
And drop hints to your father about vacation plans to IBM's headquarters and how he'd love to get to know the people there
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Well, we do seem to have an unpaid position available. You'll need to know Java, J++, T/SQL, P/SQL, C++, C#, SOAP, XML, XSL, XSLT, VB, Perl, Python, Ruby, Fortran, Cobol, Asterix, Obelix, Hindi (Punjabi A+), Solaris, Redhat, Windows Server 2003, Active Directory, certifications in all desired, be able to lift 50lbs, basic data-entry skills, some light telephone, filing, have reliable transportation for occasional errands. Free donuts in the breakroom every morning!
I've interned approximately 10 months for Apple computer (EE for the Mac Mini in 2004), and been on two recruiting events to my college during that time, taking resumés (but not doing any interviews). From the recruiting side you quickly find that everyone's resumé looks exactly the same as everyone else: you all have the same courses, projects, and skills in programming languages and the like.
What I want to see is you telling me why I should hire you -- why should I push this resumé to the hiring manager with a "we've got to hire this kid." What makes you different? We all know you want to work for us -- you wouldn't have been in line giving me your resumé otherwise. If you give me the impression that you're not full-out gung-ho for the position, I'm not even going to consider you.
I want to see things like what you do in your free time: do you have a life? But I don't want to see someone who only does extracurricular activities. Do you surf and play in a band, say, but also work on some really neat [EE/CS] projects at the same time? Can you balance school/fun/hobbies? Do you have personal drive and a spark of intelligence? If you're bright and driven, we can teach you anything you need to know. That's far more important than simply knowing many things. Tell me something cool you've done. Impress me. Make me want to see you come work for us.
Even more interesting is being in the college at which you're recruiting: you can see everyone taking the same classes you've taken, doing the same projects and trying to pass it off as if it's unique. Hey, kid: I did that last quarter. In fact, you were in my section and goofed off half the time; or perhaps you're the guy who took the easy route on that project while I busted my ass doing it the hard way. I don't think so.
Don't be disappointed if you don't get anything your first year: Many do not. Don't, however, waste your time. Do -something- related to your major and expected career. Make up some project for yourself and do it, and do it well. Work for free for a company as long as it's giving yourself some valuable experience. In other words, do -anything- to differentiate yourself in a positive light and make me remember you. I went through 60 resumés in 6 hours at one career fair, and I can't remember 2/3 of the people I talked to. The only ones I remember are those who made an impression.
Good luck! I'll be at Google and http://www.pasemi.com/ this summer/fall (have to see more of the world before I graduate and pick a permanent career). Once you have experience in one job, the next come much, much easier.
I run a small software development team here in Southern California for Rapid7 and I have some experience with employing interns. The qualities I tend to look for (in order of importance):
1) Work ethic and dependability. Someone who takes pride in his or her work.
2) A genuine interest and love of computer science and programming (typically evidenced by non-school computer interests & programming projects that you have taken on). I don't hire people who are just interested in completing their school's curriculum.
3) Ability to learn new things quickly.
ANY reasonable employer will be able to look beyond your lack of experience (this is the whole point of an internship position). You should be focussing on positions that will enable you to grow and learn interesting things. Mentoring is important at this point in your career, so don't accept positions where you think you're just going to be doing menial stuff that will not challenge you.
There should be plenty of opportunities out there for you. Any good 2 or 4 year school should have an office full of people whose job it is to help you find internships. Don't be afraid to think outside the box and apply directly to companies you find interesting, even if they are not advertising internship positions at your school.
P.S. -- Shameless plug. Talented undergrads in the Los Angeles area who are interested in network security and Java programming are most welcome to apply to Rapid7. Contact me for details -- chad [at] rapid7 dot com
I work at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. From what I have seen, the summer internship program at The Lab is excellent. There are internships in variety of areas, including computer science, materials science and physics. In many cases there are interesting projects to work on and there is an opportunity to present your work at the end of the internship period. The daughter of a friend was an intern at The Lab last summer in materials science. They gave her access to the microfabrication facility for her project.
The requirements for the various summer internship programs vary depending on the department. In most cases you need to have third year academic standing and a related major. You will need to get letters of recommendation from some of your professors in many cases. I believe that there is also a US citizenship requirement, since The Lab does classified work.
Applications start early. For many departments, the application window for the summer closes December 31, the year before. For example, some departments closed applications for this summer on December 31, 2005. Some departments allow later application. Again, check the llnl.gov web page.
Note that I'm not writing here in any "official" capacity. Just as someone who works at The Lab and has learned about the internship program.
I'm not the only person in this boat. However I'm a 3rd year CS student with about 7 years summer-work experience. Doesn't make it any easier finding internships however.
Expect to be very geographically limited, unless you have a super-spectacular resume you can fire at people. I'm looking for out of state internships (currently in Arkansas) and after a year in Japan I'm trying to find one in or near a large city.
I applied online to Apple, however I doubt I'll hear anything from them (after all, I'm not from some big name university with miraculous projects to show.) I'll probably be looking in-state, but sadly accepting an internship will probably mean I'll be eating my savings working for free for some large company instead of actually earning money.
Basically, best of luck. It's far from easy unless your university has connections, people you know have connections, or your university generally gets high traffic from tech companies.
