
Ask HN: I'm a high school student. Is my job searching strategy flawed? - randallma
I've been on the lookout for summer internship opportunities at bay area/SV startups for ~3 months now. I haven't heard back from... all but one of the ~20 companies I've emailed, and I'm curious as to if this is the behavior I should be expecting.<p>My cover letter is short, sweet, and proofread (mentions hackathon I won, personal projects, etc), and I've been attaching my resume (http://www.scribd.com/doc/126461525/) to it. The emails I send out are generally to generic jobs@company.tld email addresses, which I feel are eating up my submissions and never make it to real human beings.<p>So I ask you: is my experience representative of all job seeking, or am I doing something wrong? Should I be seeking out employees to reach out to? Is your company even remotely interested in filling pre-undergrad positions, and if so, does my pitch reach the barrier of entry for consideration?<p>(email == randall@randallma.com, if you'd like to talk privately to me)
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jfaucett
Think about it from their perspective. Imagine you are an HR person, maybe if
its a start up the CTO, and you receive the application you've been sending
out. How would you react? Would the application be memorable? Would it impress
you and make you think, this person seems like they are really enthusiastic
about working at our company and they have impressive skills?

To this end, I'd say make sure you show them something you've built that's up
and running and 100% completed. It only has to be just one thing, but make
sure its impressive - something you're proud of and would consider your best
piece of work. Send it as a link in your initial email.

Anything unique and cool that makes you stick out is good. Why not strap up
your resume as an interactive app designed specifically for that startup you
really want to intern for? Or whoever said you had to send a standard resume
word doc? Why not mock up a sweetly designed resume - even if you're a
programmer it shows motivation and ability to think outside the box. (See this
link for inspiration: [http://dzineblog.com/2011/09/35-brilliant-resume-
designs.htm...](http://dzineblog.com/2011/09/35-brilliant-resume-
designs.html))

Also, Looking over your resume I see a lot of stuff but nothing that looks
like its completed (maybe it is but the resume doesn't show it). I'd also
scratch anything from your resume that doesn't impress. The link to
<http://countervailinteractive.com> goes to an expired domain, so I can't see
what your skills are like, so I'd get that working or scratch it if you can't.
Saying you built one website doesn't do much to get you in the door.

Anyways, I hope I didn't sound to harsh, I like seeing young people
enthusiastic about programming and would like to see you get that internship.
Good luck :)

~~~
randallma
I absolutely see what you mean about releasing polished projects-- you're
saying I should spend some time getting products launched for real instead of
just taking on learning projects repeatedly. That's a good message to take to
heart. :)

Not overly harsh at all! Thank you for the valuable advice and the heads-up on
the dead domain.

------
domainkiller
In my humble opinion, firing off an email is a lost cause. HR folks are
blasted all the time and it's really hard for them to "separate the wheat from
the chaff" as they say.

Your idea of getting in touch with the employees is the right direction. You
need to connect with someone personally from these companies. Connect with
them on LinkedIn, hit them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook. Be wherever
they are.

Also, consider posting your resume and cover-letter within a Hacker News
posting asking for advice... oh wait...

------
argonaut
Some of my thoughts:

It is very common for high schooler resumes to get no attention. After all,
these companies want college interns. And to top it off, you're a high school
_sophomore_. Most HS seniors never get internships either.

I'll second what jfaucett said. It is much more important to show 1-2 projects
that you actually shipped, rather than 10 projects you never finished. This
should make intuitive sense.

Things on your resume that are not very impressive: 1) Your GPA (high school
GPAs are meaningless to a startup) 2) Software Dev Club VP (high school club
leadership is meaningless to a startup)

Honestly, it's a turn off when the first 3 things I see on your resume are
that you're a sophomore in HS, your GPA, and a club leadership position, since
I know how meaningless those things are. You should put your
experience/projects at the top, since those are the most impressive. I'm not
saying that you shouldn't include those other things (GPA, club), but they
should be at the bottom of your resume.

Some notes 1) Get your app on the Google Play store. 2) Add a link to your
django-based news aggregator 3) Countervail is down. Get a version up on your
own domain (randallma.com) and link to it just so you can show it off.

In fact, you should get your personal website up and running so that you can
have a digital resume that actually _shows_ people your projects (with links
and screenshots). A drab resume is not going to get past HR.

Your Hackers&Founders description also has a grammar error.

Finally, the high school students I know who got internships at software
companies ALL had some sort of inside connection - typically through their
parents or a family friend. See if your parents have any contacts they can
leverage.