(If this sounds pessimistic it's cause I've been scouring for places, but all the companes I'd be interested in interning at seem to only want people in their local area or from universities they actually visit, which means big, expensive universities. Oh and it's yet more learning you have to pay for, despite them benifiting from it.)
It is amazing the amount my employer places on GPA when looking for Co-Ops. Bottom line, GPA counts alot. If you don't have it... spend some time at some small software shops where they can't afford to hire the top GPAs.
At least at Lawrence Livermore (LLNL) summer interns do not need and are not given security clearances. My understanding is that they do a basic background check, which includes criminal record. My friend's daughter applied in December and was accepted a few months later.
The world of business is as much (if not more) who you know as it is what you know. You need to build a repetoire with someone or some company to stand the best shot.
;-)
It's also good to have some experience, however menial. I found basic web jobs around campus were great to at least show a possible employer that you had at least worked in IT to some degree.
Do you want to be paid? I would kill to have an intern on hand to pump out C#, Perl, and ASP.NET code. Bet I could convince my boss to go with an unpaid internship easier then a paid.
Find out if there are any professors at your school who also work in your industry, then take their classes and make yourself known to them. This can open doors to internships and real jobs.
Getting an internship after freshman year could be tough. I got one based on my connections and work from high school, but if you're starting now it may be too late. (I already hired my interns for this summer.) As other posters said, maybe start working on some personal projects that will make your resume stand out in later summers.
Also check out IBM Extreme Blue; it's a lot of fun. (You can guess where I work...)
I was in a somewhat similar situation to yours a year ago. What I ended up doing was putting my php skills to use in a startup for considerably less money than an adult php/mysql programmer, but more than most college kids, and with a much better job/work environment. If you only have a year of experience in C++, you probably can't really use that for much, but web programming generally allows for simpler applications.
As other people in this thread have said, it's also worthwhile to have outside projects. If you can't come up with anything, then create a portfolio site that shows up just what you can do so you can point people to it. Aside from that, your University is a great resource for finding jobs. Talk to other professors and other students. Right now, I'm helping my boss find a student for a job. Also, your department probably has a career center. Often they get emails from companies and recruiters looking for student workers and interns. Good luck.
Try here. Way cool place to spend the summer. It looks like they even hire high school students for internships.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
It may be tough to get a summer internship as a first-year student, but there are some tricks.
Many companies prefer students to stay for longer co-op assignments (i.e.: Summer+Fall or Spring+Summer). I found that it was much easier to get a co-op in Spring+Summer (basically January through August), since fewer people seem to be willing to do that.
(unfortunately it's too late for this year)
IBM in particular tends to have quite a few openings every year for co-ops starting in January.
Having gotten an internship at my dream job, and stayed there ever since, I'd say you have more or less what it takes.
1) Enough technical knowledge to actually do the job.
2) Enough technical knowledge to know when to say "I don't know".
3) One or two projects (either for school or independent, or both) that show the ability to do something interesting, complete it, and talk about what you did.
4) A resume that focuses more on your projects (what you've done) then your class (what's been done to you).
If you haven't done a project for school that you're proud of yet, set aside a weekend to hack the heck out of something that interests you, and be prepared to spend a few hours a night finishing it, even after it starts to get a bit boring. What kind of project? Write a Linux device driver to scratch your own itch; put together a small demo search engine with wikipedia as a data set; write a small networked game; whatever. It's kinda nice, but not essential, if it's somewhat relevant to the internship you want.
If you've done the project, and you have the interest, it's a simple three-step process.
1) Figure out what company you want to be at. Limit yourself to one or two applications at first.
2) Write an objective that actually reflects what you want to do. Don't use MBA words, just be honest. "Objective: To find an internship in the computer industry where I can write code for a product that will ship to customers, learn about the software industry, and get a better sense of where my interests lie."
3) Find postings at jobs.company.com or the equivalent, not some aggregator. Skip any that require you to use their online filing system. Look for e-mail addresses. E-mail the person given, with a short (no more than four sentence!) cover letter and your resume attached as a pdf.
I've had this sig for three days.
If you can afford to, find a prof doing something interesting and volunteer to work for the summer. Not only do you get to [hopefully] work on something cool, but you get to know more about the department and who you might want to work with or take classes from [and who you want to avoid].
I did this and it lead to [paid!] employment in a research-y position for the remaining summers of my undergrad and through my masters. This led directly to my first Real Job - and look at me now!
I think, workwise, it was the best decision I've ever made.
What do I need to bring to the table to be considered for even a menial position, these days?
1. Five years of experience.
2. A perfect employment history with no gaps of more than a weekend.
3. Willingness to work 80 hour weeks perpetually
4. WIllingness to work without benefits, overtime or vacation.
5. Being a team player, which means "agree even when the team is wrong"
6. Work for half pay.
7. Work those 80 hour weeks as a temp
8. Perfect credit
9. No family (too many non-company obligations)
10. Permarenter (so the company can relocate at will)
All ten or it's a guaranteed layoff within 60 days. It's that simple.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Yes, freshman undergrads can get internships. You probably won't be at Google, but look around locally a bit (craigslist). There's a fair chance you could get hired by your school's IT department(s), or find a position at some small software dev shop in town. Big names are nice, but future employers know that any experience is better than none. And writing code is almost the same everywhere, so you'll develop real skill even if you don't have a big name behind you.
Lastly, some companies receive non-profit open source development experience very well... Amazon and Google in particular. If you can't make money programming, do it for free like so many slashdotters. Put it on your resume and you'll have something to show for your summer. Perhaps more importantly though, is that you'll become a better programmer and have fun.
Look outside just the computer/tech industry. I spent a pair of summers with Delphi Delco Electronics (ya know, the now bankrupt auto parts supplier spun off from GM)-- one writing a pretty fair chunk of code, the other doing hardware design. Quite valuable experiences. Leverage alumni contacts if possible. You really just have to work at it to find something.
It is vastly easier to get a 6-8 month co-op rather than a 3-4 month internship. It really pays to do a quick numbers check on how your future courseloads would be affected by missing a semester. Graduating a semester later isn't so bad (especially if you're staying for a Master's anyways), and if you plan it right then it might be unnecessary.
Learn PHP, HTML, and get yourself a basic knowledge of MySQL. Then head to your local opensource/Linux users group, and bang.
What? It worked for me. What started as a summer job evolved into a part-time thing that I've been doing for nine months, and there's no end in sight. And I'm only a sophomore in high school.
Companies understand that there will be a fair bit of training associated with all interns, and one of the best ways to get a position with a good company is to look for a co-op (like an internship, but lasts 6-9 months) instead. With a co-op, the company knows you'll have plenty of time to be trained and produce useful results. It'll still come in very handy later when you're looking for a summer internship or fulltime job to be able to say you've spent 8 or so solid months at a real job with real projects.
Not more than you need, just more than you want
Last year I was invoved in hiring two summer students (we paid our student employees, 50-100% more than any of their classmates) from a local college at the end of their second year. It was basically a disaster, we were not prepared, and other then getting a pay cheque the students had about 25-50% of their time that was useful or educational to them, and less than 25% of time was useful to us beyond the time it took to describe a task to them.
How to stand out from a crowd of resumes? Be interesting to a geek, without offending any HR people who might read it before forwarding it. Something like, "Contributed patches to codefoo script version 2.3 to work under perl 5.9" is a 100 times more interesting than the one resume that said the applicant was a self-described "computer nut". Tell me build model rockets and save money by mixing your own fuel (really paid attention in chemistry class), don't tell you too first year computer science, chemistry and physics. Point me to your favourite programs that you wrote yourself (class assignment/project, useful shell script 'hacks', anything), don't tell me that you know C++, Perl, and PHP. Write a short web tutorial about how to do a task (or fix a common problem) using Linux, like what you had to do to get your sound card or printer to work using Linux.
Other random thoughts: If I call you, I want to speak to you, not your mother. Get your own damn email address and check it, and a website of useful material (sample code, copy of resume in various formats (points for ASCII and OpenDocument)). Consider getting your own vanity domain and website (~$10/month) from some place like DreamHost.com (no financial interest, my friend love them). Compare your own resume with your friends', then try to figure how to express what makes you different to me (remember I'm selfish).
I am a fairly senior IT guy at a large medical institution with a large summer research internship program (e.g. I'm on one of the committees that reviews candidates). Nearly all the summer internship offers went out *LAST* week. The better planned apps were in before New Year's -- making contacts and cold calls was a good use of Christmas break for the motivated candidates. You dear, Ask-Slashdotter, are quite possibly too late to get a good gig. Internships are like jobs, you have to always be on the lookout for a great position in case it comes your way. No matter what your position and how much you like what you are doing, ALWAYS have a resume at the ready. Keeping a resume fresh helps you know what marketable skills you have an what skills you lack.
A number of private spaceflight firms which are periodically posted about on slashdot are looking for students to hire as summer interns, as well as full-time jobs. These companies are looking for folks with expertise in a variety of areas, from web design, to aerospace/mechanical engineering, to programming. Here's a few links (courtesy of RLV News), with descriptions of what the company does:
* SpaceX: Orbital rockets which are drastically cheaper than the competition, with plans for building manned orbital rockets. They should be launching their first rocket next month.
* Blue Origin: Suborbital vehicle company started by Amazon.com's CEO, Jeff Bezos.
* Masten Space Systems: Suborbital launch vehicles.
* Rocketplane Limited: Suborbital spaceplanes
Also, a few more hiring only for full-time jobs:
* Bigelow Aerospace: Inflatable space station modules for orbital research and tourism. Out of all the private spaceflight firms, they probably have the most resources.
* Scaled Composites: Burt Rutan's company and winner of the X Prize. They're currently working on building SpaceShipTwo for Virgin Galactic.
* SpaceDev: They build microsatellites and propulsion systems.
* TGV Rockets: Suborbital launch
I wish the best of luck to you, and if you get stuck with something like trace-collecting I reccomend you go bald now so there will be no hair to pull out while you stare at the screen for what seems to be eternity (dreams, memories, I couldn't tell the difference any more. The horror!).
Now's a good time to evaluate your goals.
... that is, you want to go after the apple/microsoft/ibm/novell brass rings and be a career programmer, then you're on the right track ... hunt for programming internships, if you can't find them, hunt for programming jobs, and if you can't find them either then polish your skills by adopting a favorite open source project and working on it. Developing your abilities with real-world production code is definitely a plus, and a nice resume-builder if nothing else.