~~~
caw
I'd agree with some of this. HS resumes are going to get binned unless you
prove otherwise. Your resume might be decent in getting a "high school" job
like a supermarket, but it's still not great.

I think the Software Dev Club VP could be something, but you don't explain it
at all. What is it? Did you cofound it? What do you do as VP? Accomplishments?

Your resume is somewhat fluff. You have skills, but it takes up >1/3 of the
page without much to show for it. Try 2 column for skills. I'd also move it to
the bottom, since your experience should speak for the skills you have, the
skills are just a reminder^H^H^H^Hkeyword spam and list other things that may
have not been included.

Not enough info at that point? Try speaking to some of your hackathons. It's
an extracurricular thing.

One trick for designing resumes is to flip it upside down and look at the text
as shapes rather than words. How is it balanced? Are there noticeable gaps,
and are those intentional or should they be filled in?

Also, cover letters should be custom for each job. If you template them it's
really only 1 paragraph you should have saved, and the rest should be custom
per job.

As a high school student, don't send to jobs@. How do you even know the mail
alias exists and actually gets looked at? Send to somebody.

EDIT: One last thing -- your resume is pretty flat. You are obviously strong
technically, but you have no reference to teams or working with others. Hence
why you should expand Club VP (maybe to experience section). If you do
volunteering or organized something or did a Boy Scout project, I'd put that
on there. You do get a bit of resume forgiveness as an intern that you don't
get professionally.

I've looked over resumes for interns before, and basically you know that the
most you can hope for is technically strong. Most of the time you want strong
soft skills and they just grow technical skills through the internship. You
don't show me any of the soft skills.

~~~
argonaut
Two things I would like to disagree with / clarify:

1) Just to be clear, the software dev club VP position is not a _negative_ ,
just that it's not going to impress anyone. And honestly I can't think of
situations in which it would. Co-founding a club in college, let alone HS, is
very easy.

2) I disagree with the statement that "Most of the time you want strong soft
skills and they just grow technical skills through the internship." Keep
things in perspective. It's hard for a HS _sophomore_ to impress on the soft
skills side of the equation. I mean, even something that might be impressive
to a college in admissions, like organizing a community service outing, is not
going to be very relevant to a startup engineering internship. I actually
think the way that you shine on your resume is to have extremely strong
technical skills. _If I know you have exceptional technical skills, I am
assured you will be a useful contributor. If I am assured that you have
exceptional soft skills, that still does not tell me how much you will be able
to contribute. It's not like you'll be doing biz dev or sales._ Looking
through your github profile, it's hard for me to get a handle on your
technical ability, which is why I recommend having a personal website with a
visual portfolio (screenshots) of your projects and more detailed descriptions
of the technical challenges and features of your projects.

I am not saying that you should neglect the soft skills side of things. Be
involved in clubs. _I cannot stress how important it is in the general scheme
of things to be involved in something that requires public speaking._ Club
leadership is not public speaking. Something like theater or debate is. The
payoff for those things shows itself in college admissions and in life after
college when you have to deal with people and managers. As an intern you are
not likely to face interpersonal challenges that require articulation and
persuasion.

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jason_slack
Well, maybe one approach would be to search Hacker News for popular tech
companies and see names of people at the company and then e-mail them?
Ethical? I dunno. Attention grabbing? Probably.

Dropbox. E-Mail Drew Houston. Twitter/Square. E-Mail Jack Dorsey. Google.
E-Mail Kevin Rose.

I dont't know how much this would help but maybe worth a try...

Kevin Rose also does a Foundation Podcast, a bunch of which are here in the
bay area. Maybe review those for potential people to contact.

~~~
randallma
Haven't heard of the Foundation Podcast before/will definitely take a look at
it. Thanks for the heads up!

------
aviraldg
See also: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4079567>

\---

EDIT: In short, open source contributions help a lot. (also: you'll have
better luck finding not just jobs, but also valuable connections on HN, than
anywhere else)

------
rohanpai
I'm a HS student and you basically have to know people/get personal referrals.
Sent you a message

------
wmf
You should probably try emailing one real person at each company; after that
it's a lost cause.