... but it's not going to get you into the PhD program at very many places, or enrich the depth and breadth of your knowledge and interest in the subject by a whole lot either. After all, when you spend a summer making copies and getting coffee ... it doesn't really amount to _real_ work experience.
... there's a LOT of summer REU deadlines that are coming up in the next 3 days or so!
If you want to pursue the "software life"
On the other hand, if you want to aim for an academic's path (ie: you want to go on to grad school pursuing a doctorate degree and doing research in the field), internships are pretty useless. Look for research opportunities. I know at my university, we've got an REU program (research experiences for undergrads) that are very popular, and both meet the suggested "don't spend the summer doing nothing" and "get experience" goals. It's a program sponsored by the NSF, and is apparently pretty popular around the country, and comes highly recommended. Oh, and the pay isn't terrible, as an extra bonus.
The nice thing about the academic paths -- undergrad research for a prof, REU programs, etc -- is that they end up working toward either goal. Getting an internship or getting a normal job may work toward the couple years of experience most places want for their better positions
Anyway, think about things from the perspective of what doors they open. But be quick about it
(REU Program: http://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/ )
I've always felt that jobs obtained through connections were some sort of kickbacks or briberies. I've always applied for jobs at places where I was confident, to some degree, that nobody would know me at a personal level (such as friends or family). I arm myself with whatever experience and projects I have and head to interviews.
What do I need to bring to the table to be considered for even a menial position, these days?
1. Flexiblity, so you can bend over backwards to kiss your boss's ass.
2. Energy, so you can run errands for everyone else in the office.
3. Kneepads, to worship management properly.
4. Tough skin, so you can handle being a slave.
Seriously, most companies see interns as slave labor with decent pay or benefits. Either look for a job or talk to people who interned at companies you're looking at so you know what you're getting yourself into.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
The CS Department head where I went to college called getting your degree "getting a union card". Initially, I thought that it was somewhat of a cynical attitude for someone in that position.
However, from personal experience, I will say that he was right on the money. Getting a degree or an advanced degree is al well and good, but it will only impact the rate at which you are able to advance in your career in certain limited environments that are not very representative. I.e. you will get better promotions if you work for a large governement agency or government contractor, and it's a requirement for advancement in academia itself. So if you want to teach and/or do research in certain companies *eventually*, you will need to have an upper level degree to do so. You will need your "union card" if you want to work for IBM's T.J. Watson research center as something more than a scut worker. You will need it also for Google, which likes you to have more letters after your name than in your name, or you get treated as a second class citizen. You will need it to work on anything interesting at Nasa or Genentech. And so on.
BUT - and this is a *big* one - you will start out at the bottom just like everyone else, until you "prove your chops". The world is full of highly trained specialsts that aren't necessarily that good at what their paperwork says they know.
Should someone with a Masters degree be paid for having spent another couple of years becoming more educated, instead of spending those years getting job experience? Not initially, in my opinion. Yes, they should be able to negotiate up front that they want a three or six month review, based on their ability to do the work, at which time they get their value to the organization fairly evaluated, and a pay bump, if they merit it. Just having a union card is not enough to merit a high starting salary, any more than an electrician starting out is automatically a journeyman because they hold an electrician's ticket.
Most people don't do this type of negotiation - abbreviated review cycle, etc. - when starting their first job, because, well, they lack real world experience, so it never occurs to them that this type of thng is at all negotiable.
-- Terry
I personally am a second year CS student at the University of Utah, and my experience finding internships was incredibly positive. I managed to get an internship with a very successful software company in the midwest after my first interview. I also suspect that I would've had internship offers from two other smaller, local companies had I not already accepted this one.
The best advice that I can give, and what worked for me, is to get your resume out early and often (it's already a little late for a lot of internships). Get into contact with your career services or equivalent organization on campus immediately (even smaller schools should have at least one career counselor). Attend every job fair and recruiting event that you can. Look at other schools nearby and attend their career fairs as well. You should try and aim for a larger corporation that is maybe not as high profile as Microsoft or Google. It will be less of a risk to a large company to hire an inexperienced person, as they will have the resources to be able to train someone without all the necessary technical skills. If you think you're a hotshot, check your ego at the door because right now no matter how good your schooling was, you probably don't have the skills to compete in a competitive business environment.
Make sure that your resume is airtight and highlights your strengths. If you have a high GPA or are involved in leadership at your school(like student government), emphasize that. Most computer students take the same classes early on, so you aren't going to wow anyone with your curriculum. At your level, technical knowledge is not as important, although that should definitely be on there. The most important thing is not to show that you are a great programmer/sysadmin/whatever, it is to show that you have the potential to become great at it. Also, talk about things you do in your free time, especially computer-related stuff. If you show that you have a real passion for what you do, that can set you apart from the pack.
You should make an attempt to talk about any team-oriented project or leadership role you've held, no matter if it was in the CS field. Communication skills are also very important. Any Joe Schmoe off the street can know a little bit about C++, you have to show them that you will retain what they teach you and put it to immediate use. It's all about distinguishing yourself from the other students.
Hopefully by doing that you'll get an interview. In a lot of ways, that's the hardest part. Despite what some people may be saying, in software engineering right now there are a LOT of opportunities for bright, young people. You definitely have a chance to land an internship with somebody, even with your lack of experience. The most important thing is to get into a place where you get hands-on experience. You don't want to end up getting some idiot's coffee all summer.
You probably won't be getting paid much, so money shouldn't be an issue. If it is you might want to wait on the internship until you have more schooling and just try to get a regular summer job that pays better. Internships aren't always low-paying, though. I'll be making $16/hr. at mine, which is pretty good at my level.
If you see an internship that you like, go for it. Have confidence and things will work out. The worst thing that'll happen is that you get shut down for the job and end up doing whatever it is you were going to do this summer anyway, but if you never go for it then you'll never know. Don't wait until your senior year or beyond to try and land some good internships.
As somebody who interviews, selects, and supervises interns - the most important thing you can bring is attitude. You have to be ready to work, willing to work, and up for stretching to and beyond what you think the limits of your abilities are. You also can't consider physical work to be beneath you; especially in smaller organizations (like mine) sometimes everybody needs to help setup for a conference, move furniture, etc.
You absolutely cannot be afraid to do things that are hard; doing things that are hard is how you learn. You can't be afraid of failure; failure happens. It's what you learn from the failure that counts. If something is absolutely mission critical, I'm not going to hand it to an intern unless I have a backup plan.
Background is useful, and may get you more interesting work to start with, but attitude is what truly gets you in the door. Potential is much more important than which classes you've already taken.
For anybody who's supervising interns - you can learn a lot from those interns; sometimes it's good to get a reminder that just because somebody didn't grow up in a computer-enabled household doesn't mean they can't do useful system admin type work.
A bit of background on me: I'm the System Administrator for a small non-profit that does computational science education and research type work. We hire a lot of interns, for everything from System Admin and Programming to helping develop curriculum materials and teach workshops.
If anybody figures out which org this is - I only speak for myself.
ERROR: Null
... not much. The guy was an Industrial Engineering major (nothing wrong with that, mind you) with pretty much zero computer skills. We gave him this PHP project that a bunch of our interns had hacked on over the years (and me, when it gets truly FUBAR) and he just crossed his eyes the entire semester. They're bringing him back, though, so I figure if you can swap out backup tapes (the only thing he did successfully) you're hired.
He also had the most amazing ability to completely awkward-up any conversation he was involved in. Truly mind-boggling.
Game... blouses.
I assume you mean you sent email to college@apple.com with a subject line starting with "internship", per the instructions at the Apple Intern program web site, right?
http://www.apple.com/jobs/intern/index.html
I also asume you went looking for the campuses that Apple would be visiting to see if one was close enough for you to take a road trip and show up in person, to demonstrate that you were earnest about an Apple internship? Showing up at an even at a college or university that you don't personally attend, just to talk to the Apple Intership people would be very likely to make you stand out from the other possible candidates.
-- Terry
Know someone that works at your company. I'm in my third year of computer science at a school known for.. well, known for absolutely nothing. I'm also going to be spending my second summer at Apple's HQ in Cupertino. Why? Because my dad worked there and handed my resume to a manager. Because my brother worked there and told the manager I was worth hiring. Because a close family friend was the one that interviewed me for the position.
Do I deserve the internship? In my opinion, yes. Would I have gotten it without help from the inside? Probably not. People walk around saying "Oh it's not what you know, it's WHO you know," like it's some great revelation. It's not; it's simply the truth.
"What do I need to bring to the table to be considered for even a menial position, these days?"
Jobsearching skills.
And I'm really not kidding. Jobhunting skills weigh more than fixing-a-computer-through-knoppix-remastering skills. They do NOT teach you that in college (thank God).
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
As the head of IT for a nonprofit organization, I managed to hook up with a local college with an internship program. I've had one or more interns a year for about five years now. For one reason or another they've been willing to work for the experience. Since I can't afford to pay much (sometimes not at all), I try to get the interns projects in their areas of interest. It's been great to have them, there's always a lot more work than the time/manpower to do it. The interns get mentors who treat them like people and give them a lot of attention, and at the end they get a fair recommendation from me if they want one. I'll bet that approaching other nonprofits would get similar results. "You're willing to work as a volunteer? Sure, what do you want to do!"
;-)) could net you experience, networking, and a little good Karma (not on Slashdot). Plus it would be a really good habit to have, and to keep.
I know a lot of students (most students) can't afford to work for nothing, but maybe squeezing in an hour or two a week of volunteer work (you could cut out a little Slashdot reading
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." -Emerson
I did intern interviews for a couple years at one of the largests companies in the US. Big companies are very popular for students. They usually pay very well for a relatively small ammount of work. Private companies are some of the best to get internships with because they are truely looking to make an investment in the next generation's work force. They don't have a bottom line to skimp on. They want to make a good impression because interns are often where college hires come from.
That being said, you'll be judged on two things. One, Grades. How close are you to 4.0? I've seen a lot of college transcripts. The canidates who make it past the selection department are VERY close to perfect. Since most canidates have pretty much the same grades and classes, really what will set you appart is personal skills. Not only how likable you are, but how you react under presure.
All that being said 3rd and 4th year is were most companies really start drawing interns from.
Contribute to an open source project. Theres plenty to do out there. It shows motivation, coding skills and the ability to understand complex systems. Also, many companies are looking for people to step in with experience working with certain code bases.
Hi there, sophomore CS major at some ritzy school here. This summer I'm working for a Silicon Valley startup where I plan to actually be useful. Last summer I worked as an intern on campus for a research group, so I have a bit of experience.
Essentially, there are three things you can do:
1. Spend the summer jobless and contribute to as many open source projects as possible. Treat it like a full time job, spend 8 hours a day coding/reading code. If you have enough discipline(I don't) you can get a lot done and have a lot of stuff to put on your resume.
2. Work in IT. This is what I did through summers in high school. You probably won't be programming anything sweet, but a job is a job and an entry on your resume is an entry on your resume. Boring, but you can probably surf the web most of the day if things don't go wrong.
3. Apply at startups. After freshman year, every big company told me to not even bother applying at their job fairs since I was so young. They're usually right, but if you're good enough (I probably wasn't), you can apply to startups and hopefully get hired. Some startups give interesting interviews out here in the valley where you can show your actual talent instead of a resume. The second interview for this summer's employer consisted of being sat down in front of a machine and being told to write a webserver that serves static files. 3 hours later I had done it and they made me an offer.
I think any of these three options are viable, consider them.
when I find myself you'll be the first to know.
<homer> m-m-m-m-m-, doughnut fries! drooollll</homer>
<moe> Doughnut Fries! I'll be *rich*!</moe>
I'm a bit special because I had my first job in the computer business when I was 15 (as a low low level tech).. And I already had experience before starting university. But still, I landed my current job through a summer job. On a 4 yr program, I did 2 summer jobs and 1 internship (the only difference being that the internship gives me a credit and cost me 300$). You should ask for a salary, dont go too much under 13-15$/hr. Not asking enough looks bad (employers know good candidates are expensive). That said, most employers dont expect interns/students to be productive, they are mostly given stuff that "would be cool if it was done, but we'll live without it". Internships are a great way to test a potential recruit, its pretty cheap and the intern will go away in 4 or 8 months, and then you are completely free to ignore him or offer him a better job.
Where I work, I did an internship doing php/mysql/perl in the systems (sysadmin) departement, and ended up getting a job as a software developer for a distributed filesystem (how cool is that!!).
Did I say not to worry about having no experience? No sane employer expects first year interns to have experience. And if you arent in a desert, it should be pretty easy to find something, most school have a service to help you find one. And the current economy is very good in the IT sector.
If you find nothing, look for something in research (it looks good on a resumé too), most professors hire student (but its badly paid!). Just look at the list of profs in your department/school and look at those that seem most interesting and go see them, they love it when students are interested in what they do. This obviously only apply to universitys where research is done.
While everyone is right that your skills are nowhere near as important as your attitude and drive, I think there's one exception: learn Scheme (or OCaml if you'd rather).
It isn't so much that Scheme is the world's most useful language; it certainly doesn't have library support anywhere near the major industry languages (C++, Java, etc.). But that's not the point.
Rather, being able to program in Scheme means that you understand computer science in ways that many of your peers, who might only have ever learned Java or similar languages, don't.
Any data structure that you use in Scheme that's more complex than a list, you have to program yourself. There is no iteration; there are no mutable variables; there's no state at all. Programming in Scheme feels very much like writing math equations that happen to be able to calcualte their own answers. But, by the same token, there's no cheating. If you don't understand recursion, you won't be able to write anything.
Maybe some employers won't know the difference between Scheme and JavaScript, and that's really too bad for them. But there will definitely be people who will see "functional programming" on your resume and realize, hey, this kid knows his stuff.
At my school, we have two intro CS tracks; one is all-Java, and the other (which I took) teaches Scheme and OCaml in the first semester and Java only later. I don't know too many people who chose the first track, but I know about a dozen people who took the second one their freshman year, and now, as sophomores, every single one had multiple offers for summer internships.
An ex-prof of mine who went back to industry while finishing up his PhD gave this speech. I personally consider him one of the best people to go to about practical life skills; he has extensive experience in industry. These notes are just some of the jot notes I wrote, and apply directly to getting noticed and in the door:
Think about what you offer to an employer.
Where in the market sector do you want a job?
What makes you useful? You have to be a net contributor. Technology skills are a given; you need to be a nice person, someone who can work together. Someone who does not break up what's already working. Sometimes an employer will hire someone like that deliberately as an agent of change. Do your hobbies or interactions with community groups enable you to get a job? Do you know people (social networking)?
Think about employee costs: simple model -- salary = benefits + taxes + overhead. You cost a minimum of 2x your salary, but may be as high as 12x if you have an IC fab in a place. If you want 50k a year, you must contribute more than 100k to a company's bottom-line at the low-end. More R&D based places have to have higher margins. Tightly run services companies can run as low as 1.65, but that's pushing it.
Be professional. There can be no mistakes on your resume or cover letter. Be concise -- time is money; a site manager can bill time is thousands of dollars/hour. Be relevant -- don't reuse too much material. Of course, when working towards a higher level (VP, etc), you need a full-colour spread -- sell yourself.
Be prepared to be googled; a personal, professional web presence can't hurt. Expect your references to be contacted -- warn your references! Be prepared to give your opinion on issues (Microsoft, Open-source, DMCA, etc) -- this can be a minefield; they may disqualify you, or mark you on your ability to speak on sensitive topics. Keyword search terms -- electronic prescreening is used on resumes now, be aware of it.
Convincing the interviewer(s). This is about you as a person. Display honesty and integrity. Show (quiet) self-confidence (except for sales positions). Be positive, but realistic, and mature. Show how you can be a part of the team. You want to be the kind of person you'd invite over for a saturday night, or let watch your kids. By maturity, do you beat your dog when your design is changed?
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
you're the one with the opening, shouldn't you be more concerned with how well hung he is?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Los Alamos has a very robust summer internship program that is entirely focused on the student learning something new, rather than be oriented towards what the student can produce. www.lanl.gov/education
I started there the summer after my freshman year, and I loved every moment of it. There's a reason why this summer is going to be my fourth one there.
I know this may be somewhat unpopular advice, but here's my limited experience. (Of course, the plural of anecdote is not data, so YMMV.)
PEOPLE GET PEOPLE JOBS. Make connections. Network -- the social variety. And when all else fails, be ready to do a lot of legwork just like you were hunting for ordinary jobs -- lots of resumes, lots of time investment, and probably only a few interviews. So really, network network network. It's how the business world works. Remember, hiring you is a business decision -- you're going to cost money, so you have to sell yourself.
Practice your interviews. Make sure everything from the typesetting of your resume to your body language during the interview establishes that you're competent and confident (but not cocky!). Don't worry about the specific skills while you're looking for an internship -- if you're applying for that level of position, you have the unique benefit that your employer doesn't EXPECT you to have lots of experience. Contrary to some posts I've seen, many internships pay pretty well (at least, in my experience), so it's a nice way to spend the summer.
If you're purely looking for experience, and not planning to draw a paycheck from your internship, look to local volunteer organizations. There's almost always a church or a community organization that could really use a volunteer to help them out with tech. Maybe you could set up a CMS for a local organization, improving their web site and giving them the tools to keep it maintained. Projects like this are great for demonstrating genuine enthusiasm for the technology, and showing that you can work in a "real life" environment.
NETWORKING
I have two stories about networking.
"The University Job:" I worked in an R&D lab at my university. (This is a great way to start meeting people who can help you with your career.) While doing a presentation to a local business, I interested the right person in our services. Twenty minutes later, I had a 2-week proof-of-concept gig. After 2 weeks, I secured a summer internship to finish the study. After college, I went to work for this company.
"The MMORPG Job:" A few years later, I was looking for a job. Damn layoffs. As it turns out, a guildmate of mine was an IT manager looking for a new hire. I ran our guild and player-city web sites, I'd done some web-based "player events," and I generally talked the talk. It was enough to get me an interview, and eventually I landed the job.
CANVASSING RESUMES
I've never gotten a job offer this way. I've gotten a few interviews. It's hard -- because you're up against people who do have an "in." A lot of technical places give bonuses to employees when they refer new hires. A lot of technical workers and managers have out-of-work friends. And a lot of IT shops in particular are running at extremely minimal staffing levels, and really need a quick study who happens to already know the technologies they use. But now that I've said that, it never hurts -- there's always the chance that your typesetting, or the way you communicate in the resume, or even just your name will grab someone's eye. Make sure your cover letter focuses on the company -- I personally can't stand it when I'm screening resumes and the person just zipped off a copy of their standard letter.
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If you actually want to do something useful ask around with your friends and co-students for your average small Company with the standard overworked IT Department. For someone who can actually cut it, theres no better place to earn some RL experience. The other Staff will basically have no Choice but to let you run with stuff, cause theres _no way_ they can find the Time to do it themselves.
Again this shows the value of Networking, cause that is where the Opportunities are hidden.
When i leave my current Job theres 10-20 People i came in Contact with during this Job i would check up on for Leads. And of course there still are all my Aquaintances from University, who mostly have Jobs now too....
-- never underestimate someone who overestimates himself
You should probably get with your school's Career Services (or similar) office to start looking. They keep a listing of Internship Partnerships the school has with various organizations.
If you're feeling social, you could always go around to the small businesses in the area and offer your services to develop a small piece of software for them in exchange for their gratitude and a little college credit.
Then there are always the big guys: NASA, the national labs, large hospitals, etc. They always seem to be looking for interns to do something.
All it takes is a little digging.
Build up your portfolio. Lots of comments already covered volunteering, trying to get a co-op. What would impress me is if you can "show" me your work. Have a great idea? Let's see you realize it. Like gaming? Design/create one -- collaborate with your fellow students/friends. See a better way to do something on a website? Do it and show me how you improve it. I can't tell you how many resumes I've scanned looking for a summer intern, (and sadly this applies to actual job applicants as well) many had no web pages, no working samples of their work. A high GPA means you know how to pass a test, it doesn't give me any sense of how you deal with practical issues, like writing code/script to solve a problem. Even if you don't get an internship/job, the working portfolio is still useful.
You look great on paper, with C++, familiarity w/ Perl & PHP. You also know the Windows OS and Linux OS. But if I was a recruiter, that doesn't tell me anything. 1. Have you ever used those skills to create programs? 2. Have you ever worked with a team of developers? (Most companies do not hire just 1 programmer to fulfill the company's programming needs.) 3. Have you ever adhered to a strict schedule and have deadlines that have to be met? 4. What does familiarity mean, make basic web pages only, understand the theory but never applied it? 5. Do you have a passion for what you are doing or are you just looking for a job? 6. And of course, like the apple intern, why should I hire you over that other guy who just came up to me and told me the same thing? These are all questions that have to be answered, and there are probably many more that still need to be answered that are not listed above. If you are a sophomore or maybe even a freshman in college, try to find a computing job on campus. There are almost always several of those around because of the how cheap students are willing to work for. Not only do these positions help you beef up your resume, but they also tell companies that you have applied the skills you have learned in professional environments. If there are no possible job opportunities, look instead to become a research assistant for a computer science professor on campus. Besides work experiences, keep all the programs you have worked in school, and create other programs outside of school. Keep these all these pieces of work in a portfolio and indicate on your cover letter that you have prior programs/webpages that can be shown so the company may themselves look at where your current skill levels are. This way, you are not telling the company what you're capable of; you are showing the company what you are capable of. And of course, since you are in school, having a good GPA should be a no brainer.
This summer is a big congressional election season. Offer to help one of these campaigns (most have contact info on their websites) with their financial/FEC-filing software: sell your CIS background and prove that you can help the finance director handle the "logical flow" of information from checks/donors to the FEC. The earlier you can get on a campaign, the better.
None of your peers thought of this - trust me. And if you're on a campaign that wins, your future employer will piss themselves and hire you on the spot when they get a recommendation call from a U.S. Congressman. If you don't win, you still get a lot of good contacts and you prove to potential employers that you can handle working in a high-pressure "people-centric" environment.
"Yep. Otherwise we should stop bullshitting people about how important education is."
Education is important as a long term investment. Credentials are less important, except under certain restricted conditions (some of which are highly desirable to some people, subch as the ability to get a research position doing your own research isntead of someone else's).
Just because someone has a set of credentials does not make them educated; conversely, not having the credentials doesn't make you uneducated.
One of the big mistakes we've made in our society is attempting to measure people by their credentials. We've seen that in this thread, with everyone piping up about Bill Gates dropping out of Harvard; while it's true, he dropped out before obtaining more advanced credentials, the lack of those credentials doesn't make him uneducated.
Likewise, we see it in the value of certain certifications; for example, comparing wages offered to people with and without MSCE credentials, we see (as reported on Slashdot last spring) that and MSCE actually reduces your earning potential.
Finally, I'm sure that all of us have had classes with people who were only there to get the credentals, and rarely thought outside the box, or did more than the required coursework - straight A or even B students who we would personally not hire because they lacked the passion for their subject.
The 1990's was absolutely *filled* with people who took a CS major because, like those same people who pursued a JD or MBA in the 1980's, or an MD before that, they were looking for a quick path to money, rather than doing something that they felt was worthwhile. And like the JD's, MBA's, and MD's before them, we rewarded that thinking by giving everyone with a pulse and 1 year of CS under their belt a cublicle to sit in and a monitor in front of them. Until, lke the JD's, MBA's, and MD's before them - we didn't.
And the bubble burst, and now we have a lot of people who were short term thinkers that have neither credentials nor desirable work experience.
Don't get me wrong - credentials are important *now* - but the reason they are important is *not* to get you a higher starting salary, it's to get you in the door at all vs. those people who jumped on the Internet boom before getting their credentials, and now have to face a job market now that its bust.
Personally, I'm not going to hire someone who thinks "this is my 9 to 5 day job", and has no passion for their field of supposed expertise otherwise. Such people live on their marginal ability to produce, and they're the first people you throw overboard when or if the margin shrinks, because they're the first to lose their economic value to the company.
Finally, somone's MS in CS from a state univerity in the U.S. is no more valuable than the MS in CS from IIT of someone in Bangalore, and if they price thenselves out of the market because of an inflated sense of their own value, don't be surprised when their potential employer, now firmly convinced of the value of credentials, realizes that they can get someone with equivalent credentials cheaper elsewhere.
-- Terry
"Maybe they just wanted a job to pay the bills."
I had a long reply about what would have to be true convince me to hire someone for a job for which they demonstrated no passion.
But you know what? If someone just wants a job to pay the bills, and no passion for the work, and is just in it to be a 9-5 chair-warmer... I think they can go find another employer. Maybe a civil service job would suit them.
Then, when they finally snap because they wake up one day, chronically depressed that they've been working at a job for which they had no passion for the last 20 years, it won't be my office where they go postal, it'll be someone else's.
-- Terry
I get offered internships and student worker jobs left and right. I've found I make a lot more money working for myself, and that I am more greatly appreciated while running my own business. My clients seem to be pretty happy people, and in return they pay me good money. Screw these low pay slave jobs, I like being my own boss, it just takes a lot of self motivation to get started. I've been programming since I was about 12 years old though, so that may be put at an advantage. If you are going to take this route though, I'd recommend some business courses, because computer science alone isn't going to teach you how to run an IT business successfully. Working at various computer shops and firms throughout high school probably gave me a leg up, because I analyzed the companies, pointed out their weak spots, and moved on. Working for a big retail company helps too, because you learn a lot of good business practices. Unless something special intrigues me, to where I think I will learn something new, I won't even look at working under somebody else though.
Sig: I stole this sig.
bottom line, all you need is to have a lot of friends who can maybe get you a job OR know someone inside the company you want to work for.
I know very smart and hard working people that really know their stuff and they are working in low level jobs just because it's hard to get a position that match their skills without knowing someone that can introduce them... It's all about connections.
Specially when they are immigrant and they know nobody-nowhere.